Grants:APG/Proposals/2016-2017 round 1/Wikimedia Argentina/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

Comments on metrics

  • The "number of quality articles" metric work very well on specific projects, such as offline activities or projects within the classroom. Instead it is more difficult to apply in massive activities. We are learning from it in order to see how we can improve or where we can apply this indicator for next year. In this sense and mainly in GLAM we have analyzed the quality differentiating articles created - on es wiki and other wikipedias - and improved articles that generally refer to more massive activities. In this sense we have not counted the very small changes. It is a metric that takes time to be implemented so we must review its definition towards a more oriented metric on diverse content, at least within the GLAM program. We will review this at the annual grant 2018.

New Global metrics Overview

Program Participants Newly registered Content pages Number of quality articles % of institutional growth Comments
Education Program 1911 877 1052 537 (51%) 20 new partners More details here.
GLAM Program 1850 591 16,414 content pages

393 books (67,000 pages in Commons)

9,870 (60%) 12 new partners We have analyzed all the articles created and improved in GLAM as much as possible. We did not count small changes.The number is the most estimated possible.

More details here. The pages on Commons are mainly books and can't be analyzed by this metric properly.

Community Support Program 534 85 4,091 2,560 14 new partners

20 activities defined by community interests

More details here.

Again, we reviewed all the articles edited as much as possible. The number is the most estimated possible.

Total 4,295 1,553 21,557

393 books (67,000 pages in Commons)

12,960 46 new partners

20 activities defined by our community

Other relevant metrics can be found here.


Education Program edit

Summary
WMAR’s Education Program has obtained the following great results, during 2017:

  • During 2017, we have worked with more universities than ever, incorporating new editors and above all diverse and quality content in Wikipedia.
  • We continued reinforcing Wikipedia’s role as an educational project with a social impact, getting universities and experts on Human Rights involved to make this issue visible at a regional level.
  • With our Editing Clubs and our annual contest with UNESCO, we continued promoting Wikipedia as a learning tool in schools in order to improve the content gaps in relation to historical and cultural heritage in Argentina.
  • We began to organize the 1st community of leader educators of the program in order to grow at a national level.


Wikipedia in the classroom edit


Success: Wikipedia as a learning tool edit

During 2017 we designed projects that were appropriate both for our objectives and for the reality of the Argentinean context. Also, we learnt from our challenges in 2016 and we worked to find solutions in the following way:

  • We discarded massive talks for educators because they did not provide good results and we defined specific projects for each school and university.
  • Projects are organized in stages, which allows us to have proper and on-going follow-up.
  • All projects are headed by educators and adapt to their work hours in schools and universities.
  • We can work offline on all projects, so educators and students can participate regardless of their access to internet connection.

Wikipedia at the University and the Editing Clubs

In 2017, we designed these two programs with the following objectives:

  • Incorporating new editors and quality content to Wikipedia.
  • Helping educators see the real possibilities of using Wikipedia as a learning tool.

Wikipedia in the University We worked with 7 universities from different regions of the country: Northern, Middle and Southern:

  • National University of Salta
  • San Bartolome English Teacher Training Institute
  • University of Buenos Aires
  • Maimónides University
  • Higher Education Teacher Training of Chivilcoy
  • River Plate Post Secondary Center
  • National University of Río Negro

Editing Clubs
We reached regions of the country in which we had not previously worked with any schools. Four provinces put the project with educators and students into practice:

  • La Rioja
  • Tierra del Fuego
  • Entre Ríos
  • Buenos Aires

How did we put them into practice?

Both programs share similar characteristics:

  • Both projects are carried out by educators. Educators participate in a 2-day on-site and online training course in which they learn to edit appropriately.
  • During the entire project they have access to on-site and online tutorial classes.
  • We articulate with local counterparts, generally educational institutions and Ministries of Education, that help us to provide the necessary resources to put the project into practice.
  • Both projects share similar objectives: to incorporate quality and missing content to Wikipedia.

What were the results?

At a qualitative level:

  • Educational innovation: programs are increasingly more accepted in the classrooms and are viewed as an innovative way to work with Wikipedia. An example of this are the +80 educators that are interested in participating in these programs during 2018.
  • Satisfaction: 100% of the educators and provinces that we’ve worked with would like to repeat the experience.
  • Quality: We’ve generated quality content on subjects that were missing in Wikipedia, also highlighting Argentinean culture.

At a quantitative level:

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Comments
100 students University 135 95 208 n/a
150 articles created/improved 106 86 188 n/a
70% quality articles (university) n/a 61% 80% of quality articles (university) n/a
450 students High-School 559 135 626 Editing Clubs and UNESO contest.
150 created/improved 78 39 242 n/a
% of quality articles (high-school) n/a 56% 50% of quality articles n/a
Number of educational institutions involved 7 7 14 institutions Only Editing Clubs + Wikipedia in the University
Number of trainings n/a 17 50 On site and virtual trainings
Number of educators involved 559 310 875 Editing Clubs, Wikipedia in the University's projects, UNESCO Contest.
% of educators' satisfaction n/a 100% n/a n/a
Number of volunteers involved 1 12 30 Mainly educators + WMAR's volunteers leading education activities.
Number of staff hours n/a 127 340 On site and virtual activities
Editors retention n/a n/a 22 n/a


Side effect: the birth of a community of educators

One of WMAR’s greatest challenges was to build a community of leader educators for the projects. This was one of our main objectives, since it is very difficult to sustain these proposals without them. During July 2017, we organized the first call for leader educators of our programs in their institutions. 15 educators took part and later launched proposals with Wikipedia in the classrooms. Nevertheless, the most important aspect was the degree of retention of educators, since 100% of them are organizing new projects for 2018. In 2018 we reopened the call for new leader educators and by mid-March we had trained 18 new educators. Our great challenge is that these educators not only put activities into practice but that they also feel confident to use Wikipedia in the classroom as a learning tool, so it can be a part of the curriculum in educational institutions.



Success: Remote learning edit

We continue to promote our flagship program: the online course for educators. When we began offering this course in 2014, the project was seeking to become the answer to reach every educator in the country and this is precisely one of the objectives that we achieved in 2017. Thanks to the online course, we have been present in the 24 provinces of the country, with a total of 234 participants. However and even that we have already done 6 editions, during 2017 we included some important changes due both to the evaluation after 4 editions and the local context and its impact on our Education Program.

How did we organize the project in 2017?

  • Focus on quality above quantity: we dismissed working on articles already considered of quality as there are many that need to be fixed and updated. In this sense, the participants learn how to edit at the same time of improving the quality of Wikipedia.
  • Engage long-term editors as revisors to get newbies smoothly involved in Wikipedia
  • 2017 was specially hard for teachers' and their jobs in Argentina. The local context made us redefine and reduce the number of participants per course. Even so, this became a great learning, as working with a smaller group have not meant a huge difference in terms of articles edited and made our work easier.

What are the main challenges ahead?

In 2017 we set new objectives for the program:

  • Scaling the proposal at a regional level: Wikipuentes is a project that can have great outreach but it needs to be adapted to the different local contexts. WMAR discarded the idea of scaling the proposal to a regional scale and we began to work directly with Wikimedia Chile and Wikimedia Mexico. We shared all the content and the platform format so they can put the project into practice in 2018. Wikimedia Chile is launching their platform and course in April 2018.
  • Inclusion of new communities: We want to continue promoting Wikipedia as an inclusive project in which all knowledge is represented. In order to achieve that, we need to get new communities involved. During 2017, and after an alliance with Paraguay Educa, we traines 40 educators that will participate this year in the 1st edition of Wikipuentes in Paraguay, with the objective to improve the content on that country in Wikipedia, also in the Guarani language. The course will be carried our in May 2018.

Main results:

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Comments
600 participants 361 134 234 Less participants due to local context.
450 articles improved 680 260 505 We focus on improving quality content
45 projects designed by teachers 85 35 70 n/a
Participant dropout 41% 45% 30% Around 40%-50% is considered normal dropout
Volunteers involved n/a 2 3 n/a
Tutorials designed n/a 5 7 n/a
% of satisfaction n/a 100% 100% 100% of the participants was satisfied with the training and learning.
Editors retention n/a n/a 10 n/a



Gating factor: continuing expanding our education projects edit

Inside the Education Program, we continue identifying challenges for the implementation of projects that:

  • Allow us to continue expanding the Education Program at a national level, especially in districts where we have not been present yet.
  • Allow every teacher and student in Argentina to participate in the different WMAR’s education projects.

How do we plan to develop it?

  • To continue growing: reinforcing alliances with the Education Ministries at a local level and with nacional universities that allow us to have better outreach for our education projects.
  • To improve retention: encouraging activities in which edition is done with a purpose and on a specific subject at a local, social and historical level. We have proved that if educators are the ones who choose the subjects on which they edit, related to their context, results are qualitative and quantitatively better.
  • To scale: generating dissemination material and support tutorials that allow us to present the experience through its protagonists; and generating strategies for online support for educators who wish to join the projects.



What have we learnt? edit
  • Educators are willing to carry out innovative projects in their classrooms if they are trained and supported appropriately.
  • Generating strategic alliances with institutions such as the provinces’ Ministries of Education in order to have official recognition of the projects as official educational activities, which encourages educators to participate.
  • Less participants in our online course don't have to mean less impact in terms of content and can make our work easier.
  • Focusing on quality intead of quantity helps us keep the Wikipedia community happy and it's a great strategy to learn how to edit.


Wikipedia & Human Rights edit


Success: Wikipedia as a tool with social impact edit

It’s impossible to understand Wikipedia outside the social context in which the project is developed. Argentina is a country in which recent history and the political agenda permeate everything and Wikipedia is presented as a digital tool with influence in Internet.

During 2017, the agenda was dominated by:

  • Defense of Human Rights and reconstruction of historical memory.
  • The Argentinean feminist movement.

In order to meet this demand, since 2016 we have launched the Wikilesa project, to make Human Rights visible in Wikipedia. The project, which had its 7th edition this year, crossed borders in 2017 and took place in Uruguay and Chile as well, growing at a regional level in 2018. Currently, Wikilesa has become #Wikiderechoshumanos (#Wikihumanrights).

How do we organize the project?

  • Counterparts: We specifically articulated with Human Rights organizations and national universities.
  • Audience: We trained researchers, journalists and educators on how to edit Wikipedia on Human Rights-related content.
  • Subject: Edit-a-thons are organized on specific subjects (Sites of Memory, Human Rights trials in Argentina and the region, Social leaders).

What were the results?

At a qualitative level:

  • Editing with purpose: redefining Wikipedia as a digital space in which to make current social causes visible.
  • Building a community: Argentina has 6 large Human Rights organizations. Wikiderechoshumanos has been accepted as a project by these organizations, with which we have built a network and a stable community.
  • Retention: Of the total of participants in 2018, 65% participated in two of the 2017 edit-a-thons and 30% is still editing after 3 months.

Main results

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Comments
6 Education edit-a-thons 4 1 3 As we explained in the Progress Report, we prioritized the Editing Clubs and Wikipedia in the University during the first 6 months of the year.
200 students involved 204 45 85 See the comment above
Women involved n/a n/a 52 n/a
At least 20 articles created/improved 30 n/a 73 71% new articles
3 editors retained 1 n/a 25 n/a



Gating factor: How to measure social impact edit

One of our great challenges while working with Wikipedia as a social project is to measure the real impact of the work we’ve been doing. Beyond the number of created articles, we have established a few strategies to measure the impact of our work with a double objective:

  • Improving the readers’ reliability on Wikipedia content.
  • Encouraging potential editors to begin to edit Wikipedia

For these purposes, we have begun to:

  • Measure the impact of Wikipedia: we have begun to measure and share the traffic on articles related to news in the public agenda. This allow us:
    • To position ourselves in the media as a tool to measure the impact of current issues on society.
    • To improve the perception of Wikipedia as a reliable source of information.
    • To understand the interests of the Wikipedia readers and be able to engage them as editors/partners. We have been already contacted by some organizations to carry out activities in 2018.

Even though we are beginning to put these actions into practice, we believe they are essential to measure the impact of the knowledge we produce and also to attract new potential editors.



What have we learnt? edit
  • Editing with purpose increase the number of people retained as editors.
  • Focus our editing activities on current topics helps us engage new strategic partners and belong to specific work communities of experts.


GLAM Program edit

Summary
The GLAM Program has obtained great results during 2017:

  • We expanded our work to new counterparts and organizations in order to generate more diverse content in the Wikimedia projects.
  • We promoted free culture in new organizations and we got new experts involved as editors.
  • We began to organize and articulate the 1st #OpenGLAM Argentinean network to promote free culture and the Wikimedia projects around the country.


Re-defining GLAM Program edit


Success: From GLAM to Culture and Open Knowledge program edit

2017 brought drastic changes to the GLAM Program, since we learnt that:

  • Traditional cultural institutions in Latin America are monopolized by elites and governments, which often makes it difficult to the opening and dissemination of knowledge.
  • Popular & Folk culture, which has a strong presence in Argentina and the region, circulates through non-traditional channels.
  • Cultural institutions, governments and societies are unaware of the meaning of free culture.

For these reasons, during 2017 we began to re-design the GLAM Program to Culture and Open Knowledge, so it can be more open and suitable to the needs of our context.

In this sense, during 2017 we worked on two main lines of work:

a) Free Culture in governmental institutions, scientific institutions and women movements.

In 2017, expanding the concept of culture outside the classic GLAM nomenclature allowed us to open our doors to work with new counterparts. The most important ones have been:

Partner Activities 2017 Impact
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo 2 trainings

1 Edit-a-thon

  • Content improved
MUNTREF New images/documents released
  • Quality content released
  • Institution start licensing part of its heritage with CC licenses.
Red de Periodistas con Visión de Género 2 trainings about Wikipedia.

2 Edit-a-thon

  • Involve a community of experts as editors.
  • Quality content improved
INTA - National Agricultural Technology Institute 2 trainings about Wikipedia.

1 Edit-a-thon

  • Quality content released
  • Institution start licensing part of its heritage with CC licenses.
  • Involve a community of experts as editors.
Open House Buenos Aires Training + photo contest
  • Strenghten our photographers community
  • Involve a community of experts as editors.
  • Quality content improved.
Economia Feminista Edith-a-ton
  • Involve a community of experts as editors.
  • Quality content improved
Parque de la Memoria Training

New images/documents released

  • Quality content released
  • Institution start licensing part of its heritage with CC licenses.
Consejo General de Educación de Entre Ríos New images/documents released
  • Quality content released
  • Institution start licensing part of its heritage with CC licenses.
Ministerio de Defensa Training

New images/documents released

  • Institution start licensing part of its heritage with CC licenses in 2018


How did we work with them?

  • Training: by training on how the Wikimedia projects can be used and incorporating the free culture in cultural, scientific and governmental spaces. During 2017 we trained 283 people in 8 institutions.
  • Tailor-made activities: we defined tailor-made activities with each institution according to their heritage, possibilities and capabilities.
  • Building a new community: by positioning new referents in their work spaces for the Wiki projects.

What were the results?

Apart from diversifying our counterparts, a really important aspect is the qualitative impact that we are achieving in our work with them:

  • Consolidating free culture: of all the new organizations with which we worked during 2017, 8 began to liberate part of their material, which is now increasing the diversity of the content of the Wikimedia projects.
  • Building communities of experts: all our training courses take place inside the institutions and, again, that translates into new content edited by experts, which becomes quality content for Wikipedia.
  • Strengthening WMAR’s community: We bolstered project leaders inside each organization and they are currently an active part of the WMAR community

Main results

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Comments
250 participants offline 511 193 660 n/a
Number offline activities 10 11 31 Mainly trainings within new partners.
articles created/improved n/a 58 2302 Es Wiki:169

On Commons: 2133

% articles of quality (on Wikipedia) n/a 43 62 Only Es Wiki.
New middle-sized partners involved 1 6 11 New target. Continue working with them.
40 new participants retained n/a Not yet available 11 Retention is still a challenge.

b) Free Culture in libraries, museums and archives

During 2017 we released 393 new books through our digitizing projects and our WIR involving the following cultural partners: see here.

However, and as we said in our progress report we have worked with the same large cultural institutions since 2015 and our work could be touching ceiling. In this sense, 2017 has been a year of evaluations, a year to think new strategies to adress the needs of the classic cultural institutions, which can be summarized in two:

  • Preventing projects from becoming obsolete.
  • Exhaustion of the institutions’ staff.

To start addressing both needs, the key has been the same: involve libraries and librarians, actively.

Why is important to get them involved?

  • In Argentina the librarian community is well organized in different networks with federal scope. In addition, librarians are aware that their work is becoming obsolete, so they are open to new projects to re-define their work.
  • The community is also interested in getting involved in other projects such as our digitizing project.

How did we work with them in 2017?

We partnered with new counterparts as The Library of the Buenos Aires Province Legislature The Mariano Moreno National Library:,Dirección General del Libro y Promoción de la Lectura, IFTS 18 and the Red de Bibliotecas de la UBA and we carried out different activities:

  • We trained 139 librarians of 25 libraries in Buenos Aires.
  • We carried out for the first time #1lib1ref in May as a pilot. Even though the results weren't impresive in terms of numbers, different networks of librarians showed interest to participate in the campaign in 2018. This year we are launching the campaign again along with Wikimedia Mexico and Wikimedia Chile.
  • We have also incorporated libraries and librarians not only as editors but also as our allies in our work with large cultural institutions in Argentina. In this sense, we began to work with library science schools, training students and getting them involved in our digitization projects. The result of this strategy is a win-win situation, and we have already incorporated two new volunteers to our project, two of them at the Library of the Buenos Aires Province Legislature.During 2018 we’ve continued promoting that strategy, specially connecting students with cultural institutions through internship programs.

Side effect: Working with libraries in order to diversify funding.

Libraries in Argentina stock up much of the country’s patrimony. Thanks to the work we promoted with them in 2017, we consolidated an alliance with one of the treasure libraries of Buenos Aires: the Cirse Library. Together, we designed a project to train librarians of the city, installing a permanent scanner in the institution and generating technical resources for the institution with a total amount of 175,000 Argentinean pesos. The project was submitted to a local fund of the city of Buenos Aires and was approved, so it will be carried out in 2018.

Main results

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Comments
6 cultural partners (2 new) 4 6 6 n/a
3 training courses 6 2 2 n/a
200 books released 273 208 393 n/a
1000 images 1383 n/a 2823 Activity on the second half of the year
Pages uploaded on Commons 35,000 37336 70,425 67602 are book pages. This metric has changed to "number of books" in 2018.
800 articles created 2052 318 1692 On Wikipedia + Wikisource + Wikidata
% of articles created of quality 407 72% (230) 1635 (96%) 26 books completed + 636 items in Wikidata (+6 items added)
Number of libraries involved n/a n/a 25 n/a
Number of librarians trained n/a n/a 139 n/a
Number of volunteers involved 4 4 5 n/a
% of satisfaction n/a Not yet available 75% We has some problems with the National Museum of Fine Arts. Finally this year a volunteers is going to start working with them.



Gating factors: Time investment vs. Results edit

Apart from diversifying our counterparts, we still face a few challenges.

  • Time investment vs. Results: We still invest a lot of time and dedication to generate links that provide good results in the long run but are very difficult to measure in the short run. The invested time aims at helping these spaces understand which are the principles of the Wikimedia projects and what we mean when we speak of free culture.
One of our objectives for 2018 is to generate strategies to introduce institutions to free culture and the Wikimedia projects in a more simple and organic way.
  • Resources: this is an old issue that is still one of WMAR’s greatest challenges when working with cultural institutions. Many institutions lack resources. WMAR provides with equipment, the technical and even human resources. It is essential to continue working on strategies that are beneficial to both parties in order to make the program grow.


What have we learnt? edit
  • Redifining the program and its strategic lines has made it more appropriate for the Argentinean cultural context. It is necessary to continue working towards positioning free culture inside the cultural sector.
  • There are no bigger or smaller partners. Diversifying our partners can provide a new amount of diverse and quality content to the Wikimedia projects.
  • Opening the program to new partners that work on very specific topics translates into a great opportunity to involve experts as editors and continue expanding WMAR's reach within new institutions.


New Cultural Pilot Projects edit


Success: Brewing new cultural projects: quality, diversity and community edit

During 2017 we have promoted new pilot projects that we expect to develop during 2018:

Quality

For a long time we believed that the best people that could qualitatively improve the content in the Wikimedia projects were the long-term wikipedians. In fact, one of the biggest discussions within the Spanish online community is precisely the criticism to newbies based on the fact that their lack of training in editing generates poor quality content. This led us to irganize editing contests to improve quality over and over, that yes meant involving editors but not engaging new ones.

With this in mind, during the second half of 2017 we started designing a new project: Open Knowledge for the public agenda

Why are we doing it?

Part of our new counterparts are government agencies. These institutions have a lot of updated information about current events. Working with them is important because:

  • It helps enriching the debates & building open knowledge regarding the public agenda
  • It helps incorporating the free culture within the government agencies and engaging new experts as "free-culture leaders".

How are we doing it?

We are working with the institutions as follows;

  • Analyzing with our community what is in the public agenda and might be interesting to be released.
  • Training experts inside the government agencies to engage them as curators.
  • Releasing missing and quality content on very specific and current topics

Organizations involved so far:

What have been our results?

  • Released new diverse content to the Wikimedia projects. To date, 695 articles have been improved in the Wikimedia projects (mainly in Commons) and visited +7000 times (from Nov-Dec)
  • Promote and share new and updated information regarding public agenda with the society.
  • Government agencies as allies for the free culture

Main results

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Comments
5 online activities 3 2 2 We changed it to 3 offline activities.
5000 articles created/improved 4376 4833 5509 See results here and here

On Commons: 2823

2000 ítems on Wikidata n/a 300 300 We changed our focus.
% articles of quality n/a At least 3616 At least 4331 The first editing contest (1)

The second contest (2)

On Commons:

This metric is difficult to apply in cases of massive activities.

Involve 200 editors 41 67 96 Our editor's community has around 70 active editors (see community survey results)
50 new editors involved 2 27 56 n/a

Diversity

One of the main content focus of 2017 has been diversity. In addition to the classic activities (contests & gender edit-a-thons) during 2017, we started focusing our diversity strategy on two main objectives:

  • Improving content related to the Global South.
  • Engaging diversity-focused groups to build a stronger regional community to work on diversity issues.

In this sense, we carried out two new projects:

a) Bridges between cultures: together with Wikimedia Chile, Wikimedia Mexico and the Middle East and Northern Africa region (MENA) we organized the 1st Editing Contest on Latin American and Arabic cultures with the goal of diversifying content about Latin America and the Middle Eastern and Northern Africa in Spanish. Even though 832 articles were created and +70 editors involved, the most important results were:

  • 54% meant new content about Latin America in Arabic, Persian and Turkish Wikipedia Wikipedia.
  • We involved 7 editors from the Turkish Wikipedia, blocked by the government, meaning 88 new articles about Latin America.
  • 98% of participants were editors from the Global South.
  • Strengthening the South-South partnership.

We expect to replicate and expand this initative during 2018.

b) Making women visible: Latin America has many women groups that work hard to make women visible in different fields. Within the frame of #16daysofactivism promoted by the United Nations, we forged an alliance with the some of the main gender movements in Latin America: the International Network of Journalists with a Gender Perspective, EnRedadas por el Arte y la Tecnología, Dominemos las TIC and TEDIC to map women who have made and are making history in the region, but in a collaboratively way. During these 16 days, we invited people to nominate relevant women on whose articles we would all work during 2018. 55 women participated and 234 women were nominated.

This activity has helped us to:

  • Generate partnerships with new regional groups to work collaboratively on the visibilization women.
  • Be considered as an organization that advocates and promotes gender equality and digital gender rights in Internet.

Main results

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Comments
3000 articles created/improved on gender/culture 1659 2227 3059 n/a
100 editors involved (Iberocoop contests) 102 85 155 n/a
20 women editors involved (Iberocoop initiatives) n/a 15 21 n/a
% of articles of quality n/a 1329 1777 Just ES Wikipedia
15 editors from other Wikipedias n/a 42 82 n/a
Number editors involved in offline activities (gender) 113 58 90 n/a
Number articles improved in offline activities (gender) 121 40 119 n/a
Number of new women editors (online-offline) n/a 65 143 n/a

Community

During 2017 we worked together with large organizations of free knowledge in the country -Vía Libre, Creative Commons, Open Street Map- in order to coordinate very similar agendas. With the idea of building an #OpenGlam community with an impact beyond the Buenos Aires borders, we organized the 1st #OpenGlam Conference, with over 70 people from different cultural institutions. We held conversations on: preservation, cataloguing & description regulations and systems, digitization, intellectual property, privacy, licenses etc.

We expect to be able to organize and establish the network in 2018, with a national outreach to work and promote projects together.

Side effect: the debate on the Argentinean Intellectual Property Act

In 2015, Wikimedia Argentina worked against a project for a copyright law that was regressive in terms of national heritage. Fortunately, that law was not passed. During 2017, the debate on this law and its reformulation was resumed at the Justice 2020 forum -a digital platform of the Department of Justice and Human Rights that works with community participation- and during in-person meetings.  This time, Wikimedia Argentina - together with other organizations linked to free culture- were part of the discussions, offering our point of view and defending the interests of institutions who promote free culture and the construction of national heritage.

The debate on the construction of a new Intellectual Property Act will go on during 2018 and Wikimedia Argentina-along with other free culture organizations- are getting organized to lead, participate and outreach the discussions within the cultural sector in Argentina.


Gating factors: Expanding the cultural perspective edit

The cultural program is facing the challenge of attracting the current discussions about culture to Wikipedia.

  • Changing the concept of culture: we know that the online community is loyal and is still present in every way, by responding to our editing challenges as much as mentoring new volunteers, but the subjects on which we work are sometimes difficult to understand and they don’t fit into the classic concept of culture. It is about changing the perspective and thinking of culture not only as what we can find in a building or in a book but also in other representations in the neighborhoods and in the popular realm.
  • Culture is not only present in Buenos Aires: One of Wikimedia Argentina’s challenges is to sound out and understand what is the real work capacity outside the big cities. We know there is a cultural world beyond the city of Buenos Aires. We also understand that it is difficult to reach cultural representations in every region of the country, but we must generate strategies to begin to reach these places.


What have we learnt in 2017? edit
  • Defining "quality" as a "missing content" in the Wikimedia projects gave us a new opportunity to avoid repetitive activities that only engage long-term editors.
  • South-South's activities are not only necessary to add more diverse content in Wikipedia but also to break with the monopoly of "projects designed in the Global North and adapted by the Global South" or content mainly edited by the Global North's editors.
  • As we concluded after the 1st #OpenGlam meeting, many different cultural institutions are interested in incorporating free culture and free licenses as part of their daily job. This than can be seen as a great opportunity and it needs to be articulated along with the rest of organizations that advocate for an Open and Free Culture to be able to reach and make a really significant impact.


Community Support program edit

Summary:

During 2017 WMAR worked to:

  • Get to know the community and its interests better.
  • Strengthen the link between our community and Wikimedia Argentina.
  • Generate a wider and more diverse community


Strenghtening the WMAR's community edit


Success: Supporting WMAR's community edit

During 2017 WMAR worked to:

  • Get to know the community and its interests better
  • Promoting leadership and active participation

For these purposes, during the first semester of the year, we carried out a survey to establish the challenges and needs of our community, reaching the following conclusions:

  • They would like to lead spaces within WMAR’s programs.
  • They would like to improve their skills on specific subjects.
  • They would like to get more support from WMAR.


How did we face these challenges during 2017?


Mentoring Program

During 2017 we have worked to consolidate two new themathic communities: photographers and gender. WMAR’s Mentoring Program is the result of meeting the demands of new volunteers regarding the expertise of our active editors. The program is organized and provides the following support:

  • Direct communication: we have set up new and direct communication channels where these communities interact and share doubts, knowledge and projects.
  • Expertise transfer: we have identified the needs of the newbies with the long-term editors' expertise and provided the support to make the knowledge transfer effective .
  • Meetings and encounters: we have organized online-offline themathic meetings to improve the sense of belonging between the communities' members.
  • Putting projects together: we have technically and financially supported new projects coming from these communities.

Currently, this work logic is carried out within our first two themathic communities in the following way:

Community of photographers
This community is the result of meeting the demands of a group of photographers that wished to begin to work with free licenses with the expertise of our editors about Wikimedia Commons Currently, the community is formed by 11 volunteers:
During 2017 the main projects were:

  • Adding quality content about Argentina on Commons: 2502 new images about Argentinean culture were added, improving 380 Wikipedia articles.
  • Adding missing content of Argentina on Commons: “No Argentinean district without a photography”, a project leaded by the community, has the goal of improving Wikipedia articles with images of all of Argentina’s districts, enhancing local heritage. By December 2017, the group had improved 731 Wikidata elements to automate the incorporation of images to Wikipedia. The project continues during 2018.

This has led to the following results:

  • A new community within WMAR
  • A historical community engaged in their new roles.

Gender community
We continued working to incorporate more women to the WMAR community. During 2017, 59 women participated in our community activities. In order to support this community, during 2017 we carried out

  • Gender Workshops: we carried out 4 workshops in 2017. Currently 10 remain as active participants as volunteers or editors.
  • Projects' support to new female leaders: We have supported 3 new projects led by women volunteers. This support has meant:
  • Movility grants to carry out their projects in others province.
  • Designing guides and materials for their activities.
  • Follow-up meetings

This has led to the following results:

  • A strong and expanding community of women
  • New women leading projects.

Main results

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Comments
New participants community of photographers n/a 7 11 n/a
Images on Commons supported by WMAR 1 1002 2502 n/a
Building community with at least 15 new women as editors involved n/a 8 10 n/a
At least 100 articles edited n/a Not yet available 1115 n/a


Skills transfer workshops

We worked to provide our community with new skills, meeting a demand from the community itself. We carried out 8 skills transfer workshops, involving 35 participants. The workshops were focused on improving the editing skills of our volunteers on Wikipedia and also on Wikidata, as we noticed among them an emerging interest in the data project.

What worked well?

  • Community members in a leading role: the skills transfer's workshops were lead by 5 long-term community members. We promoted their leadership and engaged them in this new role.
  • Reach new communities beyond Buenos Aires: 6 of the 8 workshops were done outside Buenos Aires.
  • Getting new people interested: 45% of the people attending were new people.

What needs to be improved?

  • Identifying needs: support skills transfer's workshop has also meant understanding the technical support that the organizers need in advance.
  • Setting up a regular agenda: we want to be recognized as an organization that transfers knowdledge as much as an organization that builds knowledge. For this reason we need to set up a regular agenda of skills transfers meetings.
  • Retention: even if we had new participants attending, it is still a challenge to retain those participants as volunteers in one-day workshops. In this sense, we are currently working and designing longer courses with at least 3 meetings to get more people engaged and build a stronger community.


Networking & Encounter Spaces

Offline and networking spaces are just as important as online spaces, because they provide the first chance for volunteers to meet each other. During 2017 we organized 28 networking and encounter spaces online and offline:

  • Engage former and new community: we have organized 7 encounters to strengthen bonds and get new members to meet each other.
  • Build new community: 8 encounters led by the new community of photographers and gender.
  • Mentor’s community: 1 encounter to begin to organize the community of mentors
  • Projects’ support: 12 encounters to advise on projects (mainly online)

Main results

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Comments
  6 offline meeting spaces 2   3   9 n/a
  100 community members n/a   102   172 n/a
  20 of them new n/a   20   36 n/a
  Engaging 10 new volunteers n/a   10   22 n/a
Newcomers becoming active members n/a 3 4 Participants becoming new members
% feeling welcome in our activities. n/a Not yet available 95% End of the year


Project's support


We encourage our community to present new projects that we support as:

  • Financial support: we awarded grants for projects that were in line with our strategic planning
  • Technical support: we provided materials and technical tools.
  • Planning, training and follow-up: we organized online and offline training courses to actively meet the needs of volunteers organizing projects. We supported the planning stage of the projects and then provided active follow-up.

In 2017 we have supported:

  • Gender project: we have continued to support -mainly financially- Mujeres en Arquitectura's project which has scaled up in Argentina during 2017.
  • Wikipedia editing workshop:
    • We tecnhical and financially supported the design and implementation of an editing workshop - 4 encounters- in Santa Fe, an inland province of Argentina.
    • We technically and financially supported the implementation of editing workshops led by one volunteer in Buenos Aires and Brasil.
  • Wikidata editing workshop: we financially supported the design and implementation of a Wikidata workshop led by 2 volunteers.
  • Advocacy: we financially supported advocacy work done by our volunteers around Argentina. In this sense, 27 mobility grants to 10 people were given in 2017.

Main results

Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Comments
1 open call for projects 1 1 1 See here
Support for 3 new projects 6 n/a 6 Projects selected will be carried out during the 2nd half of the year
Number of people involved n/a n/a 172 n/a
100 images/documents n/a Not yet available Dismissed There weren't projects led by volunteers and focused on images supported in 2017.
200 improved articles. n/a 70 Focused changed. The Mujeres en Arquitectura's project has improved +200 articles in 2017. However, and even though we provided financial support, the project is led by two very long-term and active editors that do everything by themselves. We don't feel it's appropriate to count their articles as a WMAR's activity.

The rest of the supported projects weren't focused on creating content.




What have we learnt in 2017?

  • Organizing our community around thematic communities helped us to incorporate new volunteers and to better focus our resources according to their needs.
  • Supporting projects suggested by the community and offering the space, connections and necessary tools to carry them out proves WMAR’s involvement to help volunteers keep growing as leaders.
  • Promoting skills transfer spaces inside the community and also for new editors generates greater commitment in the community in terms of getting to know their peers.

Diversifying WMAR's community edit


Success: A more diverse and inclusive community edit

Since 2017 we have expanded the WMAR community beyond the editors, for the following reasons:

  • The WMAR community is increasingly more diverse
  • This diversity attracts very different profiles
  • New profiles participate in very different ways, so getting them involved as part of the community implies:
    • Understanding that being a wikimedian is different from being a wikipedian.
    • Understanding that both roles are equally important.

In this sense we stopped treating wikimedians and wikipedians differently and we opened new spaces for participation in WMAR.

In total, during 2017 we incorporated 16 new volunteers: journalists, feminists, activists, human rights activists, educators and librarians, who have offered their expertise to WMAR and have also opened us the doors of new and diverse organizations in Argentina.

In order to integrate them into the community, we started to use new strategies:

  • Fair inclusion in activities: we know the profile of our new volunteers and their interests well. During the second semester of 2017 we’ve continued connecting historical members with new participants. The community of photographers and the gender have been particularly essential, but also opening and welcoming everybody interested in our community and strategy meetings. In this sense, long-term members, counterparts, new participants, new editors, etc. equally participated in the design and definition of the WMAR strategy for the years 2018-2019. Through these activities we are building a horizontal and unique community in which anyone interested can participate.
  • Building a sense of belonging: most new participants were attracted by dealing with public agenda. Grouping them according to their topics of interest has proved to be a success, they get involved in specific projects and interact with people who share their interests. Also, attending their needs and organizing activities according is generating a sense of belonging that goes beyond WMAR. People are committed to a specific purpose and the Wikimedia projects are a means to this end.


What has been the impact of including new profiles?

  • Wikimedia Argentina as a more diverse, open and inclusive organization.
  • Expanding our community members.
  • Diversifying our partnerships and organizing new projects.


WMAR’s long-term community is also more inclusive
Opening the community to new participants has forced our long-term community to become more inclusive. It is not about replacing one another, but designing appropriate spaces for each participant, considering his/her disposition, interests and expertise. In this sense, WMAR’s long-term community, which we felt was increasingly tired, is now comfortable in its role as mentor and guide of new editors. The inclusion of new voices, which could have generated some mistrust at the beginning, has renovated our community, making WMAR a gathering space for people with different interests, where everyone is welcome.



Gating factors: How do we build a more federal community? edit

We work in a huge country in which working only in Buenos Aires does not represent the national reality. Also, in previous years we tried to work in a federal scale but results were not as expected for the following reasons:

  • We tried to lead communities from WMAR.
  • We established occasional relationships, that are difficult to sustain in time and in the distance.

Bearing this in mind, we are working to expand WMAR's community, even if it takes longer than expected. For that purpose we are:

  • Identifying editors from the same region and connecting them with one another;
  • Organizing meetings so they can meet each other;
  • Integrating them to our channels of communication and work groups

At the moment, this strategy is giving great results in two Argentinean provinces, Santa Fe and Entre Rios, where a small community of volunteers is getting organized and has already carried out 4 projects. We expect to consolidate these two new communities and build new ones around Argentina in 2018.


What have we learnt in 2017?

  • Wikimedia is much more than Wikipedia and communities must reflect that diversity.
  • Ensuring equitable participation generates a sense of belonging.
  • Organizing the community according to its interests and profiles fosters sustained and long-term participation.


International Cooperation edit


Success: Strengthening the Wikimedia movement edit

WMAR was involved through organizing and supporting different initiatives, in strengthening the wikimedia movement. The main initiatives organized and supported have been:

Iberoconf 2017

During 2017 we organized Iberoconf 2017 in Buenos Aires. As we explained in the progress report we decided to organize the event for the following reasons:

  • Iberocoop had grown a lot in the last three years. We had driven, together, dozens of programs, during which we created over 7,000 articles.
  • We grew a lot in number of chapters and user groups but in many cases the organizations are not professionalized enough.

However, as important as how the conference was organized - you can read more about it here and in the final report- are the results obtained, that can be described as follows:

a) Impact of Iberoconf within the Iberocoop network

The main impact of Iberoconf regarding the network can be summarized as:

  • We build a network with a more clear strategy: Iberoconf was a meeting space to debate about Iberocoop and its role within the movement. Finally we move on and we started seeing ourselves as a network that can influence the movement and can also be a strong group to advocate for free knowledge and free culture regionally. More results can be found here
  • We moved from protesting to proposing: for the first time, Iberoconf wasn't just about complainig. An specific result of this is the Letter of Buenos Aires. Involving external consultants and also having part of the WMF's Board and staff attending the event, helped the group to define ideas and avoid falling into the eternal debate based on "everything that is wrong".
  • Iberocoop in the strategy process: half of the Iberoconf's time was spent to enrich the debate of the movement's strategy process. The results- that can be found here- were incorporated into the global discussion.

b) Impact of Iberoconf within local chapters

  • Motivate local chapters: Some chapters that were struggling to continue with their activities reinforced their commitment and updated their pending reports.
  • Scale up projects regionally: Iberoconf was also the perfect place to share initiatives and projects. Thanks to this meeting in 2018, Wikipuentes - our online course- will be carried out in Chile and Mexico, WikiHumanRights will be organized in Uruguay, Chile, Mexico and Venezuela and #1lib1ref will involve Argentina, Chile and Mexico, among other activities.

Challenges?

  • The region has many different chapters and user groups with different levels of development and get them invoved equally is still challenging.
  • We are still struggling to involve missing communities.

Next steps?

  • Continue strengthening our regional relationships.
  • Carry out the projects planned.
  • Continue mentoring other chapters to help them grow.


WikiWomen Camp

Along with Wikimedia México and Wikimujeres we organized WikiWomen Camp in 2017. The details of how we organized it can be found in our progress report.

Comparing to other events like Iberoconf 2017, Wiki Women Camp had a very different objectives that can be summarized as:

  • Discuss problems about the participation of women in the Wikimedia community, challenges and possible solutions.
  • Learn from the experiences of others.
  • Build a global women-based learning network.

The two-day conference was build around these objetives with sessions about diversity projects, harassement and the movement strategy.

After the event we also conducted a survey, answered by the 65% of the participants with the following conclusions:

Survey results

  • 89% of the participants thought that WWC was a learning space according to their interest.
  • 78% of the participants thought that the event was an ideal space to share projects, meet and motivate themselves to start new projects.
  • On this matter, 63.1% consider that they learned something new.

Next steps

  • Establish common goals and strategies to work.
  • Improve and increase new work alliances with defined institutions and organizations.
  • Promote policies that help the inclusion of new female editors.
  • Teach about digital rights and harassment in Internet.
  • Promote the building of working groups and thematic support.
  • Build new spaces that allow us integrate new profiles to the movement.

What did work well?

  • We confirm the importance of face to face meetings to engage, motivate and involve women within the movement.
  • We understood the importance of the support provided by Wikimedia Foundation. This support is and will be crucial not just to close the gender gap in the Wikimedia projects but to ensure the online and offline women and other minotities' safety.

Likewise, we also had important learnigs as:

  • The agenda was too full of talks and that left little time to interact during the hours of the event.
  • Most of the talks were about projects already being developed which left little time to work together on new ideas.

How did we applied the learnings?

  • We work closely with Wikimedia Sverige to help them organize the Diversity Conference. We took an active role as part of the program's commitee and we shared our learnings and successes. Along with the organizers we made sure that the event provided the attendees with enough space to engage, meet and share ideas and projects.

Challenges?

The great challenge is how to continue. In itself, defining diversity is very difficult. After WikiWomen Camp we kept in touch and we also organized a follow-up session during Wikimania. However we haven't been able to design a common strategy.

Today, we are working along with other groups and leaders to organize a diversity meeting in Wikimedia Conference in Berlín. We are currently working on the agenda and we expect to move forward to a common and global support network.

Drafting Committee for the strategic process

WMAR was part of the committee for the strategy of the movement. Together with a diverse group of leaders of the movement, we represented the vision of Latin America, with emphasis on:

  • The importance of including the current missing communities from Latin America and around the world.
  • The importance of building a real global, equal and diverse movement.

Being part of the committee was a privilege and the strategic direction was supported by most of the afiliates. During 2018, WMAR will be working to contribute and implement the phase 2 of the strategy.

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

Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan
FDC grant ARS ARS 3.441.000 ARS 2.088.054 ARS 1.649.137 ARS 3.737.190 USD 232.500 USD 232.500
Iberoconf Grant USD USD 24.208 USD 24.208 USD 24.208 USD 24.208 USD 24.208 the funds were received directly in USD in the account opened in August 2017.
Membership fees ARS ARS 8.800 ARS 1.445 ARS 2.041 ARS 2.266 ARS 1.095 ARS 6.847 USD 527 USD 410
Fixed-term bank deposit income ARS ARS 21.914 ARS 51.507 ARS 73.421 USD 0 USD 4.396
Cash donation ARS ARS 55.000 ARS 55.000 USD 0 USD 3.293 The sum of ARS 50,000 (approx USD 3,000) that had been estimated as in-kind donations was finally contributed in cash
In-kind donations ARS ARS 239.198 ARS 2.000 ARS 32.000 ARS 11.000 ARS 80.500 ARS 125.500 USD 14.323 USD 7.515

The average exchange rate of year 2017 was 1 USD= 16,7 ARS

The In Kind donations detail could be find here

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

Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan
Staff Expenses ARS ARS 1.880.170 ARS 525.814 ARS 521.987 ARS 500.071 ARS 588.138 ARS 2.136.011 USD 127.039 USD 127.905 101%
General Administration ARS ARS 534.256 ARS 133.286 ARS 105.842 ARS 148.714 ARS 225.276 ARS 613.118 USD 36.098 USD 36.714 102%
Education program ARS ARS 359.151 ARS 30.337 ARS 121.013 ARS 114.205 ARS 138.689 ARS 404.243 USD 24.267 USD 24.206 100%
GLAM program ARS ARS 284.100 ARS 23.714 ARS 135.985 ARS 94.818 ARS 138.297 ARS 392.815 USD 19.196 USD 23.522 123% In this line has been included the Iberoconf additional expenses that are commented at the bottom of the table.
Community Support program ARS ARS 511.200 ARS 108.404 ARS 294.006 ARS 127.863 ARS 44.074 ARS 574.347 USD 34.541 USD 34.392 100%
TOTAL ARS ARS 3.568.877 ARS 821.555 ARS 1.178.834 ARS 985.671 ARS 1.134.473 ARS 4.120.533 USD 241.140 USD 246.738 102%

The average exchange rate of year 2017 was 1 USD= 16,7 ARS

The organization of Iberoconf 2017 had a total cost of USD 37,024, USD 24,208 were contributed by WMF through a specific grant for that purpose, and the remaining amount was contributed by WMAR. Of the contributions made by WMAR, USD 5,000 came out of the lines indicated for Iberconf in the budget of community support in the APG and the rest came from reserves of WMAR

All other expenses of the year were in line with the stipulated.

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". Yes

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". Yes

Signature edit

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

Resources edit

Resources to plan for measurement edit

Resources for storytelling edit


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