Program guides/Writing contests/Report

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Program Guides: Writing Contests

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Evaluating your program

It is important to measure and evaluate your program to understand what is working well and what can be improved. Your program should have clear goals that you developed during the planning stage, and these will guide your evaluation. In this section you will learn how to consistently evaluate your activities and learn strategies for making this work easier and more effective.

Evaluate your contest

Evaluation Portal

A hub for learning and sharing resources to better understand Wikimedia programs. Read the introduction to the Evaluation Portal or skip to a few that are most relevant:

• Learning Modules about Evaluation, Tracking and Reporting, Wikimetrics, and Designing Surveys: Immerse yourself in a tutorial covering some core concepts and strategies for evaluation
• Case Studies and Evaluation Reports: Read and share your project stories
• The question of Quantitative vs. Qualitative: How to measure your project story
• Measures for Evaluation: A mapping of evaluation measures to the priority strategic goals

Learning Pattern Library
A collection of helpful tips and community learning shared as problem and solution sets on topics including:

• Learning patterns about evaluation design
• Learning Patterns about Evaluation Measurement
• Learning Patterns about Survey Strategies

Global Metrics: A set of standardized metrics for grants reporting

"Global metrics" are a set of core metrics designed to provide a standardized way of tracking a few key measures of progress towards strategic goals for content and participation.

Global metrics include number of:

• Newly registered users
• Existing Active Users
• Individuals Involved
• Images Used in Wikimedia Projects
• Articles Created or Improved
• Bytes Added or Removed
• Learning question: Did your work increase the motivation of contributors? How do you know?

Measure global metrics to see how your contest increases content and participation!

Sample metrics

• Total # of participants
• # of female participants
• % increase in contribution rate per participating user as compared to user's contribution rate outside the competition timeframe
• # of articles created or improved
• # of good and featured articles created or improved
• # of participants editing X months after the event
• # of participants who are active editors (5 edits/month) X months after an event

Reporting and storytelling

Evaluation is not just about the numbers. We want this data to have a meaning for you. What do these numbers mean? What metrics are meaningful to you, in your particular context? Bring forward the story you want to tell everyone about your program.

Learn more about reporting and storytelling strategies

Here you'll find a few key points on good storytelling practices.

"Data is the starting point of where you start your story and impact is what you say around those numbers. 4 people participated and 10 articles were written, 50 people participated and 100 articles were written. If you look across then you think the one with more had more impact. But if you look at who was there, what articles they wrote, they were featured articles, then we get a much better sense of what that impact was. Its important for us to get that full story and context." - Alex Wang, Senior Program Officer

• Tell stories that showcase your data and experiences.