Grants talk:Project/Rapid/WIkimedia UG Nigeria/Wikimedia Fan Club

Hi Shola, ZMcCune (WMF) and I enjoyed working with you at WMCon to develop a plan for the Wikimedia Fan Clubs in Nigeria. We are excited that you are trying out new ways of building awareness of Wikipedia among university students and helping them engage with the Nigerian User Group to identify and fill content gaps on topics that are important to Nigerian students. We look forward to checking in with you as this project gets started, and learning from your experiences. I am adding a few notes below to clarify some of the details we discussed.

• WMF did research last year that showed that awareness of Wikipedia is very low is Nigeria. We encouraged you to build a project plan for the Wikipedia Fan Clubs to increase awareness of Wikipedia among university students in Nigeria.
• The goal of the project is to teach a small group of students on two campuses how they can use Wikipedia to improve their studies, and over time, become Wikipedia ambassadors who can share this knowledge with other students.
• The 'secrets of Wikipedia' that you will be sharing in the first session include the info box for quick information, references that can be used to evaluate the quality of an article or as a starting place for additional research, discussion pages to see what parts of the article have been debated by editors, and the list of other languages the article is in so that students can see how the content is different, or what is missing in important languages.
• After the first session, there will be a contest with t-shirts as prizes for students who tell the most friends at least one of the 'secrets of wikipedia'. They can document this with a selfie or tagging posts on social media with a hashtag.
• In the second sessions, participants will learn how to request an article that is missing. You can demonstrate how to search Wikipedia, how to create a redlink or use the 'request and article' tool, and discuss notability so that students understand what does and does not belong on the encyclopedia. The contest after this session will reward students who request the most articles, or add the most redlinks to a list. The goal of this activity is to help identify gaps in content that are of interest to young Nigerians.
• After the list of redlinks has been created in the club session, organizers will ask members of the Nigerian user group to create stub articles for at least 15 redlinks.
• In the final session, students will be asked to collect references and post them on the discussion pages of the stubs so that the articles can be expanded more easily. You can discuss the reliability of sources in this session. You might want to teach some basic editing skills in this session, or ask students to introduce themselves to the editor who started the stub on the discussion page, or show them how to thank editors on history page.
• You will be talking to students between sessions using WhatsApp groups, to send reminders about challenges, and answer questions they might have.

We hope that by doing fun activities to build awareness among students about how Wikipedia can help them in school will help you establish a group of Wikipedia enthusiasts or ambassadors who will be excited to tell others about Wikipedia, and potentially edit one day. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 15:50, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

@KHarold (WMF): @ZMcCune (WMF):, thank you for broad analysis of the project.I am sure the analysis will help to crystallise the objective of the project... Olaniyan Olushola (talk) 11:37, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

/* Request for a Change of End date this project */ exntension

Dear Grant Administrator,

We write to request for extension of this project for additional three months. The reasons being that there is general strike in Nigeria tertiary institution. While, Nigeria Institude of Journalism is on long vacation since July to be reopened in November. I therefore request for an extension till 31st December 2017. Olaniyan Olushola (talk) 21:50, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi Olaniyan Olushola. This extension is approved. The new end date is December 31st with the final report due January 30, 2018. Best, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

/* Request for a Change of End date this project */ exntension

Dear Grant Administrator,

We write to request for extension on this project for additional three months ( May 9, 2018) . The strike at University of Ibadan was called off in January 2018. The institution went straight into examination period and rigorous activities hence there were no time for meeting. Olaniyan Olushola (talk) 23:51, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Request for extension of project approved

Hello Olaniyan Olushola, thank you for putting in your request for additional extension for the wiki club at the University of Ibadan. I am approving your request. Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 11:51, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Request for extension- May ending

Hello @WJifar (WMF):. we write to request for additional one month extension to round up on this project, this will help to handover the club to the students of the school. We plan to launch a major outreach and photo contest on the 29th of May, 2018. In our projection, this activities will revamp the project. We therefore have cause to request for extension on this project because of incessant strike at University of Ibadan and also clash of the institution's program and ours when they are on session. We therefore write to request for an extension till end of May 31st to finalize the projectOlaniyan Olushola (talk) 07:21, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Approval of additional extension

Hello Olaniyan Olushola, I am approving your request to extend your project end date to May 31, 2018. Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 2 May 2018 (UTC)