3rd Waray Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

The 3rd Waray Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was a day-long wiki editing event to improve the Waray Wikipedia succeeding the the 2nd edit-a-thon event in the Eastern Visayas that was conducted last July 2015. The actual edit-a-thon was held at Casa Cristina Hotel in Catbalogan City, Samar, Philippines on December 1, 2015. The edit-a-thon was organized by the Sinirangan Bisaya Wikimedia Community (SBWC) and the Office of the Mayor of Catbalogan City; and supported by the PhilWiki Community as part of the series of Waray Wikimedia events that started from November 26, 2015 to December 2, 2015. Those events include the 2015 Waray Wikimedia Forums at Tacloban and Palo in Leyte, Philippines and the 4th Waray Wikipedia Edit-a-thon held in Catarman, Northern Samar, Philippines. This edit-a-thon in Catbalogan City was funded primarily by the city government and some generous donors from SBWC. Wikimedia volunteers from Manila helped in assisting the participants on wiki editing.

Activities and lessons learned

Activities

Pre-event preparations

After completing the second Waray Wikipedia edit-a-thon last July 2015, the project team went to the City Hall of Catbalogan, Samar to meet its Mayor, Honorable Stephany Uy-Tan. The meeting was arranged by Max Daquilanea who was one of the participants of the Calbayog Edit-a-thon in November 2014, which is the very first edit-a-thon in Eastern Visayas. In the meeting, it was proposed to have an edit-a-thon in Catbalogan City on December 1, 2015. The city government was pleased with the proposal and City Administrator Dennis Cosmod advised the team to submit a formal request for holding the edit-a-thon in the city. In August 2015, a formal letter was then submitted to the Mayor and after few weeks the project team got a reply and edit-a-thon was good to go.

Actual events

Wikipedia Edit-a-thon in Catbalogan

After the Wikimedia Forum in Palo, Leyte on November 27, 2015, the project team rested for two days at Tacloban City and on November 30, 2015, they boarded a van going to Catbalogan City where they stayed overnight at Casa Cristina Hotel, which was also the place where the edit-a-thon was held.

On the morning of December 1, 2015, the project team prepared the venue as participants come in.

Here are the highlights of the event:

8:30 am - Participants started to arrive and register for the activity.

9:30 am - Jojit Ballesteros gave his lecture

Jojit's lecture was about the basics of Wikipedia editing and introduced other Wikimedia online projects namely Wikimedia Commons, Waray Wiktionary and Wikivoyage. In between Jojit's lecture, Michael Ong answered some of the questions from the audience. (Note: Snacks were given in between Jojit's talk and it was a working break.)

12:30 pm - Lunch break

1:15 pm - Edit-a-thon started.

(Note: Snacks were served in between the edit-a-thons and it was a working break. Bel Ballesteros and Michael Ong assisted and guided participants during the edit-a-thon.)

4:30 pm - Edit-a-thon ended and Jojit began tallying the contributions of the participants

5:00 pm - Jojit gave the certificate of participation to the attendees and announced the top group of editors.

The top group who got the most number of characters contributed won prizes and they composed of students from Saint Mary's College Of Catbalogan namely Joseph Niño Pensotes, Albert Christopher Arcales, Carol C. Ocenar and Maigleam Versoza. The prizes given were mugs with the event details, Wikipedia logo and Catbalogan City Government logo printed on it. Key chains were given to all participants as tokens.

5:05 pm - The Catbalogan City Administrator gave the Closing Remarks.

The City Administrator, in behalf of the City Mayor, thanked and congratulated all the participants, especially the winners, for participating in the edit-a-thon. He also conveyed the message of the City Mayor that the city government would also give certificates for the participants after a month from the date of the edit-a-thon, because they would monitor the edits of the participants.

5:10 pm - Event ended

The following day, Michael emailed the list of participants as well as their usernames to the City Administrator upon his request. By knowing the usernames, the city government can monitor the contributions being made by the participants even after the event.

List of participants of the 3rd Waray Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

There are total of thirty-one (31) attendees and only twelve (12) people created an account. Just like with the Calbayog Edit-a-thon, participants were divided into groups and each member of the group helped in composing of content to be contributed and only one member of the group created an account. There were twelve groups and it was a group effort due to the fact that not all participants brought a laptop or other devices. The project team had taken note of the owner of the user account created. All of them are newbies or people who just created an account.

Group no.	Username	Owner of username	Contributions in characters	Articles added and improved^[1]	Projects contributed^[2]	Notes
1	Anne555555	Josephine Ann Caro	9,877	24	en.wp, war.wp, en.wikivoyage, commons	The group continued to edit even after the cut-off but within the event. Including the contributions after the cut-off, the total contributions is 10,304.
2	Wikisamar	Ray Coaspay	778	7	war.wp, en.wikivoyage, commons, incubator	The group continued to edit even after the cut-off but within the event. Including the contributions after the cut-off, the total contributions is 1,170.
3	Guinsorongan	Ponciano Colocado	1,992	17	incubator, war.wp	The group continued to edit even after the cut-off but within the event. Including the contributions after the cut-off, the total contributions is 2,095.
4	Smccgroup	Carol Ocenar	12,592	18	war.wp, commons
5	Genovivocebu	Genovivo Cebu	1,361	2	en.wp	There are additional contributions by this group but they did not make it to 4:30 pm cut-off. Including the additional contributions, the total contributions is 2,768.
6	ANTONIANS	Rolex Jakosalem	4,932	1	war.wp
7	Jovita Pagliawan	Jovita Pagliawan	3,889	5	war.wp
8	Rommelrutor	Rommel Rutor	3,490	10	en.wp, en.wikivoyage	The group continued to edit even after the cut-off but within the event. Including the contributions after the cut-off, the total contributions is 4,105.
9	LaiMinh	Lai Minh Mabulay	2,142	3	en.wp, en.wikivoyage
10	Adhorable	Ador Hurtado	1,599	16	en.wp, en.wikivoyage	A day after the edit-a-thon, this user created a draft article in English Wikipedia but was later declined by a veteran editor.
11	Tibre09	Darrel Tibre	2,991	24	en.wikivoyage, commons, war.wp, en.wp, tl.wp
12	Banoy347	Ezekiel Cabrigas	3,806	25	war.wp, en.wikivoyage, commons	This user tried to edit four days after the event.

Notes

^{^} Essentially the total edit count. The project team did not document the articles contributed or improved.
^{^} Legend: en.wp = English Wikipedia; war.wp = Waray Wikipedia; tl.wp = Tagalog Wikipedia; incubator = Waray Wiktionary; commons = Wikimedia Commons; en.wikivoyage = English Wikivoyage

Lessons learned

What worked well?

Setting up a dialogue first with partners, in this case the City Government of Catbalogan, helped established this collaboration. The meeting with the City Mayor and City Administrator helped in informing them of how Wikipedia and Wikipedia-related products work and how they can contribute in their capacity. This meeting started the collaboration.
This edit-a-thon was well attended because the project team's partner, the City Government of Catbalogan, was able to mobilize people from various sectors including students, teachers, as well as subject matter experts from other government agencies. Because the participants were interested in the activity, the edit-a-thon was able to achieve its goal by producing more than 49,000 characters of content.
The series of events, the previous edit-a-thons held in different places in Leyte and Samar, helped in establishing partnership with the City Government of Catbalogan.
It was good to have helpful and cooperative partners that provided necessary facilities and support. Incidentally, the City Government of Catbalogan provided the participants, venue and food for this activity.
The venue had an excellent Internet connection.

What didn't work?

Just like with the Calbayog Edit-a-thon, not all participants brought laptops or similar gadgets that resulted to groupings of participants. The project team hoped that the event should have been one-to-one where all attendees participated in the actual editing of Wikimedia online projects.

Outcomes and impact

Outcomes

The main goal of this project is to increase contributions to the Waray Wikipedia and Waray Wiktionary (currently in Incubator), which includes creating and editing articles. Aside from writing articles in Waray language, the participants may also add content to other Wikimedia projects such as, but not limited to, uploading pictures to Wikimedia Commons and enhancing Waray-related articles in other language versions of Wikipedia.

The first goal is to have at least twenty (20) participants attended the event. There were thirty-one (31) persons who attended the event. Thus, this part of the goal was achieved although only twelve (12) people actually created their own accounts. This is because the edit-a-thon was a group effort where everyone took part by joining a group and giving their inputs. For the second goal of having at least 42,000 characters contributed in the Waray Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, this was achieved because participants contributed a total of 49,449 characters.

To be able to determine the number of characters contributed: Jojit Ballesteros, the facilitator of the event, has taken note of the usernames of each leader of the group. After the actual edit-a-thon, he counted all of the characters of each group through the features of MediaWiki, the software behind Wikimedia online projects. He made use of the "global edit summary" and the "recent changes" features of each project that the participants have been editing.

Progress towards targets and goals

Project metrics

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
There should be 42,000 characters or equivalent to approximately 28 pages of printed text added in the Waray Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.	There are 49,449 characters contributed within the cut-off and additional 2,944 characters after the cut-off but within the event, for a total of 52,393 characters contributed in various Wikimedia projects.	The participants were actively participating in the edit-a-thon. They were encouraged to promote their city and greatly contributed to entry of Catbalogan in English Wikivoyage.
There should be at least 20 participants attending the event.	Thirty-one (31) participants attended the event excluding the project team.	The City Government of Catbalogan helped in bringing in participants for the edit-a-thon.

Global Metrics

For more information, see Global Metrics.

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	0	All the participants were first time to be familiar with the wiki editing process. There were two active Wikipedians present during the event but they are part of the organizing team.
2. # of new editors	12	Only twelve (12) people registered an account because not all participants brought laptops or other similar gadgets. Thus, it became a group effort.
3. # of individuals involved	31	This excludes the project team. Including them will increase the number of individual involved to 35.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	15	Four (4) users uploaded pictures in Wikimedia Commons.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	152	This figure is essentially the total edit count. The project team did not document the articles contributed or improved.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	approximately 52,393 bytes	This was tallied during the event. This does not include deleted content because the organizing team did not tally it during the event.

Impact

In this edit-a-thon, there are thirteen (13) words added in the Waray Wiktionary, which is currently hosted in Incubator. A Wikimedia online project currently in Incubator means that the project is in test phase and does not yet have its own subdomain unlike the Tagalog Wiktionary, which has its own subdomain (i.e. http://tl.wikitionary.org). This may seem not significant contributions and the edit-a-thon provided a very minimal impact on taking the Waray Wiktionary out of the Incubator but this edit-a-thon helped in starting the idea of including Waray words as it spoken in other variants, like the Catbalogan Waray. The Waray Wikipedia currently leans towards the variant spoken in Tacloban and the learning from this edit-a-thon will help on balancing the words used in Waray Wikipedia and Waray Wiktionary.

The most significant contribution of this edit-a-thon is the expansion of the Catbalogan Wikivoyage article. Participants collaboratively contributed information about Catbalogan in the English Wikivoyage. At the start of the edit-a-thon, the Catbalogan Wikivoyage entry was merely 776 bytes and basically an outline only. After the edit-a-thon, the entry was expanded to 13,313 bytes full of information. They were encouraged to edit the entry of their city because they are the ones who know Catbalogan more than anyone else. This is the reason why participants contributed greatly in the Wikivoyage entry of Catbalogan.

Aside from Wiktionary and Wikivoyage, participants also contributed to the Waray Wikipedia, English Wikipedia, Tagalog Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. With 152 edits and 49,449 characters contributed, this event provided content beyond the average contributions for an edit-a-thon. According to the Evaluation Report on Edit-a-thons by the Wikimedia Foundation in 2013, the average contributions of all participants in an edit-a-thon is almost 24,000 characters. Among all edit-a-thons in Eastern Visayas, the result of this edit-a-thon is the largest in terms of characters contributed. Considering that expenses were shouldered jointly by the local government of Catbalogan City and Sinirangan Bisaya Wikipedia Community, the content provided by the attendees are valuable and significant to the online projects of Wikimedia.