Grants:APG/Proposals/2017-2018 round 1/Wikimedia Israel/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

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved
2. # of new editors
3. # of individuals involved
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects


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.
Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) End of year (projected or actual) Comments
Example Example Example Example Example


Overview edit

Executive Summary edit

2018 was a year rich in activity and action:

WMIL’s flagship program, ‘Students Write Wikipedia’ continued in the Hebrew and Arabic Wikipedia. As in previous years, there was high demand for the program and the articles written by the students are an important and welcomed addition in both languages. Activity in universities also continued this year, but we see a decrease in interest of lecturers in incorporating a Wikipedia article writing task. As described in the Half-Year Report and in this report, the activity to recruit lecturers to the program continues in different manners.

The senior citizens’ courses appear to be a substantial activity area for creating high-quality content in the Hebrew Wikipedia, and as a target audience interested in continued editing and even integrating in the Wikipedia community. The rates of participants in courses who continued to actively edit Wikipedia after the course concluded are especially high. This is also related to the follow-up meet-up, support to the participants by volunteers and the Courses Coordinator even after the courses end. However, there is no doubt senior citizens have the time and knowledge to contribute to Wikipedia.

The Wikimedia community welcomes WMIL’s diverse activity to create content in the Hebrew Wikipedia. The shared work, trust and dialog between the team members and many in the community enable us to continue operating and develop new programs.

In 2018, WMIL was active in a coalition of civil society organizations to prevent aggravation of legislation and renewing regulations relating to copyrights, exposing classified archive material and the freedom of the Internet. The Israeli Internet Association leads the coalition and WMIL take an active part. In 2018, the resource recruiting activity expanded, mostly from private donors: donations of few hundreds of Shekels from individuals and donations we received following joining a donation program of small monthly sums via credit cards. We were glad to identify, at the end of 2018, a substantial balance which the Wikmedia Israel's board designated to continued activity in Arabic in 2020 (financing for this activity ends at the end of 2019). The reserve intended for the activity in 2020 is ILS 250,000. Q4 2018 was rich in activities marking new directions for operation, as of 2019:

WikiData: WMIL held several exposure meet-ups for WikiData and started to review collaborations for contribution of data from Israel. Initial review of the activity field in Israel reveals that clearly, there is great interest in the academic world, in the education system and among the data enthusiasts about WikiData and its usages. In 2019 WMIL plans developing an educational and instructional activity in this area, as detailed below.

Since WikiMania Haifa, WMIL acted to increase accessibility of Israeli GLAM organizations content through Wikimedia initiatives. This activity bore very partial fruits and surely cannot compare to the content contributions received from GLAM organizations, specifically from Europe and the US. Out of the desire to renew the connections and awaken the cultural field in Israel, in November 2018, WMIL hosted the Wikimedia GLAM with the participation of 180 people from 43 countries. This brought together old collaborations and opened new options. We hope that in 2019 collaborations will begin with several cultural institutions to release focused material and data. Soon after the convention ended, WMIL published its activity to release approximately 28K photos that are not copyright-protected (common domain) to Wikimedia Commons. The crawler operation raised great media interest and a significant public debate revolving around the question - who owns the photos? What is the role of archives? How to make information accessible?
When the public turmoil ended, a dialog began with the Archives Association leading to a shared document. Joint activity will being in 2019.


Table 3

Shared metrics

  1. Participants: The number of people who attend your events, programs or activities, either in person or virtually. This definition does not include people organizing activities, social media followers, donors, or others not participating directly.
  2. Newly registered: The number of participants that create new accounts on a Wikimedia project. These include users who register up to two weeks before the start of the event.
  3. Content pages: A content page is an article on Wikipedia, an item on Wikidata, a content page on Wikisource, an entry on Wiktionary, and a media file on Commons, etc. This metric captures the total number of content pages created or improved across all Wikimedia projects.

Grantee-defined metrics

  1. Additional Metric A:
  2. Additional Metric B:
Program Participants Newly registered Content pages Additional Metric A Additional Metric B
Community Support: Hebrew Wikipedia 126 24 WikiGnomings - 10K instances of WikiGnomings, New & improved articles: 249‏, new images: 284 3 continuous editors 80 unique participants in face-to-face activities
Total 2018 1005 68 1110 articles (114 improved), 2714 images, & 1,277 WikiGnomings 41 continuous editors 657 unique participants in face-to-face activities
Hebrew Wiktionary n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a
Total 2018 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a
Developers' Meetups 21 1 1
Total 2018 49 16 2
Local Wiki-Arabic Group 50 45 42 references added
Total 2018 50 45 42 references added n/a (Course to take place in 2019)
Education: Middle & High schools (Hebrew) 1630 teachers and students 1400 460 (386 articles, 30 images and 44 Wiktionary articles) 98.7% kept 2 Teachers’ training (CET and MOE): 183 teachers finished the courses;

'Students Write Wikipedia': Three educational umbrella organizations and seven additional educational organizations continue to cooperate; 'Students Photograph Wikipedia': No activity in H1 2018.

Total 2018 2013 teachers and students 1503 488 Wikipedia articles and 65 articles in Wiktionary 99% kept Teachers’ training: 183 teachers finished the courses, opened in 2017. 70 teachers began the courses in 2018

'Students Write Wikipedia': 102 new articles or significant expansions in H2 'Students Photograph Wikipedia': No activity in 2018. 'Students Write Wiktionary': 65 articles in 2018

Education: Middle & High schools (Arabic) 149 77 99 5 schools join the program 5 schools continue to the next school year
Total 2018 369 83 101 (70 new Wikipedia articles, 31 significant improvements) 13 4
Higher Education 638 437 371 (257 new, 114 improvements) 11 newly-joined professors n/a
Total 2018 884 559 552 (398 new, 154 improvements) 12 9
Training (volunteer team of instructors + training tools) 40 For more information - see below For more information - see below Tools developed or updated: 6 15 volunteers and partners exposed to training tools
Total 2018 70 For more information - see below For more information - see below 9 15
TOTAL FOR ALL PROGRAMS Target 2018 - 4,565

Total 2018 - 4440

Target 2018 - 2,463

Total 2018 - 2274

Target 2018 - 2,340 articles; 480 images; 5,500 Wikignomings

Total 2018 - 2066 new articles, 259 significant improvements in Wikipedia; 65 new articles in Wiktionary (2,390 articles written or improved); 2714 images; 1319 WikiGnomings


Community Support edit


Hebrew Wikipedia edit


Program Participants Newly registered Content pages Continuous No of unique participants
Community Support: Hebrew Wikipedia 650 200 500 articles, 150 images, and 5,500 WikiGnomings 80 300
H1 126 24 249 articles (24 expanded), 284 images 3 80
Total 2018 1005 68 1110 articles (114 expanded), 2714 images, and 1,277 WikiGnomings 41 657

Continuous Editor - A new editor that participated in one of WMIL's activities and continued editing for two months after being recontacted. Number of unique participants in face to face activities.

Number of unique participants in face to face activities.


Planned Activities:

  • Launching three writing competitions on Wikipedia during 2018 (in March, July and November). In each competition, at least 50 articles will be written, and at least 40 editors will participate, 20 of whom will be new.
  • Holding five editors’ meet-ups throughout the year with at least eight participants in each.
  • Launching the yearly “category drive” during May-June, in which 5000 articles will be categorized.
  • Holding the traditional summer and winter meet-ups of the Hebrew Wikipedia.
  • Managing the Wiki Loves Monuments competition in October/November 2018.

In H2 2018 activities with Wikimedia community continued as planned.

Under the initiative of a Wikipedia editor, at the end of 2018 an article writing competition about African cinema took place. The competition is part of an international initiative to expand knowledge in the various Wikipedias about persons, films, festivals, etc. During the competition, 268 articles were written by 13 editors.

This is the third year of conducting a categories improvement drive, led by a chapter volunteer. During the activity, about 231 new categories were added. About 7,000 categories were added to articles, and about 3,100 categories removed.

Another community activity we supported was the Asia Month. This initiative was organized by one of the young editors, and included writing 202 new articles by 28 editors. At the end of the initiative, modest rewards were given to the participants who wrote the most articles and WMIL organized a lecture about Japan with appropriate catering of Sushi. 18 participants took part in the lecture.

During 2018 seven small grant applications were submitted. The grants committee is composed of two Committee members and three volunteers. WMIL staff provides administrative support to the committee members.

Out of the seven applications, four were granted.

In the last summer meet-up of Wikipedia community, the community decided that there is no need to “bake” under the hot sun and the meet-up could be held, for the first time, indoors in an air-conditioned venue. Of course, before making this decision the opinions were divided. 90 community members appeared to the meet-up and enjoyed meeting in an air-conditioned hall. The meet-up celebrated the 15th anniversary of the Hebrew Wikipedia. No other editors’ meet-ups took place in H2 2018.

Wikipedia Loves Monuments competition took place in Israel for the eighth time! This time too, a devoted team of volunteers led the competition. During the competition, over 2300 photos were taken. 600 people participated in 38 tours. This year, a unique competition for children’s photos took place, with the participation of several children. Less than one hundred photos were taken by the young participants.

WikiWomen edit

Planned Activities:

  • Hosting 10 monthly meetings and two social gatherings throughout the year, in which at least 60 female editors will take part.
  • Starting an online course for women in coordination with the project’s leader (still under discussion).
  • In coordination with the WikiWomen group, we will hold on he-wp special content-creation activity for the International Women’s Day, which will produce at least 30 new articles.

During H2 2018, three editing meet-up of WikiWomen groups took place. Each meet-up has a different theme, to encourage new women to show up and experience editing. Two editing meet-ups were held in Tel Aviv, the first one about women and literature, and the second about women and psychology. The third meet-up was held in Jerusalem jointly with the Van-Leer Institute, and concerned women and politics. In total, 50 women participated in the three meet-ups, 12 new articles were written and 10 more articles expanded. The end-of-year meet-up was postponed and turned into the 2019 opening meet-up!

In total, six meet-ups were held as part of WMIL’s activity to close the gender gap.

After holding article writing competitions for the International Women’s Day for three years in a row, it was decided not to hold the competition this year. The volunteers and staff agreed that article writing competitions about women have exhausted their potential.

In 2017 an online editing course was held for women. The course was a success and raised many expectations among the participants and organizers. However, despite several attempts to plan another course it could not be executed, mostly due to challenges related to timetables and additional administration issues.

During H2 2018, 180 articles were written as part of WikiWomen activity.

New Audiences edit

Senior Citizens edit

Planned Activities:

  • Training 100 senior citizens in six courses during 2018. They will improve 200 articles. Retention of 30% of the participants, who will join future activities.

Senior Citizens’ Courses in 2018 - Overview

Mr. Eli Shany, a WMIL volunteer, lectures to the participants of the Senior Citizens Course on the Hebrew Wikipedia community

In 2018, the editing courses for senior citizens passed from the responsibility of the Academic and Activity Coordinator to the responsibility of the Courses Coordinator - a new position occupied by a staff member who returned from maternity leave. The first third of the year was still included in the maternity leave, and the coordinator worked part-time during the rest of the year. Therefore, some of the goals set were not fully achieved. However, in other terms, the courses that took place succeeded even beyond the goals and expectations placed prior to 2018. For example:

  • The courses’ products were exceptional - both in terms of editing (extent, types and level of impact), and in terms of perseverance of the new editors (see details below).
  • We have progressed and learned a lot about the processes of advertising the course, recruiting participants, construing learning during the meetings and retaining contact with the courses’ alumni.
  • Connections were formed with a broad variety of academic and cultural institutions across Israel that would like to collaborate concerning senior citizen courses and host such courses in their libraries and campuses.

The many products already generated by the 2018 courses will be described below and we believe additional products will reveal themselves in 2019, when the learning is more fully manifested.

The Courses, their Products and Impact

During 2018 we held 3 courses with 25 senior citizens. 2 of the courses were held in the WMIL Tel Aviv offices, and the other course in the central library of the University of Haifa.

  • Products: as of early February 2019, the 25 participants in the 2018 courses wrote 39 new articles, significantly improved 52 articles and made WikiGnoming improvements in 98 articles in the Hebrew Wikipedia. In total, they created and improved 189 articles, about 95% of the goal set . The goal almost achieved with only with a quarter of target audience (25). The courses participants also uploaded some 30 files to Wikimedia Commons, including valuable historical certificates and photos, and original drawings that help understand Wikipedia articles. Finally, they placed these files and others, taken from historical archives in Israel and previously uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by WMIL in the Hebrew Wikipedia articles.
The appointment document of the geographer Dr. Natan Shalem to the Society for the Study of the Land of Israel: file uploaded by a participant in the Senior Citizens Course who wrote an aticle about Dr. Shalem
  • Influence: Although they are new editors, some of the courses participants have already set a significant mark in the Hebrew Wikipedia in subjects in their field of expertise. The subjects that earned significant improvement thanks to the work of the courses’ alumni include: Geography; Hungary Jewry; Holland Jewry; fiber art; culture studies; Rossini’s operas; and the painful and disputed subject of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China.
  • Perseverance: For us, the most surprising (for the best) data related to the rate of perseverance among the courses participants. For example, out of the total participants in the first two courses:
  • During the 3 months after the end of the course, 60% continued to edit dozens (sometimes, hundreds) more times, and 20% edited often, on a daily basis.
  • Since after the 3 months following the end of the course and to this date, 47% continue to edit dozens (sometimes, hundreds) more times, and about 13% edit often, on a daily basis.
Also, during the 50 days since the end of the third course and to this date, 80% of participants of the third course continue to edit dozens (sometimes, hundreds) more times, and about 30% of them edit often, on a daily basis.
  • Edit types: another pleasant surprise was the large variety of spaces in the Hebrew Wikipedia, beyond the articles space, in which the courses alumni integrated. For example, the courses alumni turned to the Hebrew Wikipedia consulting desk to receive help from more senior editors; participated in discussions in talk pages of editors and articles; expressed an opinion in deletion votes around disputed articles; and improved the personal user page in which they present themselves to the Hebrew Wikipedia community. These serve testimony for the motivation of the courses alumni to integrate in the Hebrew Wikipedia editors’ community, and to their orientation in manners of action and norms of this community. Our follow-up indicates that mostly, the Hebrew Wikipedia community responds well to inquiries, questions and comments of the courses alumni, and to their edits. At the same time, the courses alumni sometimes find it hard to understand the rationale behind editing or deletion actions made on articles in which they are involved, sometimes leading to frustration on their part. We try to support them in these moments also, as part of the general support we offer them (see below).

Current data on the activity of the 2018 courses alumni can be viewed in the follow-up pages we created for them in the Programs & Events Dashboard, here, here and here.

Maintaining contact with the courses alumni

Participants of editing and advanced learning meet-up for courses’ alumni, November 2018
A graduate of the Senior Citizens Course trains participants of a new course as a volunteer

We consider senior citizens to the natural candidates for integration in the Hebrew Wikimedia community, and for long-term involvement in the Wikimedia initiatives. Accordingly, during 2018 we dedicated special attention to contact with alumni of our courses (including courses in 2018 and previous years). This included the following actions:

  • Editing and advanced learning meet-ups for courses’ alumni - during 2018 we held two editing and advanced learning meet-ups: one in August (with the participation of 11 senior citizens and 2 volunteers) and one in November (with the participation of 13 senior citizens and 2 volunteers). In the time between the two meet-ups we dealt with lesson-learning, enabling us to develop a successful model the can be replicated in such meet-ups before the second meet-up. This model is based on a three-part meet-up:
(a) Group learning of a subject that is relatively advanced, relating to Wikipedia editing
(b) Implementing the learning through a practical exercise in small group, in a manner encouraging interaction between the participants
(c) Additional activity according to the participants’ choice (additional study on editing options, free work or personal questions)
  • Email support - the courses alumni receive answers to questions about editing through email correspondence with the Courses Coordinator and volunteers supporting the courses regularly.
  • Personal mentor - for courses alumni who express the desire to receive more in-depth training, we created a mechanism of personal mentor from among WMIL volunteers who are senior Wikipedia editors. The experienced editors offer the senior citizens answers over the phone and email, and often also face-to-face training sessions. We make sure to follow up on every pair of senior citizen - mentor, to make sure the relationship develops nicely, to consult the volunteers and to express appreciation of their contribution.
  • Integrating courses’ alumni in WMIL’s volunteer apparatus - following our encouragement, 3 courses’ alumni become WMIL volunteers, who now help mentor other senior citizens. We also started recruiting courses’ alumni as volunteers in WMIL’s initiatives in the education system. We believe in the potential this line of work embodies - a line that enables empowerment and encouragement of the courses alumni on the one hand, and significant assistance to WMIL operation on the other hand.
  • Participation in Wikipedia community meet-ups - with aspiration to encourage the alumni to blend in and integrate with the Hebrew Wikipedia community, we make sure to invite them to participate in initiatives and meet-ups of this community. For example, we invited the courses alumni for the 2018 summer meet-up of the Hebrew Wikipedia community. The courses alumni who complied formed together an increase of about 10% in the total number of editors registered to the event.

Note: as part of our follow-up on the level of perseverance and impact of our courses alumni in Wikipedia, we continued to monitor the edits of courses alumni. The data on the 2018 courses alumni is presented above. We were happy to discover that even x% of the 2017 courses alumni continued to edit dozens (and sometimes hundreds) more times in 2018.

Senior Citizens’ Courses - Learning and Improvement Processes edit

In 2017 we developed the basic model of the senior citizens’ courses and experienced their operation for the first time. The model we developed proved to be very successful and we continue to stick to its main components. Still, following the lessons we learned over time, in 2018 we made some substantial changes to the courses:

  • Changes intended to contribute to implementing the practical tools provided in the courses: reducing the theoretical content and the time dedicated to discussion during meetings, and dedicating even more time to practical exercises; development of a structured and gradual study plan to provide practical tools, together with matching practice for the classroom and at home. Adding a lecture that gives the participants practical tools for orientation and integration in the Hebrew Wikipedia community (the lecture was specifically developed for the course by WMIL volunteer, Mr. Eli Shany).
  • Changes intended to enhance commitment and motivation of the courses participants: having a preliminary process of expectations coordination about presence in the course, performing the home exercises and willingness to continue editing after the course; organizing the practical exercises in the course around the axis of a significant personal project and creating four possible tracks for this project; adding a fifth meeting to the course (which in the past only included four meetings) and reducing the duration of each course meeting from 4 to 3 hours.

The Structure of Our Course

A participant in the senior citizens course tells members of his group about the learning process he underwent during the practice at home

Our senior citizens’ course is built by the following plan:

  • Meeting 1: Getting to know the group members; meeting an active alumnus from a previous course; initial experience in editing: gnome work of simple text editing and opening a personal user page.
Homework: Experiencing the WMIL editing educational software and performing gnome work combining use of the visual editor toolbar.
  • Meeting 2: Lecture about using information sources for Wikipedia writing; Practicing adding footnotes; talk to a volunteer supporting the course.
Homework:
  • Choosing between the four possible tracks for personal project: creating a new article, expanding stabs, translation from a foreign language into Hebrew, and language editing in articles that have patterns that testify of difficulties in this area.
  • Making the first steps in the personal project.
  • Meeting 3: Lecture - tools for orientation and integration in the Hebrew Wikipedia community; beginning work on the personal projects.
Homework: The participants receive more advanced tasks according to the project they chose.
  • Meeting 4: Using Wikipedia talk pages; practicing use of talk pages; continued work on the personal projects.
Homework: Getting the personal projects to close to the finish line.
  • Meeting 5: Enrichment about Wikipedia information templates; concluding the work on the personal projects with the help of the course staff; summary talk and relating to the options for editing and integrating in additional activity down the road.

The said program may change between cycles according to the participants’ progress rate and fields of interest. Besides the course plan listed above, each course is accompanied by preliminary work stages (advertising, registration of candidates and sorting them by capabilities questionnaire) and follow-up work stages (completing and analyzing feedback, lesson learning and retraining contact with alumni).

Challenges

The area of courses for senior citizens faces several challenges, with which we would like to cope better in 2019:

  • Lack of developed support apparatus for junior editors - the editing courses for senior citizens are exceptional in the Chapter activity landscape, since they are not only intended to create quality content during the course, but also to develop continued editing among the alumni. Naturally, this line of action requires continued support of the alumni who face technical difficulties and frustrations they may encounter when independently acting as junior editors. The current support apparatus operated by WMIL for supporting independent and junior editors is relatively limited. As a result, much of the support the senior citizens’ courses alumni require is provided directly by the Courses Coordinator and the volunteers involved. This often leads to overload and substantial delay.
  • Work in the remote areas of Israel - as a Chapter, we wish to hold our activities in a geographically-dispersed manner, and to make them accessible also to residents of remote areas in Israel. At the same time, holding senior citizens’ courses in remote area is a specifically challenging task, both for recruiting appropriate participants, locating an accessible training facility, and recruiting volunteers.

The Courses as Viewed by Alumni

  • Shlomit Raz, Internet content editor and owner of a health and life quality site, summer of 2018 course alumnus: “...When I was a child I liked reading the encyclopedia, now I get to write it. [...] At first I was very awed and worried. Who am I, to amend Wikipedia, and I chose to focus of proofreading, editing and rewriting. Later, I saw that in some articles I can contribute from my knowledge. [...] I had a great time, I enjoyed the contents, instruction and support...”.
  • Yoram Bar-Gal, Emeritus Professor of Geography, University of Haifa, winter 2018 course alumnus: “...I rejoice with everything you exposed us to, well done and many congratulations. I enjoy every minute... and mostly the ability you gave me to express something for the greater good. [...] The course brought great joy to our home. My wife, holding a Ph.D in geography herself, claims that writing made my eyes sparkle again.”
  • Mirjam Bruck-Cohen, fiber artist and translator, winter 2018 course alumni: “Over the five meetings we learned [...] the ‘Hebrew Wikipedian language’ [...] We learned about the hierarchy structure of Wikipedia [editors] and a bit about the ‘psychology’ behind it. There were many talks and discussions in class about the Wikipedia ‘code of conduct’. We received tools to create articles and amend articles out of our knowledge... while coping with the possibility that another person deletes and changes [our work], for all kinds of reasons. We learned that it is important to check backstage of articles the ‘different talks’ between different editors [...]. I am grateful to the teacher Shai, to the instructors Liron and Amikam. To Wikimedia that invited us, to my course colleagues. I learned something from each of them...” (Taken from Mirjam’s personal blog post, dedicated to the editing course).

Young Wikipedians edit

Planned Activities:

  • Young editors’ meet-ups - 3-4 meet-ups during the year, with 6-9 participants in every meet-up.
  • Finding young editors throughout the year and inviting them to the meet-ups.

Four Young Wikipedians meet-ups were planned for H2, out of which, three took place. One meet-up was canceled due to shortage of participants. Two meet-ups were editing and peer learning meet-ups, and the third meet-up was a tour and social meeting in Eretz Israel Museum. A small group of six boys, ages 12-17, took part in the meet-ups. Despite the efforts of the Communities Coordinator to locate additional Young Wikipedians, and specifically female Wikipedians, it appears that there are not many active Young Wikipedians beyond this group.

Meetings of Translation and Interest Groups edit

Planned Activities:

  • Launch of two article-translation courses in April and October 2018 (each includes two sessions). At least 10 articles will be translated in every course. At least 3 participants continue to translate at least one more article each.
  • 2-3 Wikipedia editing course for interest groups - 10 participants in each course. At least 10 articles will be written or expanded. 10% of the participants will continue to edit after the course.
  • Constant follow-up of the activity of editors who took part in WMIL activities.

The group of editors in subjects of the Islamic religion did not continue to meet and edit as a group, and some editors continued to be active. Some of the group members came again to the community meet-up in winter 2018.

No additional editing courses opened for two main reasons: one, the Training Coordinator focused on activity with senior citizens, and two, no organizations or groups approached WMIL to study editing. In our experience over the years, when the initiative comes from an organization or a group, the motivation to learn editing is higher and the chances of success are higher.

Hebrew Wiktionary edit


As reported in H1, we decided to terminate our involvement in the Wiktionary community. However, students are active in writing dictionary articles. The students write articles about expressions originating from Jewish ancient literature.

Developers' Meet-Ups edit

Program Participants Newly registered Number of completed projects
Developers' meet-ups 80 20 3
H1 21 1 1
Total 2018 49 16 2


Planned Activities:

●      10 developers’ meet-ups during the year at WMIL’s offices.

●      Forming a wishlist in full collaboration with the volunteers and based on the needs raised by the communities of Wiktionary, Wikisource and other projects.

●      Inviting more Wikipedians with technological orientation to join the meet-ups, based on the wishlist.

●      Participating in competitions and other free-content-oriented activities in Israel, while presenting WMIL and inviting people to join the community of editors.

●      Examining an option to cooperate with academic institutes - having programming tasks as student assignments.

●      Organizing a local Wikimedia hackathon in Q2, attended by at least 40 developers.

Wikidata edit

In the second half of 2018, WMIL switched its focus from trying to expand the community of developers to building a community around Wikidata. There were several reasons for this strategic change, some of which were already noted in the progress report. One reason was the evaluation of the WMIL’s on-going efforts in the past several years (since hosting the International Wikimedia Hackathon in 2016) to build an active local developers community. While there is a small core group of developers who regularly came to the monthly meet-ups and participated in activities, we have not been successful in significantly increasing this group’s size. We have reached the conclusion that although there is a potentially large audience of developers and programmers in Israel, in practice, the appeal of volunteering to develop MediaWiki projects is apparently not that high. Another reason was the absence of a community coordinator, without whom it became difficult to sustain the level of activity, communication, and involvement required for MediaWiki project development.

On the other hand, there were several reasons for investing more resources in building a Wikidata community. As noted in the progress report, we received a 50,000 NIS grant from the Israel Internet Association for a project to build a local Wikidata community of volunteers, editors and developers, and to integrate data from Israeli databases (e.g., governmental data from data.gov.il; the National Library etc…) by forging collaborations with relevant institutes. Another consideration had to do with the hosting of the GLAM-WIKI conference and our expectation that this event would result in increased activities with GLAM institutions. As Wikidata becomes the infrastructure for digital cultural heritage and open knowledge, it seemed vital that we develop local experts that can support these kinds of activities.

As a first project, the databases available on the government portal data.gov.il were individually inspected to check which of these databases may provide useful data to be uploaded or linked to Wikidata. Careful inspection of the available data revealed that valuable population data is published by the Central Bureau for Statistics. In particular, the population data per settlement is published yearly and automatically imported by a template bot into the corresponding article on Hebrew Wikipedia. In the next step this data will be shared to Wikidata so that the corresponding articles in other languages will be automatically updated.

In 2018, WMIL started a new collaboration with the Israeli Film Archive which will make the archive’s catalogue available by importing its data to Wikidata. This work began in 2018 and will continue in 2019. We also reached an agreement with the Israeli Antiquity Authority, to release the data of their ancient coins collection as well as documents from their scientific archaeological excavations archive. We hope that this collaboration will begin in 2019, but given that the IAA is a governmental organization, the bureaucratic procedure required for the actual release may take some time. Following the GLAM-WIKI conference held in November 2018 in Tel Aviv, we anticipate more GLAM-Wikidata initiatives, among others with the National Library of Israel and the Israeli Museum Portal.

Our activities indicated keen interest and excitement regarding Wikidata. In April, Keren Shatzman presented Wikidata at Open Source World, the annual international conference for Open Source Systems, where it received very positive reactions. Wikidata was also presented by Shani Evenstein-Sigalov at INFO 2018 – the annual conference and exhibition event for the information industry, and the largest event of its kind in Israel. Some members of the audience later participated in a a two-part Wikidata introduction workshop taught by Shani Evenstein-Sigalov, which took place in October 2018. Almost 30 participants attended the workshop and further activities are planned for 2019.

Wikidata was also introduced into WMIL's educational program. First in academic institutions: Shani Evenstein-Sigalov gave a Wikidata introduction In January at the Beer-Sheva University (to Computer Science and Digital Humanities M.A. students), in March at the Tel Aviv University (as part of a Wikipedia course to academic staff) and in June as part of the Web-Based Learning Environment course. In September, WMIL helped in the organization of the Digital Humanities Carmel Hackathon 2018 at the University of Haifa – an innovative event to initiate and promote digital projects for preservation, accessibility and computerized research regarding the heritage, culture, and history of the Carmel and the Haifa area. As part of the event, Shani Evenstein-Sigalov gave a practical Wikidata workshop.

High-school students Wikidata workhsop at WMIL offices

In October, WMIL started promoting WIkidata to high-school teachers. Since 2016, there is a matriculation track  in which Israeli high-school students can choose to major in Cyber Informatics. This new track focuses on the discovery, identification and detection of digital information, with an emphasis on the application of multi-lingual retrieval processes. The students learn topics relating to information and communication technologies, retention, sharing and development of knowledge, internet and social media, information and informatics, as well as learning a foreign language. While students also learn about different programming languages, the track focuses on information analysis, not on programming.

One of the challenges that teachers in the new track are faced with involves giving concrete and relatable examples to explain (sometimes abstract) technological concepts. Furthermore, some ideas are best understood through experience. The Wikidata platform examplifies many ideas included in this track's curriculum. Moreover, it allows students to learn by interacting and editing on the platform. With this in mind, WMIL approached at the end of 2018 several teachers of this track and suggested a small pilot to explore the feasibility of using Wikidata in the classroom. The teachers' reactions were overwhelmingly positive, noting that Wikidata is exactly the kind of hands-on educational tool that they often feel they miss.

While the first pilot studies will only take place in 2019, WMIL has already met with Dr. Orit Zeichner, the national coordinator of Science and Technology at the Ministry of Education, who is interested in organizing a Wikidata training day for all the teachers of this track. Building on our extensive collaboration with the Ministry, and the experience and insights we've gained through the teachers' Wikipedia training and WMIL's educational program, we plan to implement the same model for working with students of the Cyber Informatics track.

Local Wiki-Arabic Group edit


Program Participants Newly registered Content pages Continuous No of unique participants
Local Wiki-Arabic Group 15 15 15 4 5
H1 50 45 42 references added Wikipedia editing course planned for Q3 or Q4
Total 2018 50 45 42 references added


Planned Activities: edit

  • Recruiting at least 10 adults for an Arabic-speaking Wikipedia editing course in Arraba.
  • Each participant will write or significantly expand at least two articles.
  • 25% of the participants will continue to edit in the following three months.
  • At least 20% will take part in follow-up activities (editors’ meet-up, volunteering in schools etc).

With our expanding work in education, we are also working on introducing Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects to a larger target audience and to other Arabic-speaking groups. Following the one-day seminar held in March, 2018 at al-Qasimi Academy for Palestinian librarians in Israel, we received calls and inquiries from librarians at different institutions who were interested to learn in depth about possibilities of merging Wikipedia activities within their institutions (school libraries and public schools). We also witnessed great enthusiasm from the participants at the seminar to the possibilities Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects can offer. Plans to maintain a group of editor-librarians began during the summer in collaboration with the Association of School Librarians. We tried to organize a group and our attempts were finally executed by the end of 2018. The editing course opened in February 2019 and the group was hosted by St. Joseph Seminary High School in Nazareth, the participants in the course are veteran librarians, through the course they will acquire editing skills, be introduced to the Arabic Wikipedia community and design ways to merge Wikipedia activities at the library. We continued to collaborate with libraries as part of the #1lib1ref campaign as workshops were held at the National Library of Israel and at Ibn Zaidoun Library in Umm al-Fahem.

Education edit

Programs in Hebrew (Middle & High schools) edit


Program Participants Newly registered Content pages Content retention Continued cooperation
Education: Middle & High schools (Hebrew) 2,500 1000 840; 510 articles and 330 images Three months after upload, at least 90% of the content is kept, with only minor changes.
  • Teachers’ training: both partners organizations (CET and MOE).
  • 'Students Write Wikipedia': Three umbrella organizations + 7 educational organizations.
  • 'Students Photograph Wikipedia' and 'Students Write Wiktionary': at least 50% of partner organizations.
H1 1630 teachers and students 1400 460: 386 articles, 30 images and 44 wiktionary articles. 98.7% kept.
  • Teachers’ training: 183 teachers finished the courses, opened in 2017.
  • 'Students Write Wikipedia': Three educational umbrella organizations and seven additional educational organizations continued to cooperate; 386 new articles or significant expansions.
  • 'Students Photograph Wikipedia': No activity in H1 2018.
  • 'Students Write Wiktionary': 44 articles.
Total 2018: 2013 teachers and students 1503

488 articles in WIkipedia, 65 articles in Wiktionary

99% kept
  • Teachers’ training: 183 teachers finished the courses, opened in 2017. 70 teachers began the courses in 2018
  • 'Students Write Wikipedia': 102 new articles or significant expansions in H2
  • 'Students Photograph Wikipedia': No activity in 2018.
  • 'Students Write Wiktionary': 65 articles in 2018



Training Teachers edit

Planned Activities: edit

  • Online training seminars for teachers
  • Continue providing guidance and support for the training, striving to achieve the following goals:
  • 200 teachers will complete the basic course
  • 40 significant article expansions will be created by participants in the advanced course

Five online courses concluded in February 2018, training 183 teachers. The courses were provided by the Center for Educational Technology (CET) for the fifth year in a row. In November 2018, 72 more teachers began learning in two online seminar groups (one seminar will end in May 2019 and the other in March 2019).

In 2018, CET opened a second-stage seminar for the first time, for teachers who had already participated in the first stage of the Wikipedia seminar. In this seminar, the teachers learned to edit Wikipedia and, as their main task in the course, they had to write a new article. Overly optimistic expectations have resulted in only 12 out of the 40 teachers writing a Wikipedia article. We think that the teachers may have failed the Wikipedia article writing task for two reasons: 1. It appears that not all the teachers in the course are able to write a Wikipedia article, and that the teachers themselves need to receive intensive instruction to acquire encyclopedic writing skills. 2. The task of writing a Wikipedia article required the teachers to spend more time than is customary in such a seminar, and they were not prepared to do that. This problem may be solved by explaining to the teachers what is expected of them in the course and guiding them to write relatively easy articles.

Preparation for Future Expansion of Teacher Training edit

We have learned that there are over 140,000 teachers in the Israeli education system, of whom over 100,000 are in the Hebrew-speaking education system. So far, only 1,400 teachers have participated in the Wikipedia course. Therefore, we presume that there are still many more teachers who would enjoy participating in a Wikipedia course which would enable them to make better use of Wikipedia.

With this in mind, we met with Ronit Mesika, online professional development director of CET, and Guy Bresler, instruction developer. This meeting revealed that the demand for teachers' seminars on Wikipedia has decreased, and they asked WMIL to create a new format for Wikipedia-related seminars.

We also met with Dalia Fenig, Vice Chair of the pedagogical Secretary in the Ministry of Education, who supported the Wikipedia initiative and the manner in which Wikipedia is written and updated. Ms. Fenig also expressed willingness to help implement this issue in the education system. In this meeting, we came to the conclusion that Hebrew language teachers are the preferred candidates for expanding the Wikipedia writing program. As a follow-up, Ms. Fenig set up a meeting with the national and regional supervisors of Hebrew language studies on behalf of the Education Ministry and WMIL staff. In this meeting, we presented the project, the involvement required from the teachers, the assistance offered by WMIL, and the suggested work schedule for teachers. Following this meeting, we made contact with two Hebrew language supervisors, and we expect to see results during the coming year.

The “Students Write Wikipedia” program edit

Planned Activities: edit

  • Students from 30-40 classes will produce or expand at least 430 articles in the Hebrew Wikipedia during the 2017-2018 school year.
  • Three educational umbrella organizations and seven additional educational organizations will continue to cooperate in the 2018-2019 school year.
  • The utilization of the program’s resources will be improved by the preservation and expansion of quality cooperation (such as those with a high cost-benefit ratio, and having social and educational added value).
  • Starting in the spring of 2018: Preparations for a moderate expansion of activity in the 2018-2019 school year
Yarkon School Seminar edit

In the summer of 2018, the Yarkon School history coordinator, Ohad Tsur, approached WMIL to collaborate on a project of Wikipedia article writing by students. Tsur came with an organized and ambitious work plan to train all 9th grade teachers, and to include all 9th grade students (288 students) in this project. The subject chosen was the Jewish Holocaust. Therefore, Tsur also contacted the Yad VaShem staff, who were happy to provide him with a team of researchers. They provided him with a list of towns and villages in Eastern Europe whose Jewish communities had been destroyed in the Holocaust, and have no article in the Hebrew Wikipedia. Yad VaShem staff also provided several information sources from the Yad VaShem archive on every village on the list.

The Hebrew education coordinator of WMIL gave a three-session seminar to seven history teachers. The first meeting focused on presenting of Wikipedia as a free, shared, and reliable encyclopedia. They learned how Wikipedia ensures the reliability of the articles, and how readers can check this for themselves.
The second meeting focused on assessment of information sources, discussion of article structure and how to edit Wikipedia optimally.
In the third meeting, various problems that can be found in student’s drafts were discussed, such as copyright violations, bad translation and unreliable sources. Then, the teachers met with a senior Wikipedian who explained how the Wikipedian community works. Following this seminar, the teachers presented Wikipedia to their students, creatively distributed the articles, and then they all went to the Yad VaShem archive and met with the researchers who had prepared information sources for them.


In the second 2018 semester (during the summer vacation and at the beginning of the 2018-19 school year), 80 articles and 22 significant article expansions were added by gifted students who participated in academic summer programs in Haifa and Tel-Aviv universities.

Participants of editing in Sharet's school in Kfar Saba

In the 2018-2019 school year, 33 classes joined the “Students Write Wikipedia” project, and in total, about 950 students are participating in this program. They are expected to write 475 articles. As of January 2019, some of these articles have been uploaded in Wikipedia and others are in different stages of preparation.

Some of the participating classes in the project are in part of the national education system and some are part of special programs for gifted students in the universities. 3 such programs are taking part in the Wikipedia writing project, as well as 7 Ort Israel schools. In Be’er Sheva, the project is continuing in 7 schools, and 8 additional schools (3 of them new) are participating in the project in different disciplines.

The majority of the schools have participated in the project before. 14 teachers have been participating in the project for a year or more, and currently benefit from the experience they have accrued. In addition, 13 teachers receive guidance that includes a personal meeting and regular contacts. 7 of them participated in the Yarkon School seminar described above. The Education Coordinator helps them choose an appropriate list of articles, gives general instructions, checks drafts, requests corrections, and cooperates with a WMIL volunteer in Ort Israel who is an Hebrew language expert.

Some teachers requested to allow their students to choose their own subject and invested much thought in this process (together with the Wikimedia staff). Some of them continued the previous years’ project (the Righteous Among the Nations, civics, ect.). Others relied on a list provided by WMIL. This list included subjects such as: biological species, heritage sites and natural sites. For the 2018-2019 school year, we added more topics to the list: Nobel laureates and international days.

Collaboration with Beit Ariela Library edit

WMIL initiated cooperation between the Beit Ariela Library and students in the "Students write Wikipedia" program. Two groups of students visited the library. They received instruction about the library and how to search for information sources using the library catalog, databases, journals and archives. The staff also helped them find specific information sources about the articles they decided to write.

Reducing the Gender Gap in Wikipedia - Collaboration with Tel Aviv University

The Tel Aviv University gifted students program together with WMIL decided to use the students’ article writing task for reducing the Wikipedia gender gap. The students wrote 45 new articles about women scientists and researchers from various fields. For example, they wrote about Alice Catherine Evans whose research made pasteurizing an integral part of the milk industry; about Georgia Benkart, mathematician and physicist, known mostly for her contribution to the classification of simple Lie algebras; and about the Israeli Michal Feldman, a pioneer in the integration of computer science, micro-economics and game theory.

Through their research, students learned about the hardships and challenges that these scientists had to face to publish their work and to be recognized by the scientific community. They have the opportunity to be inspired by these pioneer women. See the full list of scientists.

In the Tel Aviv University "Idea" program, another program for gifted students focusing on the humanities, the students wrote 35 articles about female authors and artists from various fields. See the list of pioneer women in literature and art

An update about this project at WMIL's website on the International Day for Women and Girls in Science.

Students Photograph Wikipedia edit

  • Photography students from at least three classes will upload 330 photos of their work to Wikimedia Commons and integrate at least 240 of them into Wikipedia (or other WMF projects)

The photography initiative started in 2017-2018. The initial idea was to collaborate with photography courses in high schools. But it was not carried out during 2018 because only few schools showed interest in the project, which required extensive investment. Very few photos were uploaded and their poor quality did not justify great investment in the project.

Students Write Wiktionary edit

  • Launch a first pilot for the program (including evaluation, conclusions and adjustments)
  • Students create 40 entries in the Hebrew Wiktionary (in the pilot itself and in the next round)
Wiktionary - Instruction, Supervision Tools and Products edit
Participants of editing in Michlelet Levinsky

In the 2017-18 school year, WMIL led a pilot of "Students write Wiktionary articles" program, in which 48 articles were written in two schools. (In terms of numbers, the annual goal had already been achieved in the previous school year).

It was decided to focus both the pilot and the project on expressions and proverbs, assessing that dictionary writing requires linguistics expertise, that is beyond students' abilities. It was also decided to focus on expressions originating from classical Jewish texts, mostly the Bible, since the Hebrew language is based, to a great extent, on ancient sources that constitute an essential part of Jewish and Israeli culture.

Following the pilot, it was decided to expand the project in the 2018-19 school year. 4 schools from Ort Israel chain and two other schools joined. The teachers received instruction, including a face-to-face meeting, and support throughout the process.

The initial outline recommended but did not unequivocally require working with dictionaries/proverb books. Working with the Wiktionary article structure was recommended. Experience showed that this outline was not accurate and did not provide the teachers and students with sufficient tools. We found two reasons for this difficulty:

  • It is almost impossible to understand an expression from the Bible without being aware of the layers of language. At one time, an expression had a specific meaning in a specific context, but in modern Hebrew, the meaning can be slightly different or even the opposite.
  • Internet sources do not usually help students understand the meaning of the expression, and mostly cause confusion. Most students do not yet have the tools to distinguish between the definition of the expression and its use, and they don't understand that the same expression can have different meanings in different contexts.

As a result, a new instruction manual was written, clarifying several matters:

  • Teachers learnt that they cannot rely on Internet sources to define the meaning of an expression/proverb, and they have to obtain the appropriate printed books.
  • Students should see where the expression first appeared and understand the context. This stage is necessary to understand both the original meaning of the expression and its modern meaning. Therefore, teachers were instructed to choose only expressions from the Bible, and not from other Jewish texts, that require at least basic orientation in these texts.

A new instructional tool was also suggested - a follow-up table for the research process the students should undergo to write the article. This table guides the students to first identify the source of the expression and understand it by using biblical interpretations. (We recommended interpretations that use modern language, which make the Bible accessible to students). Then, the students are required to find and copy definitions from resource books. Only after this process, are they asked to independently write three sentences: a definition of the expression and two examples from different disciplines proving they understood the expression. We also recommended adding an explanation of the expression in its biblical context. This project requires and develops skills of accurate and concise writing. This guide has been proven in a project managed by a student teacher from The Levinsky College of Education in a Hertzliya school. Good articles were written, relatively quickly.

It appears that the Wiktionary writing project can be a significant project combining research, digital environment, collaborative work (writing in a team, peer review) and creation of free knowledge. It fits the Hebrew language curriculum at Junior schools, and it is relatively short and easy to integrate in class teaching. However, it is not appropriate to every class, but requires that the students have a certain ability to investigate, gather, comprehend and process information.

Wiktionary - Collaboration with Lewinsky College (continued on Junior High Schools) edit

Dr. Dvora Harpaz is a senior partner in “Students Write Wikipedia” project in Ort Israel and also a lecturer in The Levinsky College of Education. Together with Dr. Harpaz, WMIL organized a peak day in which students (all - future teachers) got to know Wiktionary, wrote and uploaded a Wiktionary article. In this project, 17 articles were uploaded and only one deleted.

The list of articles written in the seminar in Lewinsky College

Initiative template of Lewinsky College

One of the students participating in this peak day decided to lead a Wiktionary writing project in the school where she teaches as an intern. She collaborate with her mentor in teacher training, who was happy to learn from the student about new teaching options. This project concluded in January 2019 with the uploading of 16 new articles that were accepted nicely in Wiktionary.

The list of articles written in Ben Gurion School, Hertzliya

Users added in the second semester of 2018 edit

During this period, 119 new participants were added, 13 of them are teacher students in Lewinsky College who wrote articles in Wiktionary, and the others are students in gifted programs in Tel Aviv University and Haifa Technion.

Programs in Arabic (High and Middle Schools) edit


Program Participants Newly registered Content pages No. of school who join the program No. of schools continued to the next academic year
Education: High schools (Arabic) 140 60 110 4 4
H1 149 77 99 5 5
Total 2018 369 83 101 (70 new, 31 significant improvements) 13 4

Planned activities edit

  • The Arabic 'Students Write Wikipedia' will operate in at least 10 schools, and will result in the writing or expansion of 110 articles in the Arabic Wikipedia.
  • Development and implementation of the Wikipedia Ambassadors Program in half the schools where the 'Students Write' Wikipedia operates.

Students Write Wikipedia edit

The chapter continues to expand its activity in Arabic-speaking schools and seeks to create local quality content in Arabic Wikipedia, through nurturing active editors with the aim of building an active local editors community at schools. Since its launch in 2016, the “Students Write Wikimedia” program in Arabic has been active in 16 schools.

Students in an editing workshop, al-Ukhowwa Junior High school, Taybeh

During H2, the chapter introduced the program to 7 new schools and programs, two of the new schools participate as part of an extracurricular program run by the Israel Association of Community Centers in East Jerusalem. The chapter reactivated its activities in 4 (out of 6) schools which dominantly participated in the project in the previous school year (2018-2019). 180 students are expected to participate in the program in the ongoing school year.


The activity at each school is planned to suit and follow the needs of the school and the students. Some schools choose to add Wikipedia-article writing or editing to the mandatory tasks in a subject, as alternative assessment. Most high schools chooses to participate in the program as part of their social involvement programs where students are encouraged to write Wikipedia content. As the Bagrut diploma requires social commitment units (measured hourly) which must be completed by high school students prior to their graduation, some students chose to write Wikipedia articles, to gain sustainable skills and to contribute to Free Knowledge as one way to be involved in a community project.

​Al-Battouf High School – Arrabeh was one of the schools that joined the program in September 2017 and showed remarkable dedication and interest in both the learning process and the outcome. The school staff encouraged the students to participate in the program as volunteers, and assigned Ms. Libya Nassar, a teacher of civics, to lead them. The first step was choosing appropriate topics, which was carried out in coordination with Ms. Nassar. The topics chosen were meant to serve the teacher’s pedagogical aims, and therefore were related to civic awareness. This step required research efforts and was for the most part conducted by the Arabic Education Coordinator at WMIL. In the future, we plan to involve school staff more in the topic-finding process.

al-Battouf High School students at WikiGap Tel Aviv, 2018

The first task that was given to the 12 students (10th and 11th grade students) was a beginner task: The students wrote informative articles about historical Israeli governments and legislative elections. A common template was set in advance and the students used reliable sources throughout the process. Taking a thematic approach was the most preferred choice as it built a common ground for the participants who came from different matriculation tracks. For their second task, the students improved 11 articles about country flags in Arabic. Since the format of flag articles is standardized, the students were given instructions on what to add and how to extract historical information about each flag such as: historical timeline and changes, laws related to the flag​ in each country​, description (colors and size) of the flag and iconography. Some students translated entries from the English-language Wikipedia into Arabic too. Having a common theme enabled group learning as the students dealt with lexical jagon and a common article structure. For their third and last task, the students and the teacher preferred topics on human rights issues (basic human rights such as the Right to Food, Right to Work), local notable persons, or topics of their own interest. The group’s work was impressive and inspiring. The activity in the school will resume in 2019 with two groups: new and returning students.

Wikipedia Ambassadors edit

The Wikipedia Ambassadors program was launched in December 2018 as a group of 20 high school students convened in at Haifa University to attend the first session in the school year 2018-2019. ​The session included an introduction by Bekriah Mawasi, Arabic Education coordinator at WMIL, followed by a videocall with Samir El-Sharabaty, writer at WMF communication department, who joined the event from Cairo. Samir shared his inspirational experience as both a student and an ambassador at campus. The session also included a remarkable guest talk presented by Amir Khatib, journalist and TV host, who talked about Arabic content in various online media platforms.

Wikipedia Ambassadors, December 2018

In this talk, students were introduced to the variety of styles in Modern Standard Arabic found online. The program is designed to motivate participants to contribute to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects on a large scale. As most participants are students who participated in the “Students Write Wikipedia” program previously, the program aims to provide them with advanced tools and resources which enable them to become Wikipedian leaders within their schools, which encourage them to express themselves creatively, to develop critical thinking, to raise their awareness on free knowledge, to acquire new skills that they will use in their educational environment, and to turn them into Wikipedian leaders in their schools where they will assist school staff and colleagues in Wikipedia related activities.

Higher Education edit

Program Participants Newly registered Content pages No. of newly-joined professors No. of professors continued to the next academic year
Higher Education 1,100 650 650 12 15
H1 638 437 371 (257 new, 114 expansions) 11 n/a
Total 2018 884 559 552 (398 new, 154 expansions) 12 9

Planned activities edit

●      Presenting the project in 3 institutions/faculties/departments

●      Integrating Wikipedia writing assignments in five courses in the framework of new organizational collaborations

●      Integrating assignments into 15 courses (collaboration at the lecturer level)

●      Retention of 50% of lecturers (at least 8 lecturers continue from year to year)

●      Writing 450 articles or significant expansions in WMIL-led courses

●      Writing 200 articles or significant expansions in courses led by volunteers

WMIL-led Collaborations edit

As mentioned in our Progress Report, following an evaluation of the strategy of developing organizational collaborations, we concluded that although the reaction of heads of departments/faculties/institutions to the idea of a Wikipedia assignment was generally positive, implementation proved to be more difficult, and in most institutions deans and heads of departments were reluctant to organize a meeting in which we would present the Wikipedia assignment to their staff. The time and effort invested in meetings with deans was not commensurate with the actual results of these meetings. Moreover, instructors who take the initiative to approach us themselves are in general more motivated, adhere to the guidelines, instructions and timetables that we decide on, are more strict in their assessment of their students’ work, and more keen to see that the work is published (i.e., uploaded correctly to Wikipedia). As a result, we see more and better products from these courses. The outcome of our assessment was that in 2019 our marketing of academic projects will switch from a push strategy to a pull strategy – an ongoing marketing campaign that advertises the Wikipedia assignment program, while  reducing our efforts to reach and meet instructors, unless they approach us first. Although this might increase the risk of less instructors joining the program, at the same time it will increase the quality and commitment of those who join, and ultimately to a more efficient use of our resources.

The academic coordinator did present the Wikipedia assignment to a groups of nine instructors who teach the “academic literacy skills” course at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This is a compulsory course to most first year students at the Humanities faculty. As one of the assignments in the course, we suggest expanding a stub by writing a paragraph based on at least one academic source. This assignment fits the goals of the course very well. Two teachers who incorporated the assignment this year reported the students were more motivated to make an effort on this assignment than other assignments within the course, knowing their work would be visible on Wikipedia.

Despite not being able to forge true organizational collaborations, 21 lecturers had a Wikipedia assignment in WMIL-led collaborations, of which 12 were newly-joined teachers. In total, there were 22 courses, in which 385 articles were written or expanded. We were particularly happy with new collaborations at a couple of new institutes:

● At the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology – we met with the Dean of Undergraduate Studies and Vice-Dean of the Graduate School and talked about the Wikipedia assignment. Most Wikipedia assignments are done in courses in Humanities or Social Science, and rarely in the STEM fields, in which the Technion excels. This is somewhat understandable, as writing is often not viewed as part of the required academic education in these fields. Unfortunately, it is often these STEM fields in which there are knowledge gaps on Hebrew Wikipedia. Although our suggestion to introduce the assignment as part of the curriculum of STEM teachers’ education did not come to fruition, Wikipedia assignments were introduced in two courses: Organizational Behavior at the Industrial Engineering faculty, and Physics of Porous Medium at the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering. We hope to continue and broaden the collaboration with the Technion, bringing high-quality content to these topics.

● Another field in which Hebrew Wikipedia often lacks high-quality content is Arts and Design. As with STEM fields, the academic studies of these fields often focus on practical aspects that need to be learned, rather than on writing. However, since 2013 the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem offers graduate studies (master’s degree) in Policy & Theory of the Arts – an interdisciplinary program combining theoretical exploration of the field of art, design and culture in Israel, specializing in Curatorial Studies and Art Criticism Studies. Given that writing about art is part and parcel of this program, we had a meeting last year with the head of the program, and a Wikipedia assignment was introduced to two courses, taught by Dr. Tal Ben Zvi. Sixty articles were written in these courses last year and the assignment will continue this year as well.

● We also met with Yuli Tamir, President of the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design to discuss collaboration possibilities. Tamir suggested that we introduce the idea to the staff and relevant students in the form of an Edit-a-Thon. This event took place on the 19th of July, with 19 participants – both teachers at the school and students of the Design Curatorial Studies program – who mostly expanded stubs and added references to articles. WMIL continues to be in touch with the Shenkar staff to find ways to combine a Wikipedia assignments at the institute, as part of the curriculum or in other formats.

Orly Simon and some of her students at the Librarians meetup at GLAM WIKI Tel Aviv Conference

● Orly Simon, head of public services at the National Library of Israel, taught for the first time a course to Information Science and Librarianship M.A. students at the David Yellin College of Education. In preparing the curriculum of this course, Simon participated in the “Wikipedia + Libraries: Better Together” OCLC project. The course program which she created is essentially a classroom equivalent of the OCLC, in Hebrew. Twenty-nine librarians participated in the course last year, not only writing and expanding articles, but also learning to create a project at the library they work at to teach how to use Wikipedia to a wider audience. Thus this course has not only immediate outcomes in Wikipedia, but also long-term outreach to the public. Orly is teaching this course this year as well.

Volunteer-led Activity in Academia edit

Hana Yariv continued leading various Wikipedia assignments in courses at the Department of Humanities at the University of Haifa, with five courses in which an assignment was combined: “Feminist Theories” and “Gender and Processes of Change in Middle-Eastern Societies” in the Women and Gender studies M.A. program; “Tastes and Smells of the Ancient World” and “Facts and Interpretations” in the Archeology Department, and “Roman Campus” in the General History Department. Hana also instructed students in the American Jewish Studies master’s program in the Department of Israel Studies. Due to personal reasons, Hana reduced her activity in academic projects in the last quarter of 2018, and is not expected to be active in 2019.

Shani Evenstein-Sigalov, who has been teaching Wikipedia courses to students at the Tel Aviv University since 2013, continued last year to teach the Wiki-Med course, the Web-Based Learning Environment course (M.Ed students) and the all-campus elective Wikipedia Course. The curriculum of the latter course has been expanded this year to also include learning and editing Wikidata, and the course is now titled “From Wikipedia to Wikidata”.

Shani also taught the Wiki-Med course in English as part of the New York State/American Medical Program at the Tel Aviv University. In addition, Shani Evenstein gave Wikipedia and Wikidata workshops to faculty members at the Tel Aviv University and at the Information Systems Department at Haifa University.

In total, there were volunteer-led assignments in 8 courses, in which 167 articles were written or expanded.

Supporting Cultural Institutions for Free Content Release edit


Image-Mining Project edit

Wikimedia Israel’s long-fought battle to release historical images to the public domain became known to the public last November.Using specially designed crawlers, Wikimedia Israel was able to extract some 28-thousand copyright-free images from Israeli public archives, and upload them onto Wikimedia Commons to make them freely available in Israel and worldwide.

The move immediately attracted the media’s attention and was covered in depth by the main TV channels, radio stations and newspapers. Despite condemnation by the Association of Israeli Archivists, the move was welcomed by most commentators and public figures and triggered positive reactions from the general public.

The former Israeli copyright statute stipulated a copyright term of 50 years for photographs taken in Israel or the former British Mandate. While some public archives adopted the spirit of the law and made efforts to secure free access to digital versions of historical images online, many major archives, most notably Israel’s State Archive, Central Zionist Archives, the JNF archive, the Palmach archive and the Moshe Sharett Heritage Society, where not cooperative with Wikimedia’s offers to collaborate and allowing free access to the copyright-free photographs they stored. Wikimedia Israel negotiated free access to at least some of these photographs with these organizations for about two years, but to no avail. The organizations kept claiming ownership of the images and some offered paid access upon request for specific images.

Wikimedia Israel also had legal advice to help with the legal aspects, giving Wikimedia a green light, the chapter decided to use specially design image-mining crawlers to extract the images from the archives’ servers. The crawlers extracted only photographed that had been taken before 1947 according to their attached metadata file, even though newer images were also copyright-free; this, in order to be on the safe side, and avoid any possible mistake and law-violation. Special automated tool to remove watermarks were also required to make the images usable.


In the Media edit

Wikimedia Israel meetups November 2018 Released images

Wikimedia Israel’s image-reclaiming project attracted the attention of the local mainstream media immediately, news items about it were published and broadcast on Yedioth Aharonot, Haaretz, Calcalist, Channel 1, Channel 10 and other media outlets. The coverage was by and large positive and often included an open discussion about the issue of copyrights and access to public documents. Some of the articles were translate also to English: Media Line, CTech- by Calcalist, Haaretz, TLV1.

Ongoing Dialog with Archives edit

The reactions among the archives’ managers were mixed. The deputy head of Israel’s State Archive and the website manager of the Moshe Sharett Heritage Society both welcomed the move, and said they were not able to do it themselves due to budget and manpower restrictions. The State Archive further said Wikimedia Israel’s move had been in line with the general policy of the Israeli government regarding public documents. The Zionist Archives claimed the move was “trespassing”, and the Association of Israeli Archivists published an official condemnation, dubbing the project a “sting operation” and questioned its legality. Since this public condemnation, Wikimedia Israel and the Association of Israeli Archivists had several meetings and talks, trying to find common ground. After a long debate both of the parties released a joined announcement.

Training Curriculum Development and Training Team edit


Training tool Short explanation about the tool Goal set The need the goal intends to solve Progress made with respect to the goal in 2018
Editing courseware An online tool that enables technical teaching of Wikipedia editing by experiencing editing in an environment that simulates Wikipedia. Can be used independently or in training workshops. Updating the tool Changes in the visual editor interface in Hebrew Wikipedia

Needs and challenges the rose following use of the courseware in the field and in the new WMIL website.

After extensive search we found a software company that can execute the desired changes. (The difficulty was that most relevant companies in Israel no longer work with 8 captivate that was used to build the courseware).

We created a work plan with that company but unfortunately it was not yet executed due to the company’s difficulty in reading our files. We are working to find a solution to this technical problem. We stress that the courseware it still active. It is used by many participants in our activities and the public, and continues to win praise. After its implementation in our new website we are unable to monitor its use, but we assume that as in previous years, this year too, new editors wrote and edited through it dozens to hundreds of articles in the Hebrew Wikipedia, uploaded dozens of photos to Wikimedia Commons, and placed most of these photos in the Hebrew Wikipedia pages.

Educational presentations to study editing The educational presentations are a parallel tool to the courseware. While the courseware is a tool with closed and well defined content, the presentations are more flexible and allow us to match the contents according to the audience and task type. Updating the tools Much like the courseware, the presentations too needed updates following changes in the visual editor interface in Hebrew Wikipedia. The main presentations used in our workshops were updated according to the new interface of the visual editor. In addition, the most central presentation underwent multiple improvements, intended to make it even friendlier to users.

Planned Activities: edit

  • Translation of training tools from Hebrew to Arabic, with adaptations, to support the 'Students Write Wikipedia' program in Arabic and the general public
  • Developing designated tools for the Wikipedia Ambassadors program
  • Development of an editing coursework for Wikipedia in Arabic
  • Continued development and improvement of the WMIL’s training tools in Hebrew:
  • Create a tool about free content and copyright
  • Editing courseware: implement minor changes due to changes in the visual editor interface in Hebrew Wikipedia
  • The Encyclopedic Writing Guide: adaptation to academic program target audience
  • 'Students write Wikipedia' tools: update some of the tools, and create uniformity among all the tools
  • Continuing to nurture educational and training volunteers participating in face-to-face activities:
  • Providing professional and personal assistance as needed
  • Six physical and online sessions for enrichment, consultation, networking and recognition


Arabic training tools

Wikimedia Israel has been developing an instructional courseware in Arabic to assist and encourage Arabic-language readers around the globe to edit and write articles for Arabic Wikipedia. The project will be available for the public through a website called Wiki Warsha ويكي ورشة ("wiki workshop"). The instructional courseware consists of multimedia elements (video, text, images), and is divided into 13 chapters (see below) taking into account the particularities of Arabic Wikipedia and its community of editors:

  • Wikipedia homepage structure
  • About Wikipedia articles
  • Create account
  • Sign in to a registered account
  • Create a userpage
  • Create a new article
  • Edit an article
  • Formatting the article
  • Adding image
  • Adding internal and external links
  • Adding references
  • Adding categories
  • Request edits approval on Arabic Wikipedia


Designing multimedia training tools can effectively assist students and school staff in Wikipedia and Wikimedia Education projects. Providing such tools can ensure sustainability and recruitment of more Wikipedians at schools and educational institutions. The website will introduce Arabic Wikipedia readers and users around the globe to the editing process and technical steps, and will promote editing throughout Arabic Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. The instructional kit is intended for teachers and instructors and trainers in our Arabic educational projects, Students Write Wikipedia, as well. The work is being produced in collaboration with a company specialized in digitisation and education. The structure of the courseware will focus on:

  • Getting to know the Arabic Wikipedia interface and the visual editor toolbar
  • Editing articles and user pages
  • Adding photos
  • Using talk pages


The Arabic courseware is based on characteristics of constructive learning where users construct knowledge and contribute content to Arabic Wikipedia, taking into consideration the particularities of Arabic Wikipedia and the policies of its community of editors. The layout of the tool will be flexible and support many devices. It will allow users to acquire the basic technical skills for editing in Wikipedia on any screen: their computers, their tablets or their smartphones. In addition to the wide range of designated instructional materials developed by the WMIL team and used in workshops, The Arabic editing courseware comes as a follow-up project to the Hebrew editing courseware that Wikimedia Israel launched in 2015. The Hebrew editing course has proven successful.

Hebrew training tools

The Education and Training Coordinator in the Hebrew language was on maternity leave during the first third of 2018 and when she returned to the team moved to a part-time position with different elements. Accordingly, we had to adjust the work plan for Hebrew training tools, as well as the field of volunteer support that was under her responsibility (see the next section). Concerning Hebrew training tools, we decided to focus in 2018 on two goals only. The following table details the focus goals together with reference to the progress in each.

Educational volunteers' Meet-Up

In the course of 2018 one face-to-face meet-up for volunteers took place, for enrichment, consultation, networking and recognition. Due to its uniqueness in the work year, much investment was put into the production of this meet-up, with special attention to the venue, content and creating a respectable and rewarding feeling for volunteers.

The meet-up took place in November and included:

  • Festive gathering and joint meal.
  • A lecture by Dr. Dvora Harpaz, WMIL’s partner to the initiative in Ort Israel middle and high school. The Ort Israel initiative is one of the oldest, most populated initiatives in our education program, and Dvora shared with the volunteers insights from her study on the added value of incorporating a Wikipedia task in the curriculum.
  • Training by the journalism section manager of Sha’ar Zion-Beit Ariela Library - the second-largest journalism section in the State of Israel, preserving rare Israeli journalism treasures. The training included explanation about the section and exposure of rare newspaper clips retained there.

The meet-up was a great success. In total, 16 education and training volunteers of WMIL and 3 staff members participated (the next generation was also represented: the baby the son of two WMIL volunteers showed up at the meet-up :-) ).

We consider it a special success that four volunteers who specifically came from afar, a former WMIL staff member who became a volunteer and two volunteers who never participated in such meet-ups showed up to the meet-up.

The meet-up succeeded also in terms of its contribution to strengthening the ties with Sha’ar Zion-Beit Ariela Library, one of the leading library institutions in Israel.

Free Knowledge Awareness edit


Planned Activities: edit

  • Active participation in coalitions working for freedom of information, freedom of the Internet and open information in Israel
  • Support the Public Figure Photography Project
  • Plan and implement an annual conference to raise awareness of the goals of Wikimedia

GLAM-Wiki Conference 2018 edit

More than 180 attendees from 43 countries gathered between November 3rd-5th for the GLAM-Wiki 2018 conference in Tel Aviv, Israel. During the GLAM-Wiki​ conference​, GLAM community professionals and Wikimedians convened to discuss and share experiences, present ​their favorite tools, and discover new ways to create, enrich and reuse free cultural knowledge. Co-organized with the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Israel hosted the GLAM-Wiki Conference as part of the GLAM–Wiki initiative (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums). The initiative enables cultural institutions to share their resources with the world through collaborative projects with experienced Wikimedian editors.

The program included three days of keynote lectures, talks, workshops, meetups, and social events where participants had the opportunity to examine new paths toward GLAM-Wiki collaborations and to discuss mutual interests shared between Wikimedia and various cultural institutions. The conference attracted the attention of the local media: People And Computers, Yedatech, Calcalist, Israel Hayom, Globes. Examples of GLAM initiative in different countries, and the keynote speakers got a lot of media coverage.

Support the Public Figure Photography Project edit

In the Public Figure Photography Project, WMIL volunteers look for articles about Israeli living public figures on the Hebrew Wikipedia and contact these persons in order to take their pictures. The images are then published under a free license on Wikimedia Commons and embedded in the relevant articles. Unfortunately, this project was not active in 2018. The leading volunteer didn’t proceed this and there was no other volunteer that took interest in leading this project.

In 2018, WMIL was involved in public-advocacy activity concerning freedom of information, freedom of the Internet and amendment to the Copyrights Law. The activity included participation in Knesset (the Israeli parliament) committees’ discussions, formulating position papers of civil society organizations about these issues and leading an initiative to incorporate educational content about copyrights and free content in the education system.
The ED led the public-advocacy activity.

Communication edit


Planned Activities: edit

  • Positioning WMIL as a significant body in the education system in Israel through participation in major conferences, media publications and more.
  • Increasing the visibility of the organization’s activities through publicity in various channels during the year.
  • Maintaining contact with Wikimedia communities and volunteers by publishing a monthly newsletter, local and international blog posts, and other relevant publications in village pump.
  • Handling press relationship and press inquiries.

Marketing & Advertisement

media coverage
This year we had two major events that got us a massive media coverage, the release of archives images and the GLAMWiki 2018 conference. Besides those two events, WMIL has media references throughout the year. The 2018 most viewed articles on Hebrew Wikipedia was a very entertaining item, it got covered on Channel 10, interviewing WMIL’s Chairperson Itzik Edri about Israel’s most viewed articles emphasizing events and popular topics in 2018. This list was also covered in two online news website: Globes and Haaretz. WMIL and Hebrew Wikipedia gets a lot of attention at the local media thanks to a reporter named Omer Ben Yaacov, who often writes and talks about Wikimedia and Wikipedia. Our routine activity also gets coverage in the media. All WMIL’s program get a reference in local newspapers, at least once a year, for example: 10th grades students wrote articles about the Righteous Among The Nations and got a reference in local website, and the Arabic program got a large article on a very popular Arabic website, our elderly program in a Haifa newspaper.

Digital Marketing
In order to stay connected with our volunteers, supporters and followers, we use the online platforms on a day to day basis. One of the most important platforms is WMIL website that is updated regularly. The website got a new design in the last year, making it more approachable to the readers. Another important platform is WMIL's facebook page, with more than 6K followers (An increase of 20% compared to last year), the page is updated and highlight different topics such us: WMIL activities, Wikipedia, the local Wikipedia community, free content, GLAM, relevant legislation and more. Once a quarter, a newsletter is send to all of our mailing list with updates and news, to WMIL volunteers and donors.
As a part of the Google Grants Program, we get a budget of $10K per month to advertise Wikimedia Israel activities in the Google search campaign. In 2018, the Google Grant’s change of policy made it very difficult to WMIL's team to run this tool to its full potential. In early 2019 we started using it again with the help of outsourcing support. We use the ads to increase awareness of WMIL activity and agendas.

Fundraising- Igul Letova

An amazing Israeli donation project- IGOL LETOVA is a new donations system: with every transaction a donor makes on his/her credit card, his/her bill will be rounded up to the nearest ILS and the change goes to the charities of their choice. WMIL became a member of this initiative in July 2018. Since then, we had more than 1,000 donors adding to this initiative, donating exclusively to WMIL each month (about 4 ILS monthly to a doner). Adding new donors to this initiative has been a challenge, using every digital platform we got. Beside the digital platform we also use the opportunity in our events to encourage people to round up for Wikimedia Israel. In 2019, WMIL will presented a booth in conferences run by People and Computers, in the hope that more people will round up for us.

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.

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
Revenues from private donations ILS 30,000 14,740 15,457 12,069 82,043 124,309 8,355 34,622
Sponsorships ILS 20,000 0 0 0 1,000 1,000 5,570 279
Foundations ILS 458,000 30,200 21,800 135,300 165,512 352,812 127,559 98,263
Revenues from membership fees ILS 1,500 900 40 20 440 1,400 418 390
Wikimedia Foundation ILS 1,075,000 627,083 0 447,917 1,075,000 299,401 299,401
Revenues from collaborations ILS 50,000 60,000 1,464 20,000 1,080 82,544 13,926 22,990
Revenues from courses ILS 10,000 800 0 1,400 800 3,000 2,785 836 During 2018 only 3 courses took place
Total Revenues ILS 1,644,500 733,723 38,762 604,637 250,875 1,640,065 458,014 456,779
In Kind 500,000 725,419 139,256 202,039

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


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

Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

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
Community Support (Hebrew Wikipedia) ILS 241,520 51,721 44,924 51,872 55,562 204,080 75,622 56,839 77 Based on the 2017 Impact report, we added 30K to Wiki women, but during the year 5K were moved to "promotion of the creation of openly licensed mateials" (see text). Original budget: 266,520 ILS
Wikimedia Communities support ILS 38,500 3,367 8,101 8,701 17,956 38,124 9,191 10,618 75 7.5K added for development of tools (crawler) for Promotion of the creation of openly licensed materials.

Based on the decision in 2017 an additional 13K were diverted from Wikitionary for this purpose and as the year advanced, 5K diverted from Wiki Women. Original budget: 51K ILS

Education - Hebrew ILS 213,700 49,987 30,967 37,610 53,501 172,066 55,006 47,923 95 In 2017 all educational projects were lumped under "Collaboration for free content".

In 2018 these were split to specific projects. Operational costs such as rent which in 2017 were split between Collaboration for free content (30%) and Training (30%) were redistributed across projects accordingly.
Thus 16350 ILS moved from Education Hebrew to Higher Education. Due to changes in the Education coordinator's position, the wages component was reduced by 16,200 ILS. Original budget: 181,150 ILS

Higher Education ILS 160,600 45,424 48,623 44,242 44,251 182,540 48,043 50,840 97 Due to changes in the academic coordinator's position the wages component increased by 11,900 ILS.

16350 ILS added from Education Hebrew for operational costs. Original budget: 188,850 ILS

Education - Arabic ILS 274,000 58,261 44,673 47,913 57,447 208,293 61,830 58,012 87 40K for documentation, PR and marketing were scrapped as the grant we received from another foundation was smaller than requested. As the Arabic coordinator was replaced, the budget was reduced by 12K ILS to reflect the fact that the new coordinator had less travel expenses. 16350 ILS added from Training to redistribute operational costs across projects. Original budget: 238,350 ILS
Training ILS 135,300 9,522 3,113 6,602 20,221 39,458 39,075 10,989 32 75K instead of 90K for development of materials; 20K added to courses to interested group;

16350 ILS moved to Arabic Education to redistribute operational costs. Original budget: 123,950 ILS Shai Katz who was the education and training coordinator in 2017 was on maternity leave until April. In her absence Itamar Nehama filled her position as education coordinator but the post of training coordinator remained vacant, and there was very little activity during this time.
Following her maternity leave, Shai Katz returned to work in reduced capcity as Training coordinator, but this is a limited position which is almost completely taken with the Senior citizen courses.

Free knowledge awareness ILS 79,000 16,526 21,786 10,963 22,806 72,081 38,853 20,075 50 42.5K for conference instead of 10K, 5K added for GLAM activities in anticipation of the GLAM-WIKI conference. The coordinator's position was expanded and the wages component increased by 23K. Original budget: 139,500 ILS
Global engagement ILS 42,800 6,613 7,377 9,386 10,377 33,753 9,401 11,920 83
Communication and publicity ILS 20,000 483 1,963 11,128 36,915 50,489 5,849 14,062 240 1K added for website maintenance and social media. Original budget: 21,000 ILS
Management and Administration ILS 428,800 124,248 103,807 95,718 91,428 415,200 119,426 115,639 97 Budget reduced by 10K (ED's salary raise postponed)
TOTAL ILS 1,644,220 366,152 315,334 324,135 410,463 1,416,084 464,815 394,397 84 Original total budget: 1,681,920 ILS

* Provide estimates in US Dollars

  • Note: Wikimedia Israel's Board of Trustees authorized securing 250,000 NIS for the 2020 Program of Students write Wikipedia in Arabic, from this year's budget. The decision was made on 12/9/18.

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

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Resources edit

Resources to plan for measurement edit

Resources for storytelling edit