Grants:IEG/WIGI: Wikipedia Gender Index/Final


Welcome to this project's final report! This report shares the outcomes, impact and learnings from the Individual Engagement Grantee's 6-month project.

Part 1: The Project edit

Summary edit

In a few short sentences, give the main highlights of what happened with your project. Please include a few key outcomes or learnings from your project in bullet points, for readers who may not make it all the way through your report.

Methods and activities edit

What did you do in project?

Please list and describe the activities you've undertaken during this grant. Since you already told us about the setup and first 3 months of activities in your midpoint report, feel free to link back to those sections to give your readers the background, rather than repeating yourself here, and mostly focus on what's happened since your midpoint report in this section.

Outcomes and impact edit

Outcomes edit

What are the results of your project?

Please discuss the outcomes of your experiments or pilot, telling us what you created or changed (organized, built, grew, etc) as a result of your project.    

  • We created a website about the biography gender gap in Wikidata and Wikipedia viewable at wigi.wmflabs.org (see screenshot above).
    • It is receiving a lot of traffic (see above). Editors are blogging and tweeting about it, saying "this is the tool we’ve been waiting for."

Analyses edit

 

  • We analyzed the how gender has been changing over time in Wikidata.
    • The female ratio of biographies has been climbing steadily since 2014 (see figure above).

 

  • We analyzed the richness of biographies over time.
    • Accompanying biographical information has been increasing (see figure above).
Correlations between WIGI dataset at External data. **p<0.01 ***p<0.001.
Snapshot World's Population GEI SIGI GGGI GDI U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
2014-09-17 0.852*** 0.417** 0.338** 0.310* 0.278** 0.410**
2016-01-03 0.845*** 0.457** 0.402** 0.386** 0.299** 0.473**

As seen in the table above, we show that this data is validated to reality, and is increasingly modeling the real world over time.

All data is open, and available at our snapshot archive.

Progress towards stated goals edit

Please use the below table to:

  1. List each of your original measures of success (your targets) from your project plan.
  2. List the actual outcome that was achieved.
  3. Explain how your outcome compares with the original target. Did you reach your targets? Why or why not?
Planned measure of success
(include numeric target, if applicable)
Actual result Explanation
A website with self-updating graphs and data downloads. Completed http://wigi.wmflabs.org/
1,000 pageviews per month on our statistics website. Exceeded 3965 in February 2016
100 data downloads per month of our dataset. Exceeded 1106 in February 2016
5 data re-use cases of our dataset. Not completed 1 case of data re-use, our own, with en:w:Bureau of Labor Statistics
1 report on the statistical significance of our data in a multi-scholar paper. Completed In submission, after rejection at ICSWM


Think back to your overall project goals. Do you feel you achieved your goals? Why or why not?

Our achievements were mixed. We did manage to complete the technical portion and our usage statistics are high. However in terms of community engagement in the re-use department, we did not do as well as we hoped. This is due to the fact that 1) our community engagement team member left half-way through for a position at WMF. And 2) we incorporated community feedback after we had made the prototype, looking back it would have been better to survey users before even beginning to code.

Global Metrics edit

We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across all grantees. In addition to the measures of success for your specific program (in above section), please use the table below to let us know how your project contributed to the "Global Metrics." We know that not all projects will have results for each type of metric, so feel free to put "0" as often as necessary.

  1. Next to each metric, list the actual numerical outcome achieved through this project.
  2. Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome. For example, if you were funded for a research project which resulted in 0 new images, your explanation might be "This project focused solely on participation and articles written/improved, the goal was not to collect images."

For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics.

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. Number of active editors involved 24 9 usability + 5 discussing on-wiki + 10 discussing on twitter
2. Number of new editors 0 As a research project we did not target new editors.
3. Number of individuals involved 30 Active editors plus our team.
4. Number of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 0 As a research project we did not target content creation.
5. Number of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 0 directly, some indirectly. Our research showed trends in biographies added, this may have had some effect on new biographies.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 0 directly, some indirectly. Our research commented on areas where Wikipedia and Wikidata lacked and succeed, this may have influenced editing.


Learning question
Did your work increase the motivation of contributors, and how do you know?
  • Our work did increase the motivation of contributors, for instance, WikiProject Women in Red discussed it as motivation to work on their project.

Indicators of impact edit

Do you see any indication that your project has had impact towards Wikimedia's strategic priorities? We've provided 3 options below for the strategic priorities that IEG projects are mostly likely to impact. Select one or more that you think are relevant and share any measures of success you have that point to this impact. You might also consider any other kinds of impact you had not anticipated when you planned this project.

Option B: How did you improve quality on one or more Wikimedia projects?

  • One of the key assumptions of our project was "what gets measured, gets fixed." So in measuring the biography gender gap, we believed to be "fixing" the biography gender gap. Note that "fixing" is a poor term here because, we do not know what is the "right" or even "target" ratio of women's biographies, nor that biography gender gap is a good proxy for participation by women in Wikipedia. However, as seen on the Catalan twitter, a discussion about their ratio of women's biographies - 12% the lowest among major languages - was sparking discussion. This is how we believe we improve quality, we arm discussions with data. This gives people the ability to make arguments about large-scale dynamics, and the results of those arguments improve quality on Wikimedia projects.

Option D: How did you improve the ability to measure Global Metrics?

  • Our project measures dimensions of gendered content on Wikimedia projects, therefore it could also be use as a global metric itself. This is not far-fetched, the WMF already is using this data in the quarterly review. One caveat to this is that since we are only measuring a large aggregate there will a difficult to measure causation in the way new projects affect biography gender.

Project resources edit

Please provide links to all public, online documents and other artifacts that you created during the course of this project. Examples include: meeting notes, participant lists, photos or graphics uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, template messages sent to participants, wiki pages, social media (Facebook groups, Twitter accounts), datasets, surveys, questionnaires, code repositories... If possible, include a brief summary with each link.

Learning edit

The best thing about trying something new is that you learn from it. We want to follow in your footsteps and learn along with you, and we want to know that you took enough risks in your project to have learned something really interesting! Think about what recommendations you have for others who may follow in your footsteps, and use the below sections to describe what worked and what didn’t.

What worked well edit

What did you try that was successful and you'd recommend others do? To help spread successful strategies so that they can be of use to others in the movement, rather than writing lots of text here, we'd like you to share your finding in the form of a link to a learning pattern.

What didn’t work edit

What did you try that you learned didn't work? What would you think about doing differently in the future? Please list these as short bullet points.

  • One thing that went less than optimally, was our design process. Only towards the very tail-end of our project did I learn about User Centered Design, which states to let the user and the user's needs drive the design process. With this view, you do not commit to writing code too early when fresh ideas can still propagate. We developed our design and then tested it with users, but should have involved them before even we started building. As a result, our site is more built around scratching our own curiosities, than what editors would like. Something to learn for next time.

Other recommendations edit

If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please list them here.

Next steps and opportunities edit

Are there opportunities for future growth of this project, or new areas you have uncovered in the course of this grant that could be fruitful for more exploration (either by yourself, or others)? What ideas or suggestions do you have for future projects based on the work you’ve completed? Please list these as short bullet points.


Think your project needs renewed funding for another 6 months?




Part 2: The Grant edit

Finances edit

Actual spending edit

Please copy and paste the completed table from your project finances page. Check that you’ve listed the actual expenditures compared with what was originally planned. If there are differences between the planned and actual use of funds, please use the column provided to explain them.

0
Expense Approved amount Actual funds spent Difference
Developers $11,000 $13,393
Research and Community $8,500 $7,107
Designers $3,000 $2,000
Transfer Fees $0 $180 (5 transactions)
Total $22,500 + $250 (fees) $22,500 + $180(fees) $0 + $70(fees)


Remaining funds edit

Do you have any unspent funds from the grant?

Please answer yes or no. If yes, list the amount you did not use and explain why.

  • We have $70 left over from the extra given to us to pay for wire-transfer fees.

If you have unspent funds, they must be returned to WMF. Please see the instructions for returning unspent funds and indicate here if this is still in progress, or if this is already completed:

  • They will be returned to the WMF by cheque on next visit to the WMF.

Documentation edit

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grantsadmin wikimedia.org, according to the guidelines here?

Please answer yes or no. If no, include an explanation.

  • Yes

Confirmation of project status edit

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?

Please answer yes or no.

  • Yes

Is your project completed?

Please answer yes or no.

  • Yes

Grantee reflection edit

We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on what this project has meant to you, or how the experience of being an IEGrantee has gone overall. Is there something that surprised you, or that you particularly enjoyed, or that you’ll do differently going forward as a result of the IEG experience? Please share it here!

It was brilliant to have the support of @Jmorgan (WMF):, I think all IEGs should have such an advisor.