Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikimedia CEE Spring 2022

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Applicant details

Wikimedia username(s):

Philip Kopetzky

Kiril Simeonovski

Organization:

Wikimedia Community User Group CEE Spring

G. Have you received grants from the Wikimedia Foundation before?

Applied previously and did receive a grant

H. Have you received grants from any non-wiki organization before?

No

H.1 Which organization(s) did you receive grants from?

N/A

M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?

Yes

M1. Fiscal organization name.

Wikimedia Österreich

Additional information

R. Where will this proposal be implemented?

Austria

S. Please indicate whether your work will be focused on one country (local), more than one or several countries in your region (regional) or has a cross-regional (global) scope:

International

S1. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.

T. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has. (optional)

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Spring_2022

M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?

Yes

M1. Fiscal organization name.

Wikimedia Österreich

Proposal

1. What is the overall vision of your organization and how does this proposal contribute to this? How does this proposal connect to past work and learning?

Wikimedia Community User Group CEE Spring’s mission is to sustain CEE Spring, an annual writing contest organised by Wikimedians and Wikipedians who joined the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) partnership with the aim of creating free knowledge distributing information about history, culture, tradition and people in every corner of the region to support mutual acknowledgement and understanding and to increase the quantity and quality of free knowledge available about the CEE region globally.

2. What is the change that you are trying to bring about and why is this important?

CEE Spring 2022 will primarily address the following three challenges: discovering and promoting countries, regions and communities; closing gender and content gaps; and strengthening cross-wiki collaboration.

Central and Eastern Europe is home to a large number of language communities, cultures and ethnicities distributed across many countries which share historical and political commonalities. Although most of the communities in the region have been mapped and integrated with the CEE partnership, and substantial efforts have been made in the past years to create free knowledge about them, there is still a lot to do in order to reach out to underrepresented groups and close the content gaps. This year’s contest will help to better discover these communities and cultures by compiling lists of articles on important topics and promoting them by creating free knowledge in a number of languages.

Communities participating in the contest have full discretion in identifying thematic areas and important topics. Nevertheless, it is expected that communities follow a common structure of thematic areas which are considered relevant. This is done to ease the identification of content gaps in a more organised way, as well as to make the different lists of articles comparable one with another. This year’s edition will also include women and human rights as topics of growing importance in the society, which will be addressed by adding these two as distinct thematic areas and encouraging local coordinators to consider awarding prizes for contributions to these areas.

Cross-wiki collaboration is one of the main principles upon which the CEE partnership relies and CEE Spring has become the main method to facilitate that collaboration. This year’s contest will try to strengthen the network of the CEE communities but also enlarge it by integrating new underrepresented groups and also make connections with communities from other regions.

3. Describe your main approaches or strategies to achieve these changes and why you think they will be effective.

The central infrastructure for the writing contest will be set up by a team of international organisers which consists of experienced Wikimedians from across the CEE region. This team will communicate with and provide support to local organisers, extend contacts and invite participants from outside the CEE region, make connections with similar like-minded campaigns in the movement, monitor the implementation of the writing contest and evaluate the results after the end of the contest.

Local contests will be organised by local teams and in every community the contest will have a slightly different face to take into account the local context. The local coordinators will be responsible to set up the local infrastructure, define the rules of the local contest, form a jury which will evaluate the contributions and advertise the contest within the local community. Local teams will present lists of articles about their country or community which they would like to see in every possible language in the world and editors from all other places create and significantly edit those articles, whereby participants can write about any topic, connected with the other participating countries, regions and communities in Central and Eastern Europe. Local organisers will have discretion to identify thematic areas (e.g. culture, sports, history, geography, society etc.) and important topics, but it is strongly recommended to engage other community members in creating the lists of articles.

This year’s edition will consist of two sub-contests: CEE Women and CEE for Human Rights. The former aims to close the gender gap by encouraging article creation on women and related topics, whereas the latter aims to raise awareness about human rights by encouraging article creation on human rights, environment protection, climate change and related topics. CEE for Human Rights will also be part of this year’s #WikiForHumanRights campaign, which will take place from 15 April to 15 May 2022 and will be fully contained in the time frame for CEE Spring 2022.

We wish to use prize funds of up to €400 per community to help us narrow down the focus of the editors in reaching those aims. By awarding prizes in certain categories, we can ensure the writing of articles in the categories, chosen by each local organiser (e.g. there can be prizes for the largest number of articles about women or human rights in order to close the gender and content gaps).

4. What are the activities you will be developing and delivering as part of these approaches or strategies?

The proposal aims to empower Wikimedia communities in the languages primarily spoken in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as communities from other parts of the world to take part in CEE Spring 2022 in order to join forces that support article creation about every country or community from the CEE region on every Wikipedia.

5. Do you want to apply for multi-year funding?

No

5.1 If yes, provide a brief overview of Year 2 and Year 3 of the proposed plan and how this relates to the current proposal and your strategic plan?

N/A

6. Please include a timeline (operational calendar) for your proposal.

7. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?

CEE Spring 2022 will be organised by a team of international organisers, as well as by local coordinators who will set up the infrastructure within their communities.

The team of international organisers consists of the following members:

Kiril Simeonovski (User:Kiril Simeonovski)
Mārtiņš Bruņenieks (User:Papuass)
Philip Kopetzky (User:Philip Kopetzky)
Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (User:Magalia)
Marek Stelmasik (User:Masti)
Željko Blaće (User:Zblace)

The names and usernames of the local coordinators are being self-disclosed at the participants’ page.

In addition, Annemarie Buchman and Manfred Werner of Wikimedia Austria will be advisers about the implementation of the writing contest.

8. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified CONTENT knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.

Content Gender gap, Geography, Language, Important Topics (topics considered to be of impact or important in the specific context), Cultural background, ethnicity, religion, racial

8.1 In a few sentences, explain how your work is specifically addressing this content gap (or Knowledge inequity) to ensure a greater representation of knowledge.

9. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or THEMATIC focus. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work and explain the rationale for identifying these themes.

Human Rights, Culture, heritage or GLAM , Diversity

10. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Please note, we had previously asked about inclusion and diversity in terms of CONTENTS, in this question we are asking about the diversity of PARTICIPANTS. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.

Geographic , Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background, Linguistic / Language

11. What are your strategies for engaging participants, particularly those that currently are non-Wikimedia?

Our primary target participants are the communities affiliated within the CEE partnership, whereas our secondary target participants are all communities in the Wikimedia movement willing to contribute to topics related to the CEE region. Based on our experience from the previous years, the groups of target participants number more than 30 language editions of Wikipedia and span more than 35 countries, regions and communities. In order to participate in the writing contest, each community has to abide by the following rules on international level: CEE Spring 2022 is a set of local contests, however internationally coordinated. Local contests are organised in a way to select winners before the 30 June 2022, with the reimbursement process open until late November 2022.

In order to join CEE Spring 2022, an affiliate or community: selects one person as the coordinator; this person is ready to reveal to the Wikimedia Austria office their full name, contact address and bank account number in order to conduct money transfers prepares the set of rules of the local contest and documents them on Meta. prepares (preferably together with their community) a list of articles (roughly 100) in ~10 categories on their community to translate/create before 15 March 2022. decides about the method of selection of local winners, however it must be clearly defined. presents to Wikimedia Austria originals or scanned copies of the invoices, for which they get reimbursed or provide an account in an online shop with a full shopping basket, so that only the payment details need be added by the payment processor. The shop must be capable of providing an invoice.

12. In what ways are you actively seeking to contribute towards creating a safer, supportive, more equitable environment for participants and promoting the UCOC and Friendly Space Policy, and/or equivalent local policies and processes?

All participants in the contest will have to abide by the Universal Code of Conduct, behave in accordance with the rules and guidelines on the local projects, and follow the rules of the localised versions of the contest. The local coordinators along with other people involved in organising the contest at local level will monitor its implementation and intervene in case of a violation.

13. Do you have plans to work with Wikimedia communities, groups, or affiliates in your country, or in other countries, to implement this proposal?

Yes

13.1 If yes, please tell us about these connections online and offline and how you have let Wikimedia communities know about this proposal.

We will work with all communities willing to take part in CEE Spring 2022, including communities affiliated with the CEE partnership and communities from other parts of the world.

The main communication channels which we plan to use to keep community members updated about the contest and its implementation are the following:

a list for Wikimedians of Central and Eastern Europe: wmcee-l@tools.wikimedia.pl
Wikimedia CEE Facebook Group*
CEE Spring Facebook page
Wikimedia CEE Telegram group
Meta page of CEE Spring: Wikimedia CEE Spring 2021
village pump of every participating Wikipedia language edition

We will keep the blog www.ceespring.eu discontinued because writing blog posts there showed little impact.

14. Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedian partners to implement this proposal?

No

14.1 Please describe these partnerships and what motivates the potential partner to be part of the proposal and how they add value to your work.

N/A

15. How do you hope to sustain or expand the work carried out in this proposal after the grant?

This is a recurring project since 2015 which will continue to be held annually in the future. We hope that it will be better supported by the CEE Hub once it becomes fully operational.

16. What kind of risks do you anticipate and how would you mitigate these. This can include factors such as external/contextual issues that may affect implementation, as well as internal issues, such as governance/leadership changes.

The main risks which may prevent the achievement of the metrics are related to participation and activity.

The risk of lower participation will be mitigated by intensified communication with the CEE communities and the general public in the period immediately before and during the contest. In this period, the team of international organisers will guide the work of the local coordinators who will have to set up the infrastructure for the contest locally. Furthermore, this risk will be naturally mitigated because of the project's recurrence and the prior knowledge that local coordinators and editors have acquired in the past. That said, most communities can use the infrastructure in the past to organise the contest locally, while the first-time participating communities can follow the pattern from the other communities.

The risk of lower activity will be mitigated by the local coordinators who will have to use their prize funds efficiently in order to attract editors with considerable contributions. This entails the adoption of clear local rules with a well-defined evaluation process and simple methods for measuring contributions which can be easily understood by potential participants. In order to address the gender gap, local coordinators are encouraged to consider allotting special awards to female participants. The team of international organisers will additionally attempt to gear activity by creating a timeline of communities, languages and themes by week.

Finally, it should be noted that the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine may potentially affect the participation of the Ukrainian Wikipedia community, which has been one of the participating communities with largest contributions in the past, and prevent displaced editors from taking an active part in the contest. We acknowledge that this risk can be hardly mitigated but strongly support the participation of the Ukrainian Wikipedia community and believe that there are editors who will find time to contribute.

17. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select a maximum of three options that most apply.

Identify Topics for Impact, Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt

18. Please state if your organization or group has a Strategic Plan that can help us further understand your proposal. You can also upload it here.

No

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation

19. What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?

CEE Spring 2022 will reveal the direction in which the writing contest develops, which will be used as a basis to plan and organiser its future editions. This year’s contest will have to provide answers to questions regarding the number of participating communities, community growth measured through the number of participants, content coverage measured through the number of written articles, share of female participants and its tendency over years, and coverage of topics related to women and human rights. Our learning from the contest with regards to these questions will have to enable us to make future decisions on how to increase gender diversity, how to reach out to underrepresented communities, how to help local participants and which thematic areas should be prioritised.

20. Based on these learning questions, what is the information or data you need to collect to answer these questions? Please register this information (as metric description) in the following space provided.


Main Metrics	Description	Target
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A

Here are some additional metrics that you can use if they are relevant to your work. Please note that this is just an optional list, mostly of quantitative metrics. They may complement the qualitative metrics you have defined in the previous boxes.


Additional Metrics	Description	Target
Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	N/A
Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities	N/A	N/A
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability	N/A	N/A
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors	N/A	N/A
Diversity of participants brought in by grantees	N/A	N/A
Number of people reached through social media publications	N/A	N/A
Number of activities developed	N/A	N/A
Number of volunteer hours	N/A	N/A

21. Additional core quantitative metrics. These core metrics will not tell the whole story about your work, but they are important for measuring some Movement-wide changes. Please try to include these core metrics if they are relevant to your work. If they are not, please use the space provided to explain why they are not relevant or why you can not capture this data. Your explanation will help us review our core metrics and make sure we are using the best ones for the movement as a whole.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics	Description	Target
Number of participants	N/A	N/A
Number of editors	N/A	N/A
Number of organizers	N/A	N/A

**Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project**
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A

21.1 If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation.

These goals have been set based on expectations based on quantitative data analysis from the international organising team and last year's results and will be used as a measure of success. Despite having over-achieved on some of the numbers last year, the total numbers are caused by local circumstances and are therefore difficult to manage on an international level.

Total number of participants from CEE: 500
Total number of participants worldwide: 550
Total number of female participants from CEE: 20% (100)
Total number of female participants worldwide: 20% (110)
40% of all newly created and significantly edited biographies are about women
At least 20 new articles on topics of every CEE community participating

These goals have been set based on qualitative estimations by the international organising team.

10% of the participants in all countries are new users
At least 3 new editors in every language version of Wikipedia with less than 70 regular editors

22. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected?

We will use PetScan to track the contributions from all participants in the writing contest and generate statistics which will have to show by how much each of the metrics has been achieved.

There is also a statistics tool run by User:Masti that updates the statistics page every day.

Financial Proposal

23. & 23.1 What is the amount you are requesting from WMF? Please provide this amount in your local currency. If you are thinking about a multi-year fund, please provide the amount for the first year.

8800 EUR

23.2 What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?

9565 USD

23.3 Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GWSJfqfMehunXV2MUE6jL388wewzf-_5gx7m4-R79Y4/edit?ouid=108958339043077788916&usp=sheets_home&ths=true

23.4 Please include any additional observations or comments you would like to include about your budget.

N/A

Please use this optional space to upload any documents that you feel are important for further understanding your proposal.

Final Message

By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.

We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

Feedback

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