Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Wikimedians of Republic of Srpska/One-Year General Support Grant/2025-2026

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello Bojana Wiki PG, and thanks for your General Support Fund proposal supporting the Wikimedians of Republic of Srpska's movement activities in 2025-2026. I had a few questions and requests regarding the proposal, independent from Regional Committee feedback that I wanted to share here:

• In the proposal, I saw that there were three goals mentioned regarding increasing active members, increasing participation by women in Wikimedia projects, and increasing active contributors, but these are not incorporated into your metrics. While the specific outcomes for these goals were set for 2027, if your activities stand to support some of these needs over the next year, I recommend making the following changes to your metrics if possible in the following manner:
  • I recommend removing the number of activities from your metrics for the purposes of reporting . While understanding the number of activities run provides some information about your organizational capacity, it doesn't tell us much about what impact your organization is having for participants or on Wikimedia projects. Metrics should be designed to show what are the most direct benefits extending from your programmatic or administrative work.
  • Please add active affiliate members to your metrics, and define what criteria makes a member active (e.g. attends at least x number of organizational activities, edits at least x times during a period of time, etc.), and add this to the description line under the Other Metrics section. Given that the goal is set for a 30% increase in active members by 2027, I recommend setting an initial goal of a 10-15% increase for active members over the next year.
  • Please add active contributors to your metrics and define what criteria makes a contributor active in the description under Other Metrics. One common definition for an active editor using the Special:Statistics page on any Wikimedia project is any editor who has performed an action in the last 30 days. However, a different definition might be more suitable for your work, provided you can gather that data.
  • For the Diversity of participants metric, please write explicitly in the description section what this refers to for clarity. Based on the proposal, I think this refers to your goals around increasing women's participation in Wikimedia projects. Given that the goal for 2027 is to increase this participation by 20%, I recommend setting a goal for between 5-10% for your activities in the next year.
• Currently, how many active members does Wikimedians of Republic of Srpska have?
• I wanted to applaud your active and continuing partnership with the Meridian Sport news agency-- it sounds like this is a reliable and robust partnership that yields high quality media related to professional sports. Can you discuss a little bit more about how this partnership works, and what kind of scope it has (that is, is it limited to sporting events in the Republic of Srpska, or is it somewhat broader than that?)

Please let me know if you have any questions or needs for clarity around these comments and requests. To support our review and decisionmaking, responses to proposal feedback from myself and Regional Committee members will be due on 2 May 2025. With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 16:44, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Hello I JethroBT (WMF), thank you for the valuable suggestions and recommendations. In the following text, I will do my best to address the questions that were raised.

• We acknowledge your recommendation and will remove the number of activities from the metrics. We understand that the focus is on direct benefits for participants and projects, and will instead introduce metrics that better reflect impact and contribution.
• We are adding the metric “number of new active affiliate members” in the “Other metrics” section. Active members are defined as those who participate in at least 2 activities during the reporting period and/or have at least 20 edits on a Wikimedia project within a single quarter. The goal for 2025/2026 is to increase the number of active members by 10–15% compared to the previous year.

Currently, there are approximately 48 active members.

• We are also adding the number of new active contributors to the “Other metrics” section. Active contributors are defined as users with at least 5 edits per month over three consecutive months during the project, or at least 20 edits throughout the project. This definition is tailored to our data tracking capabilities and the nature of the activities we implement.
• In the “Other metrics” section, we will clearly specify that “participant diversity” primarily refers to increasing the participation of women in Wikimedia projects. In line with our strategic goal to increase women's participation by 20% by 2027, we are setting a target of a 5–10% increase during the 2025–2026 period.

In addition to focusing on women, we have also been consistently committed to involving members of other underrepresented groups. In this regard, we highlight our long-standing collaboration with Wikimedia Serbia in organizing edit-a-thons and other activities dedicated to the Roma community, aiming to enhance their visibility and representation on Wikipedia.

The goal of these efforts is not only to increase content about the Roma but also to ensure their active involvement in creating that content, which we see as a valuable contribution to the inclusiveness of the Wikimedia movement in the region.

• We currently have a total of 89 active members, with the note that this number may vary depending on the period and the intensity of activities.
• We appreciate the support and positive feedback. The partnership with the Meridian Sport Agency involves the regular provision of photographs and media content related to sports events in Republika Srpska. This collaboration is based on a shared understanding of the importance of free content and allows us to share high-quality images of athletes, teams, and events through Wikipedia.

While the primary focus is on events in Republika Srpska, the agency occasionally covers regional events as well, further enriching the content. Thanks to this agreement, the photographs are published under free licenses and are used across multiple language versions of Wikipedia.

If you have any further questions or need additional clarification, I will be happy to provide it. Once again, thank you for your attention and dedication.

Kind regards, Bojana Wiki PG (talk) 21:30, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Comments from Красный

Hi, Bojana Wiki PG, thank you for your proposal. Additionaly to the Chris's comments I have a few of my own that popped up during the Regional Funds Committee discussion.

• As a long time member of the committee I’m glad to see the growth of the affiliate in a way of making your proposal better in multiple ways. While we were not really satisfied with your first proposal back in 2022 (it was not very elaborative on a first place), the current one is rather good in a way of explaining every planned approach and activity.
• Also it’s nice to see not only the list of the outlined problems and challenges but also a clear and well-explained approaches to solve them. In my opinion that gives additional points to your proposal.
• Not a concern, but a question: you've mentioned decolonization in Serbian Wikipedia. While it's kind of unusual to see such approach for this location and community what kind of work does this refer to?
• I'm glad to see the ongoing partnerships including those that provide funds to cover some of the expenses. Nowadays it's crucial to have multuple sources of income to maintain stability as an organization.

Thank you again for your proposal and wish you and affiliate a productve year. Красный^{wanna talk?} 19:18, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi, Красный,

Thank you for your kind words and detailed feedback. We truly appreciate your recognition of the progress we have made in the way we plan and present our activities. Your support and constructive suggestions are of great importance to us.

Regarding your question about the use of the term “decolonization” in the context of Serbian Wikipedia – I would like to clarify that this term was not intentionally used in our proposal, and it is possible that there has been a misunderstanding or misinterpretation. Our current activities are not explicitly framed within the concept of decolonization.

However, we understand that in the broader context of the Wikimedia movement, decolonizing knowledge refers to efforts to ensure a more equitable distribution of knowledge, greater diversity of sources, and inclusion of voices and perspectives that have traditionally been marginalized. In that sense, the impression may stem from our ongoing efforts to promote inclusion and visibility of underrepresented communities, such as the Roma community, as well as our work on improving the representation of diverse social and cultural groups within Wikimedia projects.

Additionally, through editing contests and thematic initiatives, we are consistently working to highlight underrepresented and overlooked topics, contributing to a more balanced and inclusive knowledge ecosystem.

Through partnerships, editing activities, and targeted initiatives, we aim to empower communities that have historically been underrepresented, which, in some aspects, could indeed be seen as part of the global effort toward more equitable and diverse knowledge.

Once again, thank you for your encouraging message and continued support. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any further questions or need clarification on any part of our proposal.

Kind regards, Bojana Wiki PG (talk) 21:55, 10 April 2025 (UTC)