Grants talk:PEG/Exile Museum/ Open Day

This grant is currently under review. Comments are welcome on this page. Remember the Friendly space expectations!

GAC comments

• how many people are expected to visit this open day? It's an important figure to compare costs vs benefits rubin16 (talk) 15:14, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

WMF Comments

Hi Exilemuseum. Thank you for this interesting grant proposal. We understand the importance of broadening awareness of the exile experience and and how it fits as a part of Greek history. The activities planned for Open Day sounds like a good strategy for engaging local communities and exposing young people to this piece of their history. We have a number of questions about the request and look forward to your responses.

1. We are supportive of participants utilizing the museum's resources to improve or create articles on Wikipedia about the history of exile in Greece. Can you please specify what you mean when you say, "the historical material will be published in Wikimedia projects." What historical materials and how will they be published?
2. We can fund training for students and academics on how to edit Wikipedia, but we do not typically fund one-day events. We have seen that a one-time event does not lead to continued engagement with the Wikimedia projects over time. Open Day sounds like a great first introduction to the topic, but we would be more supportive of a series of trainings and activities.
3. Inviting academics to assess content gaps is also a great idea. Again, a one-day activity does not sounds long enough to engage academics on such a complicated topic.
4. Please note that all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source. Unfortunately, this means that stories passed down through generations cannot be added to Wikipedia unless there is a published source.
5. Please let us know who is on your organizing team. Do you have experienced Wikimedians who can help facilitate the Wikimedia activities and serve as mentors for new editors or museum staff after the day is over?

Please let us know if you have questions about the above. Once we have clarified your goals and activities we can discuss more details. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 03:54, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi Exilemuseum. I've summarized the responses you sent via email to the above questions here:

1. In terms of historical material, you want to use academic papers and articles, as well as exile testimonies published by the museum as sources for new or improved content on Wikimedia projects.
2. In celebration of the museum's 10 year anniversary, you plan to organize a two-day event. One day for lectures and discussion and the second day for Open Day activities (included in the grant request). You see these two days as the first step in a series of outreach activities aimed at educating the public about the exile experience. These activities include the following
   • Lectures and discussions for the matter of Exile in Greece in the 20th century, political history, political science, history of art, psychology, literature, etc.
   • Art workshops such as Engraving ones, as Engraving was one of the most popular means of art that people in Exile used to communicate with their families
   • Educational programs for all levels.
3. The team has a number of experts in the field including the following disciplines: heritage management, archaeology, history, art and political science. However, none of the team members have any experience with editing Wikimedia projects. You would like to be able to train students and academics on how to edit Wikipedia.

Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 04:26, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Next steps

Thank you for your time today to discuss the project via Skype. The museum has an important mission and we see the potential for using engagement with Wikipedia as a way to get more of your community involved in and aware of the exile experience. As we discussed, we have seen good results in terms of engagement of new editors when museums host a series of trainings over a set time period. For example, hosting weekly trainings over three months. Each week organizers can focus on different editing skills, building on them throughout the series. A museum is a great place to host trainings because you have a wealth of resources about a topic that is not widely covered in the Wikimedia projects. Museum staff can help identify content gaps and articles for people to improve or create. They can also pull resources (books, articles, etc.) to make it easy for people to add references to articles. A series is also a great strategy because you can follow-up with participants between sessions. This type of program definitely takes a larger commitment from people up-front who want to sign up for a longer-term project, and the groups tend to be smaller. Here is an example of a similar GLAM (Gallery, Libraries, Archives and Museums) project we have funded in the past. It is bigger in scope and more complex than what we would suggest you start with, but a good reference. Here are more resources and best practices for how museums can engage Wikimedia projects, including planning training events: GLAM model projects.

Another key aspect of any project involving training people how to edit Wikimedia projects, is having experienced Wikimedian(s) as part of your team. There are a lot of nuances to editing Wikimedia projects and engaging with the online Wikimedia community. It is essential to have someone who knows the policies, cultural norms, and best practices to train new people so they do not become frustrated or discouraged.

In terms of next steps, we encourage the team to think about our suggestions above and if a series of trainings would be something the museum is interested in organizing. If yes, we could fund related expenses, such as food/drink, some promotional material, technical needs for the events, any necessary printed material, and some type of small swag (pin or t-shirt) for participants. Typically, we encourage organizers to give something small like pins or stickers for all participants and t-shirts to those that have high quality participation. We do not cover event coordinators for these types of activities or other personnel expenses like the engraver, graphic designer, museum educator, etc. We hope these activities can be organized by paid museum staff. The important first step would be to find at least one, but preferably 2-3, experienced Wikimedians who could join your team. We can connect you with the Wikimedia Community User Group Greece to help find local contacts.

Please let me know if you have questions about the above. We are looking forward to your response. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 04:26, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Moving back to draft

Hi Exilemuseum. We will move the status back to draft since we have not heard from you in over a month. You can revise the proposal at any time and re-apply through the new Project Grants program. Best, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 18:19, 7 September 2016 (UTC)