Grants:PEG/WM ZA/Joburgpedia 2015 Phase 2
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Background
editThe aim of this project is to build on the successes of Joburgpedia 2013 and Joburgpedia 2014 to increase Wikipedia coverage of iconic buildings around Johannesburg with historic and heritage importance.
This grant application is to cover Phase 2 of further outreach activities around the third phase of Joburgpedia. We want to encourage citizens of this Metropolis to contribute content about the selected heritage sites in a Wikipedia project of their choice. We want to build on ties made and process the donation of archives onto Wikipedia and Commons in an organized manner.
Goal
editOur goal is to activate and increase an online community while fostering the importance of preserving our history, heritage and language. We are looking at doing this by way of increasing the participation and retention of especially female editors, bringing on board more mission aligned GLAM institutions, and ensuring that the project feeds to other small Wikipedia language projects through a number of strategic activities outlined below.
GLAM Partners
editOver the past 2 years we have managed to form partnerships with the following institutions who have made an invaluable contribution to our mission:
- Johannesburg Heritage Foundation
- The Constitution Hill Education Project
- The City of Joburg
The Johannesburg Heritage Foundation (JHF) contain in its archives files of historical and heritage importance that dates back to over 130 years ago. Of these are maps, plans, a library with publications and admin records of early mining activity in Johannesburg and over 480 files of historical buildings with each file containing atleast 10 pictures and supporting documents.. Our Wikipedian in Residence the previous year managed to digitize over 250 pictures and created 199 pages.
The Constitutional Hill is a national heritage site and this is where the highest court in South Africa sits. They are also running a Constitution Hill Education Project and this year we are going to restrict our selves to partnering with them and piloting the writing competition project with them since they have the numbers in terms of age groups and other demographics available in their program.
We have been in communication with Eric Itzkin from the City of Johannesburg and they have promised to contribute 40 QR coded Wikipedia plagues.
Impact
editTarget readership
editThis project will benefit the following online communities:
- English Wikipedia
- Afrikaans Wikipedia
- Zulu Wikipedia
- Xhosa Wikipedia
- Sotho Wikipedia
- Xitsonga Wikipedia
- Setswana Wikipedia
- Chishona Wikipedia
- Siswati Wikipedia
Fit with strategy
editThis project meets a number of mission targets for Wikimedia strategic plan (through 2015). They are outlined below:
Increasing reach
editIncreasing Wikimedia's reach in the Global South is one of the salient points of Vision 2015. South Africa is crucial to this objective, as a key African hub. This project is highly anticipated and has already received a fair amount of attention in Johannesburg.
Participation
editThe potential of this project to increase participation is daunting. Extensive focus will be put into creating lasting contacts with those attending our Edit-A-Thons and participating in our other activities.
Quality
editWikimedia Commons still has a very poor representation of Johannesburg heritage sites. The available images are of moderate to acceptable quality. This project aims to improve the coverage of the Johannesburg heritage sites on commons and Wikipedia projects especially small languages.
Credibility
editThe involvement of local authoritities, heritage societies as partners we will be able to improve our credibility as a Chapter and movement in handling such important issues as heritage and historical sites documentation.
Measures of success
editWe will consider this project a success if we can:
- Contribute at least 350 high quality images of historical importance to Commons
- Create at least 50 'Class B' quality articles on the English Wikipedia
- Create at least 50 articles on the smaller Wikipedias
Resources and risks
editResources
editWikimedia ZA coordination team
This grant is effectively an extension of:
Joburgpedia 2013 and Joburgpedia 2014 and Joburgpedia 2015 - Phase 1
Plan & Activities
edit
We believe that Joburgpedia is one of our most successful projects to date and strongly believe that we are able to contribute a great wealth of information to Wikipedia and other related projects. Although our work at the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation was very successful last year, it was only a scratch on the surface of an untapped, rich history of South African heritage documents and media.
We have kept our expected outcomes as realistic as possible but expect to exceed them by far. In 2014 alone, our anticipated 250 photographs were surpassed by 609 uploads. We believe that appointing an additional Wikipedian in Residence is certain to double this amount.
In addition to the regular activities surrounding this project, we are introducing new aspects to the project as well :
- Introducing the Writing Contest into schools with training and support provided by our institutional partner
- Although we are working very hard with stakeholders to digitise these documents, the fact remains that there is a great deal of history that is yet untapped. We include with our funding application a contribution (half of the cost) to funding a smoke detection and suppression system at the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation Research Centre
- Additional training and support offered by our Institutional Partner at ConHillEdu to volunteers on editing Wikipedia and writing new articles
- Schools outreach project with the aim of targeting a school in a local township and support and train on Wikipedia as part of the curriculum (based on the success of Sinenjongo High), teaching them the importance of referencing, grammer and improving their writing skills in general.
- The appointment of an additional Wikipedian in Residence
The project is divided into 4 phases which we envisaged to run from 2013 to 2016. The initial phase in 2013 was targeted at Johannesburg to Soweto. The second phase in 2014 targeted the Johannesburg Inner City. On this project we increased the number of GLAM institutions who were willing to work with us from 2 to 5 (Including the Satyagraha House a museum where Mahatma Ghandi lived). We increased content and participation on local languages and we had 19 new users of which 50% were women. On the third and the fourth phase of the project our focus will be more into covering the Johannesburg Skyline and the other Johannesburg surrounding townships. We also realized that there's a lot of work that needed completion on the 2014 phase of the project hence we are looking at having 2 WiR based at our GLAM institution. As we are phasing out content from 2014 we will be simultaneously working on the working on 2015 going forward.
We had 9 female participants at events in 2014 and we expect this number to increase to at least 18 this year. Our focus was mainly Wikipedia but we are looking at increasing more focus on other Wiki projects as well, Perhaps Wiki Commons or Wiki Varsity.
In 2014 we created a lot of stubs. This year our focus is on quality articles. Learning from the work we have done at our GLAM institution we noticed that this was because there is a low count of reliable references on the internet that could support our work. Much of the citations and the references are found on the archives of the same GLAM institution which needs more time for research to do the proper citations. Hence having 2 Wikipedian in Residence will help in digitizing the photographs, making the proper archival research and creating quality and complete articles.
Wikipedian in Residence
editOur first ever Wikipedian in Residence completed a term at the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation in 2014. This institution contributed a great deal of content but there is much more that needs to digitised and captured for future generations. More information on the work of the Wikipedian in Residence can be found here and content uploaded from the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation can be found on Commons. We aim to continue with this partnership in the coming year by budgeting for 2 positions for a period of 6 months.
WM ZA requests funding to pay two salaries for the period as well as a small digitisation allowance. The two institutions decided upon will provide the space, support and facilities for these residents.
JoburgpediA-2015: Global Metrics
editThe following are global metric goals for this project
| Metric description | Goal | Notes | Metric description | Goal | Notes |
| PARTICIPATION (COMMUNITY) | CONTENT | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Number of active editors involved | 6 | [1] | 4. Number of new images/media | 500 | [2] |
| 2. Number of newly registered users | 50 | [3] | 5. Number of articles added | 250 | [4] |
| 3. Number of individuals involved | 85 | [5] | 6. Number of bytes added | 2 Gb | [6] |
- ↑ Note 1: Including the 2 project managers who are also active users in their own right, we have confirmed involvement of 4 more active users to be involved in the project.
- ↑ Note 4: The digitization project to be undertaken with JHF will be more focused, thus it is reasonable to expect 500 quality images uploaded onto Commons
- ↑ Note 2: We believe that this number may end up being higher as we anticipate to retain and obtain more new users from the schools through the ConhillEdu partner.
- ↑ Note 5: This will be mainly coming from the WiRs to be co-ordinated with the digitization effort. The Edit-A-Thons will contribute about a third of this number as it is becoming an accepted and recognised feature of the project that users and volunteers have come to expect of JoburgpediA.
- ↑ Note 3: We will be monitoring this number better this year, we have teachers and university volunteers whom we have not properly captured as people who are involved in the project. It could end up being higher too.
- ↑ Note 6: The JHF has since aligned their cataloguing system to assit our WiRs, so we will be able to make a huge jump from about 100 kbs added previously.
Partnerships
editJohannesburg Heritage Foundation
editThis partner came on board with Joburgpedia in 2014 and hosted the first ever Wikipedian in Residence. They contributed a great deal of content but there is so much more that needs to digitised and captured for future generations. More information on the work of the Wikipedian in Residence can be found here and content uploaded from the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation can be found on Commons. We aim to continue with this partnership in the coming year.
Conhill Education Programme
editThis partnership which took form in 2014 has grown from strength to strength. This year, various volunteers from the programme will be assisting WM ZA with the Joburgpedia Writing contest. Though their connections, they are involving 50 schools to collaborate on Wikipedia. WM ZA will provide training to volunteers who in turn, will provide participants with training on how to edit Wikipedia. The project leads, Bobby Shabangu and Dumisani Ndubane will head this project. The launch and follow-up edit-a-thons for Joburgpedia Phase 1 has already been held at this venue. ConHillEdu has proved to be an invaluable partner in schools outreach.
City of Johannesburg
editThis City of Johannesburg has just confirmed their partnership with WM ZA to fund the project in 2015. They will cover the following costs :
- Installation of QR Code Plaques
- Half the cost of catering for further edit-a-thons
- Prize for Winning Contest
Risks
editJoburgpediA heavily depends on free venues being provided for our activities. Thus far, we have a commitment from ConhillEdu to give us access to the constitutional court facilities, however the dates are cont finalised and as a result we need to co-ordinate our event dates with the ConhillEdu and the Court. This is a risk because from previous experience we get higher turn out of people e week before or after pay week, so it it crucial for us to stick to promised dates.
We have now received official partnership with City of Johannesburg and have been assured that we can have access to some of their libraries and museums so long as we give them atleast 2 weeks notice. This will assist us to mitigate the above risk.
Budget Breakdown
edit| Description | Requested Funds (ZAR) | Requested Funds (USD) | Notes | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qty | Rate | Total (ZAR) | Qty | Rate | Total (USD) | |||||
| 1.1 | T-Shirts & Printed Matter | 1 | 7,000.00 | 7,000.00 | 1 | 571.78 | 571.78 | |||
| 1.2 | Project Facilitation (2 people) | 1 | 16,000.00 | 16,000.00 | 1 | 1,306.92 | 1,306.92 | [1] | ||
| 1.3 | Advertising & Marketing | 1 | 7,000.00 | 7,000.00 | 1 | 571.78 | 571.78 | |||
| 1.4 | Incidental Costs & Contingencies | 1 | 6,000.00 | 6,000.00 | 1 | 490.10 | 490.10 | |||
| 1.5 | Pamphlets for edit-a-thons | 1 | 6,000.00 | 6,000.00 | 1 | 490.10 | 490.10 | |||
| 1.6 | Catering - 5 events | 1 | 22,500.00 | 22,500.00 | 1 | 1,837.86 | 1,837.86 | [2] | ||
| 1.7 | Preservation of Archives | 1 | 15,000.00 | 15,000.00 | 1 | 1,225.24 | 1,225.24 | |||
| 1.8 | ||||||||||
| 1.9 | Equipment | 1 | 5,000.00 | 5,000.00 | 1 | 408.41 | 408.41 | |||
| 1.10 | Training Material & Supplies | 1 | 3,000.00 | 3,000.00 | 1 | 245.05 | 245.05 | |||
| 1.11 | Sourcing & Installation of QR Plaques | 1 | 18,500.00 | 18,500.00 | 1 | 1,511.13 | 1,511.13 | [3] | ||
| 1.12 | Library Outreach Initiative | 1 | 5,000.00 | 5,000.00 | 1 | 408.41 | 408.41 | |||
| 1.13 | ||||||||||
| 1.14 | ||||||||||
| 1.15 | Wikipedian in Residence (2 individuals at 2 Institutions for 6 months) | 1 | 72,000.00 | 72,000.00 | 1 | 5,881.15 | 5,881.15 | |||
| 1.16 | ||||||||||
| Total | 223,000.00 | 18,215.23 | ||||||||
Budget Summaries
edit- Total project budget
- ZAR 223,000 or $18,215.23 rounded total as calculated to be R12.2425/1USD on 03/06/2015 using latest exchange rate
- Total amount requested
- ZAR 223,000.00 or $18,215.23 rounded total as calculated to be R12.2425/1USD on 03/06/2015 using latest exchange rate
- Are there additional sources of revenue that will fund any part of this project? List them here.
- Yes - These are project support contributions from partners (see below)
Non-financial requirements
edit- None
Partners
editThe following in-kind donations have have been made by the following project partners for the respective projects. We will be working with many of these partners on the same projects again this year.
| Project | Value (ZAR) | Value (USD) | Partner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Joburgpedia | ZAR 48,020.00 | USD 3,922.40 | City of Joburg |
| Joburgpedia | ZAR 35,000.00 | USD 2,858.89 | Johannesburg Heritage Foundation |
| Joburgpedia | ZAR 20,000.00 | USD 1,633.65 | ConHill Education Project |
| Joburgpedia | ZAR 3,000.00 | USD 245.05 | Various |
| Total | ZAR 106,020.00 | USD 8,660.00 |
Calculated to be R12.2425/1USD on 03/06/2015 using latest exchange rate
Discussion
editCommunity notification
editEndorsements
editDo you think this project should be selected for a Project and Event Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project in the list below. Other feedback, questions or concerns from community members are also highly valued, but please post them on the talk page of this proposal.