Grants:APG/Proposals/2015-2016 round1/Wikimedia Ukraine/Impact report form



Purpose of the report edit

This form is for organizations receiving Annual Plan Grants to report on their results to date. For progress reports, the time period for this report will the first 6 months of each grant (e.g. 1 January - 30 June of the current year). For impact reports, the time period for this report will be the full 12 months of this grant, including the period already reported on in the progress report (e.g. 1 January - 31 December of the current year). This form includes four sections, addressing global metrics, program stories, financial information, and compliance. Please contact APG/FDC staff if you have questions about this form, or concerns submitting it by the deadline. After submitting the form, organizations will also meet with APG staff to discuss their progress.

Global metrics overview - all programs edit

We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees' programs. Please use the table below to let us know how your programs contributed to the Global Metrics. We understand not all Global Metrics will be relevant for all programs, so feel free to put "0" where necessary. For each program include the following table and

  1. Next to each required metric, list the outcome achieved for all of your programs included in your proposal.
  2. Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome.
  3. In addition to the Global Metrics as measures of success for your programs, there is another table format in which you may report on any OTHER relevant measures of your programs success

For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics.

Overall edit

Below figures before the slash correspond to national metrics, and figures after the slash correspond to total figures including international WLE. If only one figure is provided, it corresponds to the national impact only.

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 900 / 2,600 A sum of number of active editors involved in all national projects is roughly 1,100. We discounted it by roughly 20% to avoid double-counting people participating in multiple activities (e.g. a thematic week, a photo contest and Wikipedia Birthday event). 1700 more active editors (1800 global minus 100 Ukrainian) participated in international WLE. Distribution by programme (without discount, thus with possible double-counting):
  • Parthernships: ~200 (target: 150)
  • Contests: ~550 / ~2,250 (target: NA / 1,950)
  • Community Support: ~350 (target: 150). Note: double-counting likely heavily affects this line, but it is too difficult to track how many events each participant attended, especially in case they did not requested any support from WMUA.
2. # of new editors 1,225 / 12,875 A total of 1,225 newly registered users joined Wikimedia projects owing to our national events, and 11,650 more joined owing to international WLE (except Ukrainian). Distribution by programme:
  • Parthernships: ~840 (target: 200)
  • Contests: 386 / ~12,500 (target: NA / 1,300)
  • Community Support: <5 (target: 5)
3. # of individuals involved 3,000 / 16,700 A sum of number of people invovled in all Ukrainian-centered projects and events (from our members organising events to people attending our presentations for educators, from people participating in a workshop to those receiving a copy of The Monuments of Ukraine journal, from those joining an online WikiFlashMob to those coming to our stand at Wikimania and discussing something with us) is roughly 3,600. We again apply a roughly 20% discount to avoid double-counting. Roughly 13,700 more people were involved in the international WLE (except Ukrainian national part): mostly photographers, but also jury members, partners, UNESCO biosphere reserves network etc. Distribution by programme:
  • Parthernships: ~1,300 (target: 500)
  • Contests: ~1,000 / ~14,700 (target: NA / 3,250)
  • Community Support: ~1,300 (target: 155)
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 6,785 / 13,765 Most images were coming from photo contests, but we also have exceeded expectations in terms of images (and videos!) from Wikiexpeditions added to articles. Distribution by programme:
  • Parthernships: 2,227 (target: 580)
  • Contests: 4,456 / 11,436 (target: NA / 10,000)
  • Community Support: 102 (target: 25)
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 6,100 Some double counts are possible (e.g. a workshop participant created an article for CEE Spring, or a teacher organised encourage students to write articles for Wikimedia Asian Month), thus we applied a roughly 1% discount. Distribution by programme:
  • Parthernships: 2,217 (target: 1,000)
  • Contests: 3,819 (target: 2,500)
  • Community Support: 45 (target: 50)
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects ~63,000,000 Given the number of users and articles it is not possible to directly measure this. We had to use different approximations for different programmes:
  • Parthernships: ~18,700,000 (target: 5,000,000). Extrapolation for an average article size of 8,500 based on a selection of WikiFlashMob, Pereiaslav week and an education programme articles: 8,500 * 2,138 = 18,173,000. Data for Wikisource cannot be easily approximated due to lack of reliable tools; assumed at approximately 500,000 bytes.
  • Contests: ~45,000,000 (target: 10,000,000). Direct count for CEE Spring: 23,275,395. Direct count for WikiPhysContest: 2,813,131. Thematic weeks: extrapolation based on average article size of 8,500 from three weeks: Urdu (9,650), Donetsk (8,600) and Lviv (7,100). Result: 8,500 * 2,219 = 18,861,500
  • Community Support: 325,000 (target: 500,000). Measured directly (no approximation needed).

As with articles added or improved, 1% discount applied to avoid double-counting.


Telling your program stories - all programs edit

Please tell the story of each of your programs included in your proposal. This is your chance to tell your story by using any additional metrics (beyond global metrics) that are relevant to your context, beyond the global metrics above. You should be reporting against the targets you set at the beginning of the year throughout the year. We have provided a template here below for you to report against your targets, but you are welcome to include this information in another way. Also, if you decided not to do a program that was included in your proposal or added a program not in the proposal, please explain this change. More resources for storytelling are at the end of this form. Here are some ways to tell your story.

  • We encourage you to share your successes and failures and what you are learning. Please also share why are these successes, failures, or learnings are important in your context. Reference learning patterns or other documentation.
  • Make clear connections between your offline activities and online results, as applicable. For example, explain how your education program activities is leading to quality content on Wikipedia.
  • We encourage you to tell your story in different ways by using videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, e.g.), compelling quotes, and by linking directly to work you produce. You may highlight outcomes, learning, or metrics this way.
  • We encourage you to continue using dashboards, progress bars, and scorecards that you have used to illustrate your progress in the past, and to report consistently over time.
  • You are welcome to use the table below to report on any metrics or measures relevant to your program. These may or may not include the global metrics you put in the overview section above. You can also share your progress in another way if you do not find a table like this useful.

Summary edit

This is our first impact report on the FDC funding system. Comparing to previous year we acquired more structured vision of what we do and how we divide responsibilities, could think less of "can we afford it?" and more about "how will we do it?", and gained more confidence in our powers as an organisation.

2016 was a good year for us both in terms of development of our projects and in terms of institutional growth. Institutionally, we hired our two project managers, Vira Motorko, who was our PR manager in 2015, and Anna Khrobolova, as well as our office manager Oleksandr Kotliar: all three played a crucial role in developing our projects, supporting our volunteers and making our organisation stronger. We also worked on clear definition of responsibilities of all board and staff members for better organisation of our work. Project-wise, we have worked both on improving already successful initiative such as photo contests or WikiConference by making them even better and on developing new approaches, such as relaunching Wikiexpeditions or boosting Wikipedia Education Programme in schools.

This year we divided our activities to three logic groups of Partnerships, Contests, and Community Support depending on where certain activity appears on "content—editors" line: under Contests program we work mainly on receiving content, under Community Support program we work with Wikimedians who get/create content, while Partnerships program means working with those who may not be Wikimedians yet but will later teach others to donate content. We readjusted these groups for 2017 by keeping Community Support and realigning the remaining two into Outreach & Partnerships and Thematic Content.

Partnerships edit

Overview edit

This programme is focused on partnerships development, involving new users and getting high-quality content in specific areas of knowledge. Our partners provided organizational support in training events where we taught participants to contribute themselves but also how to teach others to contribute to Wikimedia projects and to improve content owing to their expertise. This programme included Wikipedia Education Programme, Wikiworkshops, work with GLAM institutions, Wikiexpeditions and Music projects.

Wikipedia Education Programme and Wikiworkshops edit

Wikiflashmob poster
External video
On 15-16th April, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University hosted wikitraining for educators. Video captures our trainers running sessions and talking about the goals and reasons for the training.
External video
Chernihiv TV-channel on the 8-session course on writing Wikipedia articles (WikiStudia)]. Video features curators and graduates on diploma ceremony

Since Wikimedia Ukraine launched Wikipedia Education Programme and it took shape of a program, its main goal for us is addressing the education system of Ukraine on different levels and engaging its participants into donating Wikimedia content. There are several levels we work on:

  • partnering with school authorities, explaining them benefits of working with such a progressive tool as Wikipedia so that they encourage (or at least do not discourage) their staff to use Wikipedia in education process;
  • working with teachers of secondary schools and universities, helping them to get used to the writing and reviewing articles created by students;
  • working with students, holding an introductory workshop for them, reviewing their further onwiki contributions.

This year special attention was paid to teachers of secondary schools. We came to the conclusion that while it is generally easier to work with university students because they are rather mature in writing texts, students often come to university with ingrained disregard to copyright and weak skills of abstracting information from sources. Thus it seems wiser to explain these things to young people earlier. And while we cannot work with every student, we work with teachers who can further bring knowledge to many more students. (Our role here includes teaching some media literacy where needed and while making people media literate is not in our core mission it's crucial for it and thus unavoidable.) There were trainings for teachers held in different cities, we introduced them to Wikipedia, explaining how to switch from fearing 'Wikipedia the Beast' to using it. In 2016 we used a model of two-days training for this, so that on one day participants can receive basic information, make edits and receive immediate live feedback, and the next day think over the whole thing and how it can be used in classroom.

There is now a network of teachers who work in WEP and encourage their acquaintances to join, and this is how the network grows. Everything started with the first training for teachers in April where we wanted to experiment a new format of two-day trainings and where our member Valentyna Kodola, a teacher herself, recruited her colleagues interested in Wikipedia. This format worked, and it helped teachers get enough knowledge to edit themselves and to become trainers. Teachers who underwent trainings spread the word about this possibility, then organise workshops for their colleagues, and then participate in education conferences with experience gained this way. These different activities combined have far-reaching impact on the professional educators in Ukraine in general, and long-term results we might face later on.

At the same time, WikiStudia shows how WEP can be organisationally framed within the university. WikiStudia is a subdivision of Lazarevskyi Educational and Scientific Institute of History, Ethnology and Law in Chernihiv, and it's second year that students of the institute could attend classes of WikiStudia, learn how to edit Wikipedia, and receive scores in more then 20 disciplines for writing Wikipedia articles. This project shows how a commitment both of the university staff and of local Wikimedians in Chernihiv can result in a success over several years in a row: over 100 students were trained within this project over the last two years, and many of them still remain active.

In 2017 we will focus on even higher level of working with education system in Ukraine by addressing state authorities (Prime Minister, Ministry of Education, regional state administrations). As part of the preparation process for this, in December 2016 we held a round table for teachers focused on creating a general tutorial for educators in accordance with Ukrainian education laws, instructions and traditions. Our member Valentyna Kodola and her colleagues are working on it.

Wikipedia Education Programme belongs to Partnerships field of our activities for a reason. While engaging individuals and institutions into using Wikimedia projects in education we try to build partner relationships: WMUA with educational institutions on organisational level, trainers with participants on personal level, Wikipedia with education system on the level of "ideology".

Successes:

We gained really motivated teachers into the team of volunteers that are eager to pass their experience on conventional educational meetings. Some of them who did not even know how to edit Wikimedia projects in the beginning of the year, became successful trainers who know how to spread the word about Wikimedia projects among their colleagues by the end of the year. One example is user:Інна Нікітіна, a psychologist in school №25 of Kamianske who took part in our training in April: in November 2016 she arranged a Wikitraining for supervising teachers of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast almost by herself.[1]

Challenges:

We still do not have enough volunteers available to give workshops on Wikipedia editing, with demand growing faster than our team. For example, if we make a two-days Wikitraining it is more convenient for the participants to attend it on Friday and Saturday, so that they can use one working day and one day of their weekend (instead of using their entire weekend). At the same time, our volunteers work in real life and it is not always possible to find extra day-off. There is also a challenge that we do not have enough trainers all over the country yet, and sometimes trainers from the northern part of the country have to travel to the southern region to organise a training.

WikiFlashMob

Wikipedia birthday is an event to celebrate, even more so in our case because there are three birthdays of Wikipedias that follow one after another: English, Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar. In 2016 we celebrated with all-Ukrainian 3 day WikiFlashMob (edit-a-thon). It was both online and offline with simultaneous workshops and celebration wikimeetups in different cities (thus it also appears in 'Community Events' section). It resulted in bigger number of articles than expected which proves its usefulness. Mass media in Ukraine gladly picked up the topic for publications, dozens of news items appeared in January and afterwards.

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Results 2016 Comments
200 participants in Wikiworkshops 580 ~215
328
25+25+10+15+40+22+18+14+50+12+20+14+15+17+14+17=328.

Exceeded target owing to development of the network of teachers organising trainings within Wikimedia Education Programme.

250 people experience editing through Wikipedia Education Programme __ 96
584
This is the sum of students added to courses on Education Program extension in ukwiki
150 newly registered users involved 380 200
~800
Trainings are almost always made for Wikipedia newbies, and only second training and round table for teachers did not have new users at all. This also includes students involved in WEP who are also in majority newbies.
25% female participants 55% 50%
65%
In WEP workshops for school teachers number of female participants was never below 50% (secondary schools in Ukraine have a majority of female teachers).
5% of participants remain active by the end of the period 11% 5%
On target.
47 workshop participants (out of 328, i.e. 14%) and 31 students from WEP courses (out of 584, i.e. 5%) participated in an activity in 2016 AND made at least one edit in the first four months of 2017. A total retention rate of 8%, while still relatively low, shows that new workshop format improved retention, although retention of students is just right on target.
250 articles created during WikiFlashMob __ >1000
1049
Article count increased by 1049, of them 516 articles have explicit flashmob talk page template
500 articles created within Wikipedia Education Programme __ 100
774
774 articles created or improved (Education Programme extension makes it hard to distinguish) both by participants of WEP workshops and by students involved in WEP.

GLAM Partnerships edit

Wikisource Presentation in Ukrainian
External video
Winning photos on display in National History Museum.

Engaging GLAM with Wikipedia is our constant goal considering the enormous potential for collaboration. We are trying different cooperation models. From the variety of known practices, we succeeded in training GLAM professionals to understand Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, broaden awareness of Wikiprojects and initiatives through outreach events, wikiworkshops, presentations on professional conferences.

Four workshops were held in Kyiv, Lviv and Chernihiv for librarians and museum staff, including one in Kyiv-Mohyla Academy library specifically focused on adding references to Wikipedia articles. Wikimedians presented wikiprojects on three GLAM professionals events: seminar for librarians in Kyiv, an academic conference in Tustan (Lviv Oblast) and a seminar on best practices for digitizing cultural heritage in Kyiv. We were also happy to be invited and deliver the first ever presentation in an archive institution, that was for the Director and senior management of the Central State Film, Photo and Sound Archive named after G. S. Pshenichny in Kyiv. Unfortunately, despite our best negotiation efforts we couldn't break down Director's prejudices on consequences content sharing might lead to.

Local edit-a-thons in Libraries

Libraries are our natural partner for local outreach events, and library community helped us a lot in donating space and helping co-organise these events.

The most notable event was Wikiflashmob, running from 29 to 31 January in Ukrainian Wikipedia, dedicated to its 12th anniversary. The aim was to attract as many people as possible to enrich the free encyclopedia and to have a record number of new articles created during these three days. To make it easier for all interested and existing editors to take part in this campaign, meet each other and collaborate face to face, Wikimedia Ukraine inspired and supported meetups for these days. Four of them were hosted by public libraries. Volunteers have collaborated with libraries to host wikimeetups where everyone could come and have reference books at hand to write articles.

Local libraries also hosted other events, such as a wikiworkshop and edit-a-thon for participants of the thematic editing week dedicated to the anniversary of Cherkasy, as well as the award ceremony in the end of this week, or a workshop in Lesia Ukrainka Public Library in Lviv.

Exhibitions

Among non-targeted activities, there were three photo exhibitions in museums. We feel that showcasing the winning, shortlisted and commended images from the Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments photo contests offline is an important part of their award ceremonies. Thus we have a tradition of forming an exhibition of prize-winning photographs that stay in the institution hosting the ceremony for a longer period. Since 2015 we print photos on aluminium composite panels so that viewers can enjoy full-color, high-resolution images. In 2016 two GLAM venues in Kyiv held three two-week exhibitions: National History Museum (January, photos from 2014-2015 contests), Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Bell Tower (February, photos from 2015 contests) and National History Museum again (December, photos from 2016 contests). In 2017 prints made for 2016 ceremony have already travelled to 3 cities and we got 5 more requests from venues. We think that this helps us reach a wider audience and raise awareness about photo contests.

Successes:

We had a successful partnership with Pereiaslav National History and Etnography Reserve, an institution managing 371 monuments and 24 museums in Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi and region. They were very interested in making their collections and heritage visible on Wikipedia and donated both a collection of 300 images (including interiors and exteriors of monuments as well as valuable exhibits of their museums) and textual content to be incorporated in articles. We organised a thematic week on Wikipedia to encourage Wikipedians add this content to articles.

Challenges:

Most Ukrainian GLAMs are not investing into innovation and digital technologies, thus it is hard for Wikimedians to push innovation agenda and work on partnerships like connected open data, citation data etc. Though GLAM institutions are required to report on their work, reliable metrics such as usage on Wikipedia or pageview statistics are not valued by the institutions. Most of them think that number of pageviews on Wikimedia projects is secondary to a number of views of their website (usually containing images in a very low resolution under copyright) and especially number of people visiting their instituions. This is particularly the case of archives: many of them think that putting images on Wikimedia Commons will reduce the number of (physical) visitors to their archive.

Thus we have a paradoxical situation that despite having a strong population of GLAMers in Ukrainian Wikimedia community (including a board member, several chapter members, several Wikipedia administrators and a number of volunteers) we have hard time breaking this wall. We do manage to organise GLAM activities and support occasional projects by these volunteers, but we did not succeed in building strong bridges between these institutions that have Wikimedians and WMUA, perhaps because it is hard to break the wall of why-should-we question from the GLAM executives.

We hope that getting a support from the Prime Minister of Ukraine will be an important argument in favour of collaboration with us for the GLAM institutions in 2017.

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Results 2016 Comments
50 users participating in the programme __ ~20
37
These includes participants of 4 wikiworkshops for GLAMers and volunteers that participated in wikiweek aimed to add materials donated by a museum
15 new users 0 ~5
19
150 new or improved articles 0 n/a 160
4+39+30+7+80
500 images uploaded, ... 0 353
375
Uploaded: 8+299+68+partly uploads of wikiexpeditions
..., including at least 150 images used 0 ~100
193
Most used images are those from Pereiaslav donation (172 images used, i.e. 57%), owing to a successful on-wiki collaboration
20 books scanned and digitised on Ukrainian Wikisource __ 46

0 with WMUA scanner

79

3 with WMUA scanner

Numbers include works added and proofread on Ukrainian Wikisource during the period. Unfortunately, only three of them were scanned by WMUA scanner.
  • Many materials that Wikisource volunteers are interested in are already scanned, can be freely accessed online and transferred to Wikimedia Commons for further proofreading.
  • After a popular file sharing portal announced its closure, Wikisource contributors spent time retrieving scans of PD works from it.
  • Even though we placed our scanner in a library, problems in communication with local staff continued and the situation did not improve after moving it to another library.
  • And also we lack of volunteers who can/wish to use it.

This all combined explains that, sadly, work with scanner was yet lower in the list of tasks for Wikisource volunteers.

2 hours of freely-licensed music recordings uploaded 0.05 Not yet available
1.5 h
0.75 h of music performed in 2016 (these are songs performed on Wikipedia 15 concert in Kyiv, organised by User:A1 and partly supported by WMUA) + 0.75 h of Mykola Lysenko music (OTRS permission received by User:Юрій Булка from performers)

Wikiexpeditions edit

Wikiexpeditions in 2016 were mostly collective, except three individual ones. Participants completed from one to seven days trips aimed at picturing notable objects and events for illustrating articles on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects and improving articles. There was no thematic plan or a predefined list of exploration areas when announcing the project, i.e. we did not require participants to visit some specific area. Instead, we supported all reasonable proposals focused on closing content gaps identified by participants.

Unlike previous years when mostly active Wikimedians were involved, in 2016 we appealed to a wider audience, asking everyone to bring their ideas and apply for Wikiexpeditions and proposed an application form for this. Social media shares and announcements on tourist sites and forums had a positive effect. We hoped that attracting those with a passion for exploration but little or no experience in editing Wikipedia and understanding of its principles would have good impact on the project. And this mostly came true, so that we could choose better proposals and not more experienced Wikimedians. The main reason for refusing financial support to a Wikiexpedition was the topic already having good coverage on Wikipedia.

We had a new application process with a well-structured and detailed application form. This allowed us to choose well-prepared and clear applications, where participants already knew what they want to picture and who will do what. As the result, we got high-quality reports from 7 expeditions with a focus on exploring nature protected areas, 2 on city architecture and urban areas, 3 on rural life and 2 on festivals.

Successes:

In 2016 Wikiexpeditions project evolved significantly. There is now an efficient application process, newbies involved, lots of images made, even a number of videos uploaded (this one is, again, a new step for the project), and reporting level is higher than ever before.

Challenges:

This project needed extensive guidance and advice at planning and reporting stages, and in some cases an online training for participants on editing Wikipedia. It could also require good knowledge of the topic to measure the success of each expedition in terms of value and exhaustiveness of content, especially if expedition had a narrow topic, such as picturing plants. This unfortunately resulted in sort of a burnout of the project leader on the board side even despite support from a project manager.

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Results 2016 Comments
20 expeditions __ 5
20
We received 34 applications and 20 were approved (including 2 cycling expeditions). 14 wikiexpeditions added all planned content on Commons, integrated it to articles and reported according to requirements and declared plans. The remaining 6 made some contributions to Commons but did not complete their plan or did not report. List of WE (link to report page on WMUA): WE to Marmarosh (in English), WE to Dnister Canyon, WE to Mykolaychuk-FEST‎, WE to Kamianets-Podilskyi‎, WE to Pearls of Teteriv‎, WE to Downside River Teteriv‎ WE Landscape Parks of Central Ukraine, WE to Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi Raion, WE to Wolodymyr-Wolynsky, WE to Trakhtemyriv peninsula, WE to Grebinka & Pyryatyn area, WE to Lakes of Chornohora, WE to Fest Borschyk 2016, WE to Tiachiv Raion, WE to Ternopil Oblast, WE to Boikivski Geoattractions, WE to Sutkivtsi and Zinkiv, WE to White Croats, WE to Volyn villages, WE Ukraine-Belarus (all in Ukrainian).
400 new images (100 per regular expedition) 1567 1102
4855 (including 141 video files)
The number of images per expedition varied (58 minimum, 798 maximum). Ukrainian Wikiexpeditions 2016 on Commons
At least 400 images used in articles 285 ~80
2025 (WE report pages exluded)
Thus at reporting time 41% of uploaded images/videos were used in Ukrainian and other Wikipedias, Ukrainian Wikivoyage and Wikinews
10 images rated as valued, quality or featured 0 0
0% increase
Nominating pictures for valued, quality or featured statuses was not on to-do list for participants. We included this recommendations for applications in 2017.
100 new or improved articles __ 58
80 new articles + 75 improved by text editing and illustrating
The number of articles where participants only added illustations could have made this results even higher, but we did not count them.
5 publications in local media. 24 0
9
List of required outcomes for participants includes a post on Wikimedia Ukraine blog. In 2016 ten stories were published. Besides 7 publications in Ternopil media were about WE to Tiachiv Raion and WE to Lakes of Chornohora, 1 in Poltava news site about WE to Grebinka & Pyryatyn area, and 1 in local Volyn newspaper on WE to Wolodymyr-Wolynsky. Participants also shared stories on personal blogs and social media. Links to the materials can be found on the reports pages.

Contests edit

Overview edit

This program is concentrated on running the article and photo contests and supporting thematic (collaborative) editing weeks and months. It is oriented towards attracting new users and trying to improve retention of active ones. This is a program aimed at content creation, but also coaching, as contests involve more experienced users helping newbies to learn the rules and to improve their contributions.

Article Contests edit

We have been organising article contests for years and continued this activity in 2016. While there may be doubts in sustainability of this way to attract editors (like, what if every person capable of writing good articles will receive a prize and loose motivation to edit?), we see that it works. Wikipedia readers hardly bother to think of Wikipedia as a community that has its events and not just an encyclopedia one can read, so the word 'contest' and prizes one can receive really attract new editors. We are not afraid of hypothetical situation with no newbies left to attract since there are millions of readers who are not editing yet. Even if users capable of writing encyclopedia articles can be attracted to this activity [only] by prizes, so what, this is using a very human feature. And retaining editors after the contest goes beyond any material encouragements in any case — it's a healthy environment that helps people stay (which is to be taken care of regardless of having contest or not) and enough free time (which is outside of our capabilities anyway). It seems obvious to let working thing be.

The main focus of article contests is creating new content. There are different approaches in building a rationale. CEE Spring 2016 aimed at creating a large number of new articles, WikiPhysContest was aimed at quality. CEE Spring is an international event inspired by many Wikimedia communities, WikiPhysContest idea was born inside and driven by our community. Both article contests were good in closing respective content gaps.

CEE Spring 2016 was a part of international CEE Spring 2016 contest which took part from March 22 to May 31. This contest aimed at creating new articles thus the winners of the contest are those who wrote the biggest number of articles in accordance with the rules. We set 1000 articles as a target for the year but this contest resulted in 1.5 times this number of articles. Most of them are of average length (we had a minimum size requirements).

On the contrary, WikiPhysContest was aimed at quality and not quantity. Thus we speak here not about winning editors but about winning articles. Compared to CEE Spring, the topic of WikiPhysContest was very narrow, articles were evaluated in two categories: 1) theoretic and nuclear physics and 2) astronomy and astrophysics. It started on April 1 and was planned to last till May 4 but was extended till May 14 which is International Astronomy Day. The idea of the contest one was to bring more scientists to Wikipedia. User:Звірі, the main inspirator and organising committee member, made several talks about the contest for students in Kyiv and Lviv national universities, posters in institutions and personal invitations worked well for bringing participants. On the awards ceremony one of the winners told us that he is now working in IT rather than astrophysics but he decided to bring his university knowledge to the daylight and share it by taking part in the contest.
The total of articles created and improved is 88, 42 authors were involved. Not so many newbies joined the contest but, on the other side, some old users who had abandoned Wikipedia came back to take part in the contest. The winning articles of the contest are Spontaneous symmetry breaking and Atmosphere of Jupiter, both Good articles as of now. There is an overlook in contest organising: we did not insist on authors nominating their articles to become Good ones and they did not pay attention to this possibility on their own.

Successes

CEE Spring 2016 contest resulted in 1.5 times the planned number of articles. Competitive spirit raised among the contestants since there were several editors challenging to be a winner. WikiPhysContest resulted in 2 times the planned number of articles. The diversity of participants was astonishing — from school and lyceum students to CERN and other world-known institutes researchers. Bohdan Novosiadlyi, director of astronomical observatory in Lviv University and WikiPhysContest jury member, underlined that "the work of the jurors was particularly interesting due to tight contact with participants"[1] which is a specific feature of the contest.

Challenges

It is sad to admit but we did let several omissions happen in organising 2016 article contests. Instead of 4 planned contests only 2 took place, both in first half of the year. There was a sequel of Wikipedia Loves Monuments 2015 article contest proposed but not done. The goal to concentrate not only on Wikipedia but some other sister project like Wikivoyage and Wiktionary was not met as well. It happened so that no one volunteered to organise contests in the second half of the year and no contest can be organised without volunteers. Since Contests field of our work is focused on bringing content rather than users we are still happy with the results.

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress
(at end of Q2)
Results 2016 Comments
1000 new or improved articles 2019 on CEE Spring only 1672
1672
1491 articles were created and 91 were improved during CEE Spring 2016 article contest + 88 in WikiPhysContest.
incl. 50 rated as Good or Featured article 1 GA + 4 FL on CEE Spring only 8
9
3 GA in CEE Spring + 5GA + 1 FA in WikiPhysContest. We did not insist on authors nominating their articles to become Good ones and they did not pay attention to this possibility on their own. Nominating article for good/featured status takes time and requires nominator's commitment to further improve it. It seemed to be too much to ask from participants during the contest and we just lost sight of this.
200 participants 126 on CEE Spring only 113
113
78 users took part in CEE Spring and 42 were participants of WikiPhysContest. The number could be bigger, but there were only two contests held.
incl. 100 newly registered users 14 on CEE Spring only 28
28
14 users were newcomers in CEE Spring and 14 in WikiPhysContest.

Photo Contests (International and local parts) edit

Wiki Loves Earth 2016 (WLE) took place in Ukraine from May 1 to May 31 and was the fourth edition of the national contest. We continued gathering photographs of nature protected areas in Ukraine to illustrate respective articles in Wikipedia. The statistics of the local contest are as follows: 11,498 pictures uploaded by 231 authors, 26 of them are Quality Images and 3 are Featured Images on Wikimedia Commons. In general this photo contest went as well as in 2015. Comparing to the previous year WLE had less press coverage in Ukraine and the number of pictures uploaded is also a bit smaller. We again received predictably low number of photos from the eastern-most oblasts (regions) of the country. Even though we did not have a supportive article contest the photo contest itself was encouraging for volunteers to work on articles. This was not the only way to improve articles: we partnered with National Ecological Center of Ukraine (NECU) and its activists stated as their goal to provide the best coverage of nature protected areas of Ukraine in Ukrainian Wikipedia. In second half of the year, User:Василюк Олексій and his colleagues from NECU wikified most of the contest lists of protected objects and created respective categories on Wikimedia Commons.

We also decided to support Wiki Loves Earth 2016 in Moldova. This was not planned beforehand, but User:Gikü reached us with this request and we fulfilled it; our member User:Visem joined the organising committee, WMUA provided prizes. The contest resulted in 603 images uploaded by 26 participants — a decent result for the first large Wikimedia campaign in the country. Wiki Loves Earth won the EcoHackathon in Moldova as the best ecological project. We are happy that WLE in Moldova went well. It is opening door for other projects, in particular other photo contests, in this country. The main problem so far is the lack of an active Wikimedia community in Moldova.

The international part of Wiki Loves Earth met and exceeded our expectations: 26 participating countries, 13,600 authors, 11 800 newbies, more than 115 thousand images[2]. The organisation of the contest improved: we gathered truly international organising committee and actively promoted the contest. We involved a number of new participating countries, including Australia, Greece and Moldova who organised their first photo contest ever. We gave participating countries some help with organisational questions and a jury tool[3]. Agreement between WMUA and UNESCO allowed to broaden the contest's geography even more: there was a special nomination for the best photo of all UNESCO biosphere reserves, regardless of organisation of national WLE contests in respective countries. This way during June there were images uploaded from 34 countries of which only 7 participated in 'main' WLE and 27 did not, meaning that thanks to UNESCO support the contest engaged participants from the countries where local Wikimedia community is small or less active (Argentina, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Maldives, Mexico, Mongolia, Myanmar, Peru, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Tanzania, UAE, UK, USA). This way total number of countries involved in the contest reached 53.

Wiki Loves Monuments took place in September for the fifth time. There were participants who took part every year and there were newbies. "Old" participants invited their friends to take part too. Last year's winner was invited to join jury this time (and this inspired some to compete). We are glad to see that this contest is growing as a kind of 'family business': participants, organisers and jury members collaborate on making the contest better. (No undercover conflicts of interest or inappropriate behaviour ever spotted). Contest winners become engaged in other Wikimedia activities: several people already helped organising WikiFlashMob and photo exhibitions in their cities early in 2017. As for the organisation, this time we were prepared to receive dozens of thousands of images, and international organising committee defined strict deadlines for choosing top-ten photos, so we created a timeline of screening and evaluating pictures, followed it and were done in time.

Science Photo Contest gathers photos and images of different kinds, and their scientific interest is being proved by detailed descriptions. International European SCP was put on hold in 2016 but in Ukraine we decided not to take a break so that the contest remains fresh in participants' memory. More that a half of the participants uploaded their pictures on Commons for the first time. Some of the files illustrate English Wikipedia which is especially pleasant for Ukrainians.

Successes

There are several pleasant points shared by all three national photo contests. All of them are held not for the first time — and returning participants (some of whom are already beyond 1,000 monuments and/or natural sites pictured) contribute a lot both by recruiting new participants through their networks and by providing useful feedback and ideas to organisers. We set the goal to increase quality of the content received — and it increases: e.g., higher coefficient for pictures of monuments that had not been pictured for Commons before helps covering more monuments (WLM); strict rules concerning the fullness of description gives us high-quality scientific images (SPC).

Partnership with UNESCO on organising the biosphere reserves nomination was a major success of the international part of Wiki Loves Earth. While the result was not that high quantitatively (about 1,000 new images from countries that did not have national stages), it helped us reach the audience that is not typically covered by WLE, particularly in countries with rich natural heritage but emerging Wikimedia communities (such as Maldives). In addition, we received promotion via UNESCO networks, which helped get donations of photos from several biosphere reserves who shared their photos under a free license. This partnership became possible owing to John Cummings, Wikipedian in Residence in UNESCO.

Challenges

We planed to organise local promotional events (edit-a-thons, Wiki Takes, etc.) but did not organise them in the way planned. The major promotion campaign for WLM was a series of public presentations of The Monuments of Ukraine journal in March. It covered 5 cities; authors, editors and members of the Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine organizing committee presented their contributions and discussed heritage protection issues. Other than that, we added WLM and WLE bookmarks and photo contests leaflet to our merchandise package, which probably helped reach some more people. However, the idea of Wiki Takes was left undeveloped.

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Results 2016 Comments
600 users participating in the contests 238 + 237 + 249
649
248 in WLE + 259 in WLM + 142 in SPC
300 newly registered users thanks to the contest 93 + 122 + 147
358
146 in WLE + 117 in WLM + 95 in SPC
45,000 images uploaded (all contests combined) 14,770 + 41,656 11,498
48,224
11,465 in WLE + 36,173 in WLM + 658 in SPC
6,000 images used across Wikimedia projects 1,214 + 4,030 + 332
4,456
1008 in WLE + 3375 in WLM + 73 in SPC. A bit lower than expected, notably as we did not organise an article contest.
450 images rated as valued, quality or featured 52 + 10
161
28+3+11+117+4+0
International part of Wiki Loves Earth
Number of participating countries: 20 26 26
53
26 countries took part in WLE, additional 27 took part in Wiki Loves Biosphere Reserves nomination (7 more had uploads in both)
Number of photos uploaded: 70,000 (WLE worldwide) 108,132 76,289
115,211
Images from Wiki Loves Earth 2016 on Commons
Total number of participants: 2,500 8,921 6,460
13,600
toollabs:wikiloves/earth/2016
Number of new users: 1,000 7,725 5,400
11,800
toollabs:wikiloves/earth/2016
4 months after the contest, 5,000 (and 10%) of photos are used on wiki projects 8,939 (~8%) Not yet available
7,988 (7%)
toollabs:wikiloves/earth. Note that figures have improved since (more images are used), the counter is currently at 8,869 (8%). Low usage rate is mainly due to very high amount of uploads (over 31,000) in India, with rather low usage (2.6%). We are looking into how we can help Indian organisers improve this.
4 months after the event, 500 (and 1%) of uploaded photos are categorized as valued, quality or featured 672 (589 QI, 34 VI, 49 FP) (ca. 0.62%) Not yet available
600 (ca. 0.5%)
13+553+34. Note that figures have improved since then (more images were promoted), the counter is currently at 608.
At least 90% of the participating countries submitted nominees to the finale. 100% Not yet available
100%
No problematic situations spotted with this.

Thematic editing weeks and months edit

Cherkasy Week logo

Thematic weeks and months is a community driven project that started in 2009. Anyone is welcome to announce the topic, writing period and invite users to start cooperative work aiming to improve and create articles focused on different aspects of one topic. Indeed for many users, such challenges bring extra motivation to edit. Writing on the topic you like or you develop oneself in parallel with others brings more fun. We decided to support the project by proposing to organisers of weeks an opportunity to choose the best contributor(s) of a thematic week/month and entrust us to deliver souvenirs. These can be wikisouvenirs that we have or sponsoring the purchase of special ones (related to the topic). Apart of these souvenirs, we also promote thematic weeks/months via WMUA blog and social networks. Organisers of thematic weeks can find information about support they can get from WMUA on the landing page of the project.

2016 project resulted in 18 specific topic weeks or months that followed one after another or sometimes two at a time, 10 of them were supported by WMUA.

Some weeks were organised not only by Ukrainian Wikipedians but initiated by our colleagues abroad. In 2016 there were three international editing weeks or months with WMUA supporting such collaborations: Asian Month, Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Urdu-Ukrainian Community Collaboration.

Thematic weeks may overlap in time and it is OK since they cover different topics and different users are engaged. Sometimes however an overlap can create for some contributors an even narrower topic to work on. This was true in November when Wikipedia Asian Month went along with Football (soccer) thematic week: there was a number of Asian football biographies created which benefited both weeks.

Successes

Cherkasy 730 Week was the Wikipedia thematic week that deserves a particular focus. Initiated and organized by User:Вальдимар during celebration of the 730th anniversary of his native city Cherkasy, it developed beyond an online event. The municipal Public Library also participated: firstly, they highlighted articles they have resources on in the proposed list, secondly, they hosted a wikitraining and the awards ceremony. Unlike many other, the week had a logo and was covered in regional media. 34 participants created 108 and improved 15 articles.

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Results 2016 Comments
1,500 new or improved articles 1,500 659
2219
Having prepared list of suggested articles is a general requirement for a thematic week in ukwiki; thematic weeks with wide and diverse lists seem to attract more participants.
150 participants 150 85
149
incl. 7 (5%) returning previously active users 5% 5%
5% (8 users[4])
Users who previously edited on the given topic are often invited, some of them were previously inactive and feel motivated to come back.
  1. Автори найкращих статей конкурсу з фізики й астрономії у Вікіпедії отримали призи, WMUA blog
  2. Wiki Loves Earth 2016 Tool Labs – Tools for Wiki Loves Photo Competitions
  3. One of the places for answering questions was wikilovesearth-l
  4. We counted users who were active before July 2015, not active in second half of 2015 and participated in one of the WMUA supported thematic weeks in 2016.

Community Support edit

Overview edit

This program is concentrated on supporting initiatives of volunteers and contributors (through microgrants), providing scholarships to attend international or regional events like Wikimania, Wikimedia CEE Meetings etc, organising local (national and regional) events. We also plan supported trainings for volunteers.

Community Events (WikiConference, General Meeting etc.) edit

Wikipedia Birthday edit

Crimean Tatar Wikipedia's birthday was on January 12, English Wikipedia's birthday was on January 15, Ukrainian Wikipedia's birthday was on January 30. All the events dedicated to these dates got somehow intertwined and developed into series of celebrations and meetups. On January 15 there was a free music concert in Kyiv followed by a wikimeetup of ~15 Wikimedians and opening of a photo exhibition also with a small meetup. There were also documented wikimeetups in Lviv and Kharkiv and a press conference with a Wikipedia cake in Chernihiv.

Wikipedia Birthday came to be a spontaneous community event. WikiFlashMob on January 29—31 was planned as an online-event first, but was accompanied with wikiworkshops (thus mentioned in the appropriate section above) which, in turn, ended with wikimeetups and happy cake eating . These events took place in Lviv and Kyiv (one-day events), Kharkiv, Kherson and Chernihiv (two-days events). This was taken into consideration while preparing to WikiFlashMob 2017 which had a series on live wikiworkshops in its core.

WikiConference edit

WikiConference 2016 took place on September 3-4 in Kyiv, in the Museum of National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and attracted a lot of active Wikimedia contributors. We continued practice of inviting guest Wikimedians from other countries, this time there were User:Juno and User:Lantuszka from Poland, User:Мухамадеева (Bashkortostan) and User:DonSimon from Russia and User:Asaf (WMF). Each of them presented their topic(s) of interest during sessions. It is worth underlining that though sessions each had designed speakers they were mostly in format of discussions. Registration form asked for suggestions on the program so the conference was answering its participants' questions. We planned sessions in line with main project activities (e.g. Wikiexpeditions, Article Contests, Sister projects etc.) but by asking questions audience quickly narrowed down to what they wanted to focus on. 11 presentations are uploaded on Commons.

In-person meeting helped better understanding between users, there were a lot of conversations during breaks. We included Wikidojo in the program and this "cross-conference import" was welcomed by the participants. All people who filled in the after-conference survey agreed or completely agreed with the statement "Meeting with all these people helped me gain knowledge from other participants".

Hackathon edit
Participants of WMUA Hackathon 2016
Templates session

There are recurring requests in our community to elaborate, explain or implement some technical things, tools or bots (e.g. to archive reference links in articles). This motivated us to plan a hackathon to develop tools wanted by the community, that would solve pressing issues and to increase technical capacity of our community by teaching them. A survey helped to determine community wishes and preferences and to know the skills future participants already have.

We got 26 responses, which are summarised here. Gathering statistics and creating article stubs were the most desired tasks for bots. Wikidata and Templates scored highest in the question about most desirable skills, and archiving reference links happened to be the most desirable tool. Regarding knowledge of programming languages, 10 had more than basic level proficiency in some language, 4 - only basic, 12 respondents did not know any on at least a minimum level. The most well known and popular were Python and Java (12 people knew at least one of them), so we've chosen to go with them in separate threads on bots sessions. Basing on survey responses, we created a list of suggested projects to hack on. Unfortunately, almost nobody committed onwiki to hack, but we could get some confirmations in personal communication.

Due to this low commitment to developing specific tools and as most respondents (16) either did not know or had only basic knowledge of programming languages, as there was high interest in learning various topics, and as one the most popular ideas for bots was gathering statistics that is much easier to achieve using SQL and SPARQL queries, we decided to concentrate more on learning new skills than on developing tools and make knowledge exchange on using existing tools and query languages, such as SQL via Quarry or SPARQL.

After listing proposed topics on wiki, were asked everyone who showed interest or knowledge of the subject to participate in programme design. One of the main challenges was that not only we had a limited number of skilled people, but also a lot of them did not express desire or had enough knowledge to mentor or teach others, some were telling that hackathon is just developing tools together and not a conference where people are presenting something, and a lot of people were deciding on their presentations in the last moment, so it was hard to coordinate different presentations to have clear and logical learning path through them. Finally we got 10 sessions that where (co)presented/led by 5 volunteers, with one of them (Base) being the main presenter for 6 sessions.

15 users took part in Hackathon, all of them filled the post-event survey. 71% of the respondents found SQL for Wikiprojects as the most useful topic. All of the respondents found Hackathon either very useful or useful. In several months 11 people reported that they practice new skills thanks to 2-5 (on average 3.5) sessions from 10 that were presented. The most used new skills are filling Wikidata pages (7 respondents), SQL for Wikiprojects (6), Wikidata queries and SPARQL (5). Note that we had quite fine-grained topic divisions, so for example there were 3 related to Wikidata, and they are tracked separately in the surveys. If we group Wikidata topics together it gives higher percentage of people that have new skills on any of the Wikidata topics, not a specific one.

In the end 9 of 12 respondents that did not know any programming language did not show up on the Hackathon. So some of the following statements can be true: 1) They were more interested in giving their suggestions than in participating 2) We were not reaching out enough to convince them that the event could be useful for them 3) We should somehow take into account that participation of this group is less probable.

Learning sessions on SQL, Wikidata and SPARQL were one of the most interesting and useful, so it was a good decision to include them. But the number of people who found programming sessions useful and got new skills was lower, and it's probably more challenging to advance someone in programming or bots in such a short timeframe, so we should think of ways to achieve better results like 1) more hacking than presenting 2) teach someone only if there is enough time for this on the event, enough willingness and planning from both mentors and students is shown 3) invite people who know programming well, but do not develop for Wikiprojects.

List of things implemented or finished/revived before (during the preparation), during the hackathon or as a result of it, include more than 10 ideas/projects:

  • SQL/Quarry
  • Bots/Tools that create stubs
    • Improved and opensourced python bot to create article stubs from csv data, it is used for creating stubs for all the natural monuments in Ukraine (about 8,000 articles)
    • Art(icle)Uploader that allows to create multiple stubs using stub template and .csv file with variable substitutions. Similar to previous one, but has a GUI that is targeted to users without programming skills.
    • Bot to create stubs about proteins (example) from protein database was revived.
  • Simple Orphan Monitor that can mark articles that have no links to them and show list of such articles per user.
  • Bot to update "Edited now" lists of pages on portals.
  • Finished and opensourced a bot to remove outdated not translated link templates
  • added Kartografer extension to Coord template

However 4 of the tools are still privately developed and closed source. Regarding collaboration on tools, while many are resulted and benefited from communication with various interested parties, most of the tools did not bring any technical collaboration and were done by corresponding single person. One of the exceptions is the SQL scripts, which are actively adapted by several people for different tasks.

Wikimedia Ukraine General Meeting edit
Wikimedia Ukraine AGM 2016

Annual WMUA General Assembly took place on December 25th (no, it's not Christmas in Ukraine, Ukraine celebrates Christmas on January 7). WMUA Board and Auditing committee presented reports on their work during the year to the members of organisation, new Board and AudCom were elected and list of activities for 2017 was approved.

Similarly to previous year we invited WMUA members to a pre-AGM day. Its agenda consisted of several talks by Board members about 'organisational kitchen' of WMUA, things to remember for a board member and a training on the documents and process of the reimbursement for a travel grant. This was also aimed at those who felt like joining the board and actually helped User:Звірі and User:Artem.komisarenko to nominate themselves for a Board election and feel confident being a part of it in 2017 for the first time. In the end we had 3 new board members out of 7 elected, and this training helped us make onboarding process easier.

AGM discussed and approved annual activity plan for 2017 which includes not only activities for reaching our goals as in grant proposal for 2017 but also strategically important things like supporting our members in presenting on non-Wikimedia conferences, organising of thematic committees (work groups) inside WMUA, building ties between staff, the Board, members and community, cooperation with other affiliates etc.

Regional event edit

Regional event was planned to target community development in under-represented regions, preferably in Eastern Ukraine, as there are few Wikimedians in this region and, for instance, they rarely attend WikiConference. It had to be a "small WikiConference" for local both experienced wikimedians and beginners. Regional event has not proceeded as initially planned. When choosing the host city for WikiConference 2016 we received some nominations of cities other than Kyiv but the number of local organisers was not sufficient for organising a national conference. What happened next was a sheer miscommunication. Both sides — volunteers proposing bids, and organising committee deciding on the final place — knew somehow of a plan to have regional event, but it happened that no one came with a proposition to organise a smaller event instead and thus it turned that no one nominated themselves to.

On the other hand, we organised or supported events in different regions within other projects. WikiFlashMob events, for example, those in Kherson or Chernihiv, apart from being edit-a-thons, were also meetups for local Wikimedians giving them chance to discuss wikiwork; or Cherkasy thematic week awards, where novice Wikipedians exchanged their impressions; or Pamyatky Ukrainy presentation in Vinnytsia, where Wikipedians and photographers chatted about Wiki Loves Monuments and beyond. In a word, WMUA activity was not attached to Kyiv and Lviv where we have the largest communities. Notwithstanding, we need to work on catching up with regional event format as it was initially meant, in 2017.

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Results 2016 Comments
Wikipedia Birthday
Participants (no target) n/a 20+15+14+10+
168
6+15+2+50+4 on January 15, 8+15+15+16+20+12+5 on January 29-30[1]
WikiConference
50 participants 55 Not yet available
70+
Incl. 5 Wikimedians from other countries. Registered participants showed high level of commitment, only a few people could not come (and for reason).
20 speakers 29 Not yet available
26
Most of the sessions were discussions,where speakers presented their experience and the room asked questions and provided ideas to collectively improve the project being discussed.
5 ideas of projects or improvements to projects presented 6 Not yet available
5
The ideas presented were Cherkasy thematic week (held in October with support from city council), narrowing focus of Ukrainian Hackathon (held in December), activisation of the work on freedom of panorama, better understanding of Wikidata, training for volunteers on social media usage (held in October), and other smaller improvements.
at least 70% of respondents find the conference useful __ Not yet available
98%
51 participant filled in the post-conference survey, 39 find conference very useful, 11 — useful.
General Meeting
40 participants 37 Not yet available
38
61 member in WMUA on the moment of General Assembly. A bit lower number than expected was due to the fact some members were inactive for years and did not respond to our call (some of them ended up being removed for inactivity and not paying membership dues).
3 ideas of projects or improvements to projects presented __ Not yet available
3
Proposed creation of commons threshold requirements for all contests to be held, idea of training for Wikimedia contributors on learning more technical skills, cooperation with national authorities on high level in order to promote Wikimedia projects.
Hackathon
15 participants n/a Not yet available
15
On target.
3 ideas of projects or improvements to projects presented (useful tools, and gadgets, bots, etc) n/a Not yet available
> 10
Above target (see list of ideas above).
train attendees on one particular technology/skill, and have at least 50% of attendees report in a subsequent survey that they are now working in/with that technology/skill n/a Not yet available
60% (Wikidata topics combined) or 73% (any of the 10 skills)
We had not one, but 10 sessions. Per session data: 46% - filling Wikidata pages, 40% - SQL queries, 33% - Wikidata queries and SPARQL and so on.

If we group different Wikidata topics together it gives 60% of new skill users.

If we look at all the 10 skills: 73% are now working with at least 2 new skills, up to 5 new skills (3.5 new skills on average).

Regional Event
20 participants n/a Not yet available
n/a Regional event was not held, see more in the text above.
5 speakers n/a Not yet available
n/a
Regional event was not held, see more in the text above.
3 ideas of projects or improvements to projects presented n/a Not yet available
n/a
Regional event was not held, see more in the text above.

Scholarships edit

Wikimedia Ukraine table at Wikimania 2016
CEE Meeting 2016 group photo

This project is aimed at providing an opportunity for volunteers to attend events like Wikimania and international conferences. We invite users to share our experience at the event and contribute to improvements to existing or launching new projects in Ukraine using the experience they gain. This project was very successful in 2016 and we are glad to see all the targets met and the goal of increasing reach of the projects we implement and learning from others — fulfilled this year.

Success
  • Conversations with colleagues during Wikimedia Conference 2016 were fruitful: several new affiliates decided to take part in Wiki Loves Earth next year, cooperation on Wikimedia Polska's Carpathian Ethnography Project was agreed, we took part in discussions on Wikimedia movement strategy etc.
  • On Wikimania 2016 Wikimedia Ukraine was represented in Community Village, Ukrainian Wikipedians took part in Wiki Project Med meeting, discussed perspectives of moving WLM lists of monuments to Wikidata etc.
  • During Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2016 — and all other conferences — Ukrainian Wikimedians gave presentations:
Not implemented idea
Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Results 2016 Comments
4 events attended 6 3
4
4 ideas of projects or improvements to projects implemented by the end of 2016 3 Not yet available
8 at least
  1. Social media training for volunteers (held in October)
  2. Preparing new metrics for 2017 annual plan
  1. Ukrainian Wikipedia was added to WikiRank instrument [1]
  2. Preparing of strategic plan and optimisation of organisation management: first step made on WMUA General Meeting in December
  1. There is a principle agreement with user:Dimi_z about his participation in a public event on supporting free panorama in Ukraine. Ukrainian freedom of panorama campaign was discussed during a case study at Wikimania.
  2. Eurovision 2017 in Ukraine: WMUA received relay of accreditation a Wikimedian who will take pictures and notified interested users (already chosen)
  1. Hackathon 2016: first hackathon in Ukraine, held in December as a pre-stage for Wikimedia Hackathon 2017 in Austria. It was Wikimedia Austria who proposed national hackathons, and we took the idea. Thanks to this Hackathon we got to know better Ukrainian Wikimedians who work in coding sphere.
  2. Wikidojo was imported in Ukraine and held during national Wikiconference.

Microgrants edit

First free portrait of Christopher Hampton, made at Odessa film festival
President of Ukraine greets Ukrainian Olympic and Paralympic medalists

Microgrants project is a mean for members of the Wikimedia community to ask WMUA for a financial support for their micro-project or activity having an impact on Wikimedia projects. In 2016 we supported five requests, primarily accrediation to festivals but also public events involving notable people; three of them were also supported financially.

Success

Delegating two volunteers for Odessa International Film Festival (unlike one the years before) became a new and worthy experience. Accredited as photographer and journalist, Wikipedians have been mutually complementary. As a result, our volunteer photographer took several thousand photos and selected 123 photos of them for uploading, mostly portraits of actors and film directors. In parallel, the volunteer journalist wrote articles and news items about festival films and notable people. His work resulted in 45 Wikipedia articles and 5 Wikinews items.

Challenges

There were no book grants during the year. On the one hand, there were no requests from the community. On the other hand, we haven't worked much on its promotion. Plus there were books awarded as small prizes in several thematic weeks which could have satisfied contributors for the time being.

We learned two major lessons from running this project in 2016:

  • Project requires promotion of the call for submission of grants: people do not necessarily know it exists, we need to share information and encourage them to apply.
  • We lacked a clear landing page that would have general description and navigation links to the pages on photogrants, book requests, travel requests that already existed.
Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Results 2016 Comments
Photo grants
100 new images 319 Not yet available
527
121+21+31+346+98
incl. at least 25 images used in articles 71 Not yet available
102
76 (ukwiki), 102 (other wikis and Wikidata). It is worth mentioning again that there were 45 Wikipedia articles created thanks to OIFF photo grant alone so that images uploaded could illustrate them.
5 images rated as valued, quality or featured 0 Not yet available
0
This is a common problem with "valued, quality or featured" target applied to WMUA projects mentioned as well in other sections above. We did not feel confident to promote content on receiving these statuses ourselves, did not include this as a recommendation for photographers and photographers themselves did not pay attention to the possibility. This issue can and will be addressed in 2017 by including it into recommendation for contributors of image content, supported by WMUA.
Library
100 new or improved articles / or 10 articles rated as GA or FA (either 10 articles or 1 GA/FA per book) __ Not yet available
45 new articles
Coming from journalist grant for OIFF (including 1 featured list). There were no library grants disbursed this year (see Challenges above).

Trainings for Volunteers edit

Two group trainings were organised in 2016. Conflict management training was given in the context of the Community Capacity Development pilot program by the Wikimedia Foundation. In a survey conducted among the participants immediately after the training concluded, two thirds of the respondents felt prepared to handle conflict on Wikipedia (15 responses in total). We're eager to agree with the conclusion on pilot project page that it is impossible to determine whether it was successful or not in actually improving the state of conflict management within the Ukrainian community. On the one hand, we have anecdotal evidence (from qualitative interview) that individuals found value in the training, and feel more motivated to engage in resolving other people's conflict on-wiki. On the other hand, we have no solid evidence that the frequency, heartedness, or frustration involved with conflict on the Ukrainian Wikipedia have decreased.

During the discussion about CCD program in Ukrainian Wikipedia the members of the community expressed their beliefs that it is important to develop skills in Communications. Following this, in October 10 volunteers and staff underwent two-day training on mastering the using of Facebook and Twitter for organisation's and wikiprojects promotion. Though work with media was not highlighted in our annual plan, we couldn't ignore it, considering the potential of social media for enhancing projects visibility.

Launching Wikisource page on Twitter, revitalising the Ukrainian Wikipedia, Wikisource pages on Facebook, starting a discussion on social media strategy were among short-term results of the training.

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Results 2016 Comments
at least 4 volunteers underwent training n/a 23
25
23 in Conflict management training + 11 in Social networks training = 25 distinct participants
at least 2 partnerships / projects started, at least 2 presentations made n/a Not available Not available At the suggestion from some Ukrainian and other Wikimedians, program of Conflict management training, developed by Dr. Aftab with contributions by Asaf, was condensed by Asaf from a whole weekend into a more intensive (and less interactive) 3-hour workshop, and delivered on several occasions. Two participants Conflict management training later became Arbitrary Committee members in ukwiki. Ukrainian Wikipedia Facebook page got more diverse publications from bigger number of editors since Social media training.

We are not aware if participants were involved in other activities that go under description of partnerships/projects/presentations.

Publishing edit

Our publishing activities included:

  • The Monuments of Ukraine magazine. We cooperated with The Monuments of Ukraine journal and the whole February issue of it (96 pages) is about Wiki Loves Monuments in Ukraine. It contains photos and articles written by WLM participants on various topics: contest history, oriental style of Golden Horde and Crimean Khanate monuments in Crimea, wooden architecture in Ukraine, the sacred architecture of Kyiv area, Wikiexpeditions project, freedom of panorama and few other. Wikimedia Ukraine received 500 copies of the magazine and distributed it among partners and at wikievents. A paper edition of The Monuments of Ukraine can be purchased in book-stores, it is also uploaded on Commons. We held a series of presentations with this issue in 5 cities. Authors, editors, members of the Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine organizing committee presented their contributions and discussed heritage protection issues.
  • Editing Wikipedia brochure. In March we printed a second consignment (1000 copies) of Editing Wikipedia brochure in Ukrainian.
  • Annual report. In April we prepared and published 100 copies of Wikimedia Ukraine bilingual report for 2015. It was distributed mainly among local partners and internationally at Wikimedia Conference.
Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Results 2016 Comments
300 copies published and distributed >500 500+1,000+100
1,600
The Monuments of Ukraine and Annual report were delivered to partners and at wikievents, Editing Wikipedia brochure was given to participants of wikiworkshops and wikitrainings.
1,000 small different souvenirs produced and distributed __ ~500
>1000
We propose a variety of trifles branded with logos of Wikiprojects (stickers, buttons, pens, miniature measuring tapes with words How long are your articles?, miniature chocolates etc.) and souvenirs for volunteer support (mugs, bags, t-shirts).
A satisfaction/motivation survey n/a Not yet available
Not yet available
The survey conducting period got constantly pushed forward in time in order to not interfere with other events/banners/announcements. Particularly we did not want to run it simultaneously or right after WMF survey. This proved to be a wrong approach (since at any moment of time something is being announced in Wikimedia movement) but survey has not been run yet.
30 users received Wikizghushchivka 30 23
23
Unfortunately, Zghushchivka poshtoiu award was not sent in the second half-year. New volunteers are to be recruited into continuing the project since its current executive does not cope with it.

Nontargeted progress edit

In communication
  • Thanks to staffers, communications and reporting within the organisation could reach more sustainable and better quality level. 2016 was marked with publishing Community Monthly Reports and Monthly E-Mail Digests on main community news of the past month and planned events announcements.[2]
  • Social media reach:
Feeds Followers for 2016-01-01 Growth End of 2016
WMUA Facebook 1,300 + 513 1, 813
WLE-UA Facebook 1,180 + 344 1, 524
WLM-UA Facebook 1,200 + 328 1, 528
Ukrainian Wikipedia Facebook 15,950 + 3, 438 19, 388
Ukrainian Wikisource 391 + 337 728
WMUA Twitter 401 + 200 601
  1. See wikimeetups in 2016, №№196—209
  2. Reports in Ukrainian: wmua:Шаблон:Звіти 2016

Revenues received during this period (6 month for progress report, 12 months for impact report) edit

Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

Exchange rate notice: this grant was received in USD, while expenses were made in UAH. The total grant amount in USD is 66,700.00 USD, while the equivalent amount in UAH is 1,689,352.17 UAH. Thus we used the exchange rate of UAH/USD = 25.3276 in our calculations. This might lead to minor changes in the amounts of Q1 and Q2 compared to the progress report form.

Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

  • Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan
APG grant USD 66,700.00[1] 3,391.30[2] 35,517.00[3] 27,791.70 - 66,700.00 66,700.00 66,700.00
Donations and contributions USD 1,000.00 76.67 26.15 126.06 20.16 249.03 1,000.00 249.03 Despite an increase in activity in the second half of the year, it was hard for us to meet target: we had a number of donators giving small amounts (~2 USD) but, unlike 2015, we did not receive significant donations.
Membership fees USD 200.00 9.87 17.95 1.97 186.98 28.00 200.00 216.78 Our general assembly supported termination of membership for those who did not pay membership fees for over a year, and we organised a campaign to encourage people to pay overdue membership fees.

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


In-kind donations. We do not have a system to track in-kind donations, and it is hard to estimate the market value of these donations (for instance, prices for renting spaces in local libraries are not available). The main in-kind donations we received are:

  • spaces for Wiki Loves Earth+Wiki Loves Monuments photo exhibition: National Museum of History of Ukraine, National Kiev-Pechersk Historic-Cultural Preserve
  • spaces for events and workshops: libraries, museums, educational institutions
  • books for participants of photo and article contests

Spending during this period (6 month for progress report, 12 months for impact report) edit

Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

Notes:

  • For consistency, the same exchange amount (UAH/USD = 25.3276) was used for all four quarters
  • Spendings are attributed to the period when funds were actually transferred and not to the period when the event itself took place. The majority of expenses were actually budgeted in Q4, although some of them covered events that took place earlier. This was mainly due to the fact that we received the first instalment only in the end of May, thus delaying payment for many invoices.
  • For cases where two values are given, the value in brackets corresponds to the total amount spent including funds not from this grant. For instance, 500 (1,000) means that a total of 1,000 USD was spent, but only 500 USD was from this grant, with remaining funds being from other sources.
  • Rounding errors may lead to deviations of up to 0.1 USD

Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

(The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan
Program 1: Outreach USD 6,000.00 399.76 1,218.04 1,087.63 6,654.78 9,360.21 6,000.00 9,360.21 156% There was a significant increase of both activity and impact of activities on this programme. The major reason is a very significant growth of Wikipedia Education Programme, particularly with organisation of a number of workshops for secondary school teachers, and higher cost of a workshop (workshops became two-day instead of one-day, and many of them were organised in regions where we have no active trainers).
Program 2: Contests USD 23,500.00[4] 0.00
(562.63)
1,666.43 431.77 17,771.96 19,870.16
(20432.79)
23,500.00 19,870.16
(20432.79)
85% Below target for two main reasons: 1) two article contests (WLM and WLE) were not held, 2) cost-saving by merging award ceremonies of WLE and WLM into a one joint ceremony.
Expenses not from this grant correspond to printing the WLM 2015 magazine from the corresponding PEG grant. These expenses were not budgeted and are not taken into account in percentage spent (it was expected that the magazine would be printed before the end of 2015).
Program 3: Community Support USD 21,000.00 1,196.88 2,272.35 1,657.54 15,327.92
(18,052.21)
20,454.68
(23,178.98)
21,000.00 20,454.68
(23,178.98)
97% Roughly on target.
Expenses not from this grant correspond to reimbursement of various community projects and initiatives from previous periods for a total of 2725 USD, going back in time to Sochi Paralympic Games in 2014. The expenses for these projects were budgeted in previous periods but volunteers submitted expenses and got reimbursed only now. These expenses are not taken into account in percentage spent as they were budgeted in previous years.
Administrative costs (office) USD 7,368.00 1,129.55 1,295.27 1,943.50 2,614.65
(2,648.89)
6,982.98
(7,017.22)
7,368.00 6,982.98
(7,017.22)
95%
(95%)
Roughly on target. Expenses outside this grant are banking fees for non-grant operations.
Administrative costs (staff) USD 10,032.00 230.52 4,080.07 1,841.90 3,879.48 10,031.97 10,032.00 10,031.97 100% Fully on target (all staff working as expected)
TOTAL USD 67,900.00 2,956.71
(3,519.34)
10,532.17 6,962.35 46,248.78
(49,007.32)
66,700.00
(70,021.16)
67,900.00 66,700.00
(70,021.16)
100% (grant)
98% (budget)
We are on budget. All grant funds were spent according to the budget. Taking into account all budgeted activities, we are at 98%, although our income is also slightly below target at 98.9%, thus we simply did not overspend. Some activities budgeted in previous periods were covered in this period, they were not taken into account in this calculation.

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


Compliance edit

Is your organization compliant with the terms outlined in the grant agreement? edit

As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.

Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

Signature edit

Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.

Resources edit

Resources to plan for measurement edit

Resources for storytelling edit

  1. The grant proposal is for $75,000.00, but US$8,300 will be disbursed to Wikimedia Poland
  2. This amount reflects the unspent grant funds from 3 PEGs ($1,349.71 for WLM 2015; $588.19 for WLE International 2015; $1,453.40 for Programs 2015-1)
  3. US$8,300 was disbursed to Wikimedia Poland for their role in our grant
  4. US$8300 was disbursed to Wikimedia Poland for their role in our grant