4th Waray Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

The 4th Waray Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was an afternoon-long wiki editing event to improve the Waray Wikipedia and other Waray Wikimedia-related projects succeeding the the 3rd edit-a-thon event in the Eastern Visayas that was conducted a day before this event. The actual edit-a-thon was held at Coffee Hub located at corner Del Pilar and Roxas Street, Catarman, Northern Samar, Philippines on December 2, 2015. The edit-a-thon was organized by the Sinirangan Bisaya Wikimedia Community (SBWC) and JCI Catarman Cocoking. The PhilWiki Community supported this activity. This edit-a-thon was 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 Greater Tacloban and the 3rd Waray Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. This edit-a-thon in Catarman was funded by generous donors from SBWC. Two Wikimedia volunteers from Manila assisted in the conduct of the wiki editing activity.

Activities and lessons learned

Activities

Pre-event preparations

Michael Ong, through his friend, contacted Mr. Paul Muncada and Mr. Cesar Alcazar Jr. of the JCI Catarman Cocoking, the Junior Chamber International (JCI) Philippines' chapter in Catarman, Northern Samar. After communicating with them for a possible edit-a-thon in Catarman, the date was set and preparations began immediately.

Actual events

Wikipedia Edit-a-thon in Catarman

Immediately after 3rd Waray Wikipedia Edit-a-thon on December 1, 2015, the project team boarded a van going to Catarman where they arrived pass midnight. They stayed overnight at a hotel there.

On the late morning of December 2, 2015, the project team was welcomed by Cesar Alcazar Jr., President of JCI Catarman Cocoking. After having lunch, they went straight to the Coffee Hub, the venue of the event.

Here are the highlights of the event:

1:00 pm - Participants started to arrive and register

2:00 pm - 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.

4:00 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.)

5:30 pm - Edit-a-thon ended and Jojit began tallying the contributions of the participants

(Note: Dinner were served while Jojit tallied the results.)

5:55 pm - Jojit announced the top group of editors.

The top group who got the most number of characters contributed on or before the 5:30 pm cut-off won prizes and they composed of Ridelesa Bere and Emmanuel Klyde Chan. The prizes given were mugs with the event details, Wikipedia logo and JCI Catarman Cocoking logo printed on it. Key chains were given to all participants as tokens.

6:00 pm - The President of the JCI Catarman Cocoking distributed the certificates of participation to the participants, after which, he gave the closing remarks.

6:10 pm - Sinirangan Bisaya Wikipedia Community lead coordinator, Michael Ong, thanked the participants and the partner JCI Catarman Cocoking for a fruitful event.

6:15 pm - Event ended

List of participants of the 4th Waray Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

There are total of twenty-five (25) attendees and only ten (10) people created an account. Just like with the 1st and 3rd Waray edit-a-thons, participants were divided into groups. Only one member of the group created an account and each member of the group contributed to the article that they were editing using that particular account. There were eight groups and it was a group effort because not all participants brought a laptop or other devices. All of them are newbies or people who just created an account. Other than the eight users for each group, there are two additional user accounts created within an unidentified group. The two additional user accounts are Twelve17 and Thependiva who contributed 1,169 characters and 550 characters respectively. The total of edit counts of each each of those accounts is four (4). The project team was not able to take note of these extra user accounts during the edit-a-thon. Nevertheless, they are considered to be part of the this edit-a-thon.

Group no.	Username	Contributions in characters	Articles added and improved^[1]	Projects contributed^[2]	Notes
1	Nilda siervo	44	1	incubator, en.wikivoyage	There are additional contributions by this username but did not make it to the 5:30 pm cut-off. The total characters contributed by this user should have been 482 and total edit count should have been 4.
2	Edsar Alcazar	216	5	incubator	There are additional contributions by this username but did not make it to the 5:30 pm cut-off. The total characters contributed by this user should have been 383 and total edit count should have been 10.
3	Theveritas15-16	1,631	4	commons, en.wp	There are additional contributions by this username but did not make it to the 5:30 pm cut-off. The total characters contributed by this user should have been 3,464 and total edit count should have been 5.
4	Majo.ccx	611	9	en.wp, en.wikivoyage	This user contributed to the English Wikipedia but his contribution was later deleted by an administrator.
5	Gryffindor13	7,412	43	en.wp, en.wikivoyage	There are additional contributions by this username but did not make it the to 5:30 pm cut-off. The total characters contributed by this user should have been 10,479 and total edit count should have been 63.
6	Pristine Xpress	870	2	en.wp	There are additional contributions by this username but did not make it to the 5:30 pm cut-off. The total characters contributed by this user should have been 1,337 and total edit count should have been 5. Their contributions in English Wikipedia have survived speedy deletion and was improved by other veteran Wikipedians.
7	Nicabells	6,859	10	en.wp, en.wikivoyage	There are additional contributions by this username and they could have been the winners but did not make it to the 5:30 pm cut-off. The total characters contributed by this user should have been 12,403 and total edit count should have been 12. Their contributions in English Wikipedia have survived speedy deletion and was improved by other veteran Wikipedians.
8	Freddieortenero	4,317	26	en.wikivoyage

Notes

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

Lessons learned

What worked well?

Setting up a dialogue first to partners, in this case the JCI Catarman Cocoking, helped establish this collaboration. The series of communications before the event greatly helped in gaining ideas and information on how to conduct this event.
The edit-a-thon was well attended because the partner organization, the JCI Catarman Cocoking, was interested in the activity. They were able to invite students and teachers from different schools as well as government employees. Aside from this, due to interested participants, the edit-a-thon was able to achieve its goal by producing more than 23,000 characters of content (or more than 35,000 if the contributions beyond the 5:30 pm cut-off is included).
The series of Waray edit-a-thons and fora helped in establishing partnership with JCI Catarman Cocoking.
It was good to have helpful and cooperative partners that provided necessary facilities and support. Incidentally, the JCI Catarman Cocoking invited the participants and provided venue, certificates of participation and promotional materials such as tarpaulins.
There were enough Internet connections provided by the venue and the project team.
Some users boldly tried to edit the English Wikipedia and some of them successfully retained their contributions with the help of veteran Wikipedians who are just online and not in the venue of the edit-a-thon. They just coincidently saw the contributions of the participants of the edit-a-thon and fixed it. Because of this, participants learned the dynamics of Wikipedia where they realize that anyone from anywhere can edit Wikipedia. In previous edit-a-thons in the Philippines, participants who are newbies rarely edit the English Wikipedia due to its strict implementation of community rules.
The participants were able contribute more than 21,000 characters in just one and half hours. That is a feat considering that all of them are new to Wikipedia and other edit-a-thons attained this kind of achievement only on the third to the fourth hour.

What didn't work?

Just like with the Calbayog Edit-a-thon and Catbalogan Edit-a-thon, not all participants brought a laptop 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.
The duration of the edit-a-thon was shortened because the project team must board a van going back to Tacloban at 8:00 pm. The schedule could have been planned better.
Most of the participants were still editing even after the 5:30 pm cut-off despite the announcement. On the brighter side, this shows that the participants were eager to contribute content to Wikimedia projects.
Despite being called the Waray Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, no one contributed to the Waray Wikipedia. Although, some contributed to the Waray Wiktionary in Incubator.
Not all attendees were able to participate in the edit-a-thon. Only seventeen (17) out of twenty-five (25) attendees actually joined groups to edit.
The project team was not able to document extra created user accounts and the owners of all user accounts.

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 Wikimedia projects, 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. Although, participants were not able to contribute to Waray Wikipedia despite promoting it, they contributed to Waray-related articles in the English Wikipedia, the Catarman entry in Wikivoyage and the Waray Wiktionary in Incubator among others.

The first goal is to have at least fifteen (15) participants attending the event. This was achieved because there were twenty-five (25) persons who attended the event. Although only ten (10) people actually created accounts and only seventeen (17) who actually participated in the edit-a-thon. Only ten people created accounts because this edit-a-thon was a group effort. The second goal is to have at least 21,000 characters contributed in the Wikimedia online projects. This was achieved because participants contributed a total of 23,554 characters up to the 5:30 pm deadline. However, there were actually 35,195 characters contributed if the contributions beyond the 5:30 pm cut-off were included.

To determine the number of characters contributed: Jojit Ballesteros, the facilitator of the event, took note of the usernames used by the participating groups. After the actual edit-a-thon, he counted all the characters contributed by 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 21,000 characters or equivalent to approximately 14 pages of printed text added in the Waray Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.	There are 23,554 characters added in various Wikimedia projects on or before the 5:30 pm cut-off. If contributions beyond the 5:30 pm cut-off would be included, the total characters added is 35,195.	The participants were actively participating in the edit-a-thon. They were encouraged to promote their place and greatly contributed to entry of Catarman in English Wikivoyage.
There should be at least 15 participants attended the event.	Twenty-five (25) participants attended the event excluding the project team.	The JCI Catarman Cocoking 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. Active editors who are online but not in the venue improved the contributions of the new editors of this edit-a-thon.
2. # of new editors	10	Only ten (10) people registered an account because not all participants brought laptops or other similar gadgets. Thus, it became a group effort.
3. # of individuals involved	25	This excludes the project team. Including them will increase the number of individual involved to 27.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	1	One (1) user uploaded a picture in Wikimedia Commons but it was later deleted.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	108	This figure is essentially the total edit count. The total could have been 142 if the contributions beyond 5:30 pm is included. The project team did not document the articles contributed or improved.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	approximately 23,554 bytes	This was tallied during the event. This does not include deleted content because the organizing team did not tally it during the event. If we include the contributions beyond the 5:30 pm cut-off, the total would be 35,195 bytes.

Impact

In this edit-a-thon, thirteen (11) words were added in the Waray Wiktionary, which is currently hosted in Incubator. A Wikimedia online project currently in Incubator means that the project is in the 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 adding Waray words in the Waray Wiktionary as it spoken in other variants, like the Catarman 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 Catarman Wikivoyage article. Participants collaboratively contributed information about Catarman in the English Wikivoyage. At the start of the edit-a-thon, the Catarman Wikivoyage entry was merely 915 bytes and basically an outline only. After the edit-a-thon, the entry was expanded to 26,975 bytes full of information. They were encouraged to edit the entry of their place because they are the ones who know Catarman more than anyone else. This is the reason why participants contributed greatly in the Wikivoyage entry of Catarman.

Aside from Wiktionary and Wikivoyage, participants also contributed to the English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Counting 142 edits and 35,195 characters contributed (including edits beyond the 5:30 pm cut-off), the total is beyond the average contributions for an edit-a-thon. According 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. Considering that expenses were shouldered by donors outside the Wikimedia movement, the content provided by the attendees are valuable and significant to the online projects of Wikimedia.