Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikimedia Estonia Simple Annual Plan Grant for the year 2022/Midpoint Report
Report Status: Accepted
Due date: 2022-07-15T00:00:00Z
Funding program: Wikimedia Community Fund
Report type: Midterm
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General information edit
This form is for organizations receiving Wikimedia Community Funds (General Support) or Wikimedia Alliances Funds to report on their mid-term learning and results. See the Wikimedia Community Fund application if you want to review the initial proposal.
- Name of Organization: Mittetulundusühing Wikimedia Eesti
- Title of Proposal: Wikimedia Estonia Simple Annual Plan Grant for the year 2022
- Amount awarded: 72808.23 USD, 66189 EUR
- Amount spent: 26419 EUR
Part 1 Understanding your work edit
1. Briefly describe how your strategies and activities proposed were implemented and if any changes to what was proposed are worth highlighting?
- We have reached the middle of an active year and so far we have been working on an effective course. The organization of our Big Summer Meeting is in full swing, and the time will soon come when we can celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Estonian Wikipedia. In August, for the first time, we also intend to present the completed strategy to the entire association, so after its approval, a specific action plan can be created to achieve our strategic goals.
In the field of education, we are where we intended: at the beginning of the year, the Ministry of Education and Research of the Republic of Estonia confirmed us as its strategic partner. The partnership lasts for three years, and being a partner also means that we receive some financial support. For this support, we intend to recruit a specialist in the field of higher education for our team in the autumn, who will probably start working on doctoral students (a more detailed plan will be announced in the fall). During the spring semester, two people also completed their university internships with us - both translation and editing internships. The wiki club has also continued its work and we plan to move towards public places with the activities of the wiki club in the future. In the field of GLAM, our focus is currently on the Wikiquote project. Namely, Estonia is celebrating the Year of Libraries this year, and in cooperation with the Year of Libraries team, we are launching a project where library staff will add their favorite citations to the Wikiquotes page: the goal is to get 1,000 citations richer by the end of the year. We have also been involved in photo expedition projects and collaborated on virtual exhibitions at various museums. In addition, we are currently starting a tutorial videos project. As there are currently no specific and explicit Wikipedia tutorial videos in Estonian, we want to create a whole series of short but compact tutorial videos. The first videos have already been published!
2. Were there any strategies or approaches that you feel are being effective in achieving your goals?
- One of the working methods for involving and recruiting people in wiki projects is definitely a personal approach. Often, a face-to-face conversation is a better way to get people interested in wiki topics than bigger campaigns. The advantage of face-to-face communication is that a person can immediately ask all the questions he or she is hesitant about. The weakness of this method is that it requires a comprehensive bright-eyed wiki ambassador at all times and all places.
A similar approach is to catch the attention of stakeholders. For example, the pilot project of the Year for Libraries (2022) was similar to the big project: adding citations, but only within one library - about 35 citations were received in a few weeks. However, it is also necessary to spark the light inside these interest groups somehow. For example, we have also met with representatives of the institutions that gather senior citizens, but we are still waiting and planning further steps. However, we have been able to communicate face-to-face by conducting various training - for example, we were also present at the students' science festival. Effective and efficient communication is also needed to achieve almost every one of our strategic goals. This requires a stable and far-reaching communication strategy based on our overall strategy. At the same time, we try to make communication as broad as possible - we also involve experts in our field of communication with the public, etc.
3. What challenges or obstacles have you encountered so far?
- The biggest obstacles have emerged in terms of communication.
First of all, we have had a high staff turnover in the spring. The current communications manager left at the end of the winter, so we organized a new job competition. We hired two new employees to deal with communication: one as the communication manager of the NGO and the other as a communication specialist in the field of education in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Research. One employee managed to be on board for almost a month when she already found a new challenge, and the communications manager of the NGO also left the office at the beginning of the summer due to logistical insurmountability. Thus, the existing staff has had to constantly face new situations and to adapt them. As a solution, the current board has proposed hiring the current office manager as a full-time CEO. The CEO would be responsible, among other things, for the overall communication and smooth communication between the employees and the management board, as well as for the operation and well-being of the overall NGO. It will also ensure that staff can start working as a more effective team, organize teambuilding events, and improve the division of tasks and communication between them. Referring to the above, we have not been able to proceed with a forward-looking and clearly structured communication plan. However, we hope that this will also be started when the strategy is approved and an action plan is drawn up based on the strategy. Secondly, we are a little worried about finding members for the board of the NGO. The number of members we have left on the Management Board is currently 3. As being a member of the board requires you to invest your free time for several years, this is not a task that anyone would take on lightly. In order to solve this concern, we will discuss with members of the NGO how to make the place on the board attractive to newcomers as well.
4. Please describe how different communities are participating and being informed about your work.
- Age: At the beginning of the year, we focused on the group of seniors. We have been in contact with various associations of seniors and have also introduced them to Wikipedia and other ways to contribute to wiki projects. We have also conducted interviews with existing older collaborators, and the interviews will be published on our website shortly. Based on the interviews, an article has just been written, which will be published on the press portal Postimees and which could ideally invite more seniors to get acquainted with the possibilities of contributing to Wikipedia.
Disabilities: Contact with the local Association of the Blind has been received and cooperation is gaining momentum. The user survey "Blind on Wikipedia" is also complete and is awaiting a final review before being distributed to members and friends of the Blind Union. We will start processing the results in the autumn.
Unfortunately, in the light of the Russian-Ukrainian war, there are no such opportunities to develop Finno-Ugric cooperation projects as before. But we still intend to have some touching points with Finno-Ugric communities in Estonia. The involvement of Estonian Russians is also in question at the moment - it will probably be postponed a bit until the inter-ethnic conflicts have calmed down a bit.
Among our cooperation partners, we have cooperated more with various museums, and our newest cooperation partner in the field of libraries is the team of the Year of Libraries project. In the field of education, we continuously cooperate with the University of Tartu, as well as with the Estonian University of Life Sciences, etc.
5. Please share reflections on how your efforts are helping to engage participants and/or build content, particularly for underrepresented groups.
- As already mentioned in the previous answer, we are moving toward different communities in small but consistent steps.
For example, in order to cooperate with the blind, we currently have the help of the chairman of the Estonian Association of the Blind, with whom we are still working on the user survey questionnaire. He will also help to ensure that the questionnaire reaches the right target group and gets a considerable amount of answers. We have also worked on improving our communication - thanks to better and clearer advertising, 2 students (both from the University of Tallinn) have already done an internship with us in the first semester, and there are more interested - both in terms of coming to the internship and helping as a volunteer. We are also collecting new ideas on how to approach the seniors' group. We have already met several representatives of some associations working with senior groups this year and plan to continue to work with them and include this age group in everyday operations. Active cooperation has continued at the university level, nevertheless, we have also been in contact with some schools and teachers, with whom we hope to systematically cooperate in the future. With both the seniors' program and the wiki club, we would like to move our activities to public places (city libraries, etc.) in order to make access to us as easy and convenient as possible.
6. In your application, you outlined your learning priorities. What have you learned so far about these areas during this period?
- One of the main issues we raised was related to education. Whether and how to introduce students to wiki projects and whether it makes more sense to train teachers or students.
We have not yet reached full clarity, but so much can be said that it is certainly more effective to train teachers in the use of time resources. Teachers can use the same knowledge in their lessons for years. However, it is not as easy as it seems, because in the Estonian education system, the workload of teachers is very high and thus all this training can be wasted and not reach the main focus: students. So it seems that at the moment it is most sensible to train both students and teachers - may be some teachers will join the topic and can continue to train, but we will also ensure that the training reaches the target. The main learning priority in the field of GLAM was to find different ways to work with GLAM institutions. This has gone well: the aforementioned collaboration with libraries in the framework of the wikiquote project, the VikiMuseum project and past virtual exhibitions, and other collaboration projects with museums. At the moment, the focus is still on finding answers in the field of communication. The aforementioned staff turnover in the field of communication has not given time to develop a concrete strategy. We have also raised the question of what makes people come to Wikipedia. This issue is more of a philosophical nature and we will probably work on it a lot in the future.
7. What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your work?
- The second half of the year promises to be eventful. First of all, we are focusing on the association and ensuring that the Big Summer meeting and the jubilee of the Estonian language Wikipedia will be held with honor. Longer goals for this year include the association's stable and well-thought-out communication, the completion of a tutorial videos project, the continued involvement of students and teachers, the Wiki Museum project, art month in Wikipedia, some competitions, and more.
Part 2: Metrics edit
8a. Open and additional metrics data.
| Open Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | 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 |
| Additional Metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of editors that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of organizers that continue to participate/retained after activities | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Diversity of participants brought in by grantees | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of people reached through social media publications | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of activities developed | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Number of volunteer hours | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
8b. Additional core metrics data.
| Core metrics | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | All participants: 300, new of them: 200. | 300 | 165 | All participants: 165, new of them: 145
Inside this number, people who have participated in our trainings, lectures, and workshops are counted. Also, persons who take part in Vikiklub, photo expeditions, etc. |
Counting heads |
| Number of editors | All editors: 2000, new of them: 1000. | 2000 | 42 | The participants of the competitions are reflected here, also the contributors who can be counted with pictures and quotes. Unfortunately the number does not include persons who, thanks to our activities, find their way to Wikipedia, but outside of campaigns and competitions. | Counting heads |
| Number of organizers | All organizers: 20, new of them: 12. | 20 | 8 | In light of the high staff turnover, we have not been able to focus on volunteers too much. However, we do have a couple of volunteers that we have already set up appointments with for the fall. | Counting heads |
| Wikimedia Project | Description | Target | Results | Comments | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | New articles created or improved 5000 | 5000 | 634 | Wikipedia
To date, we have held two competitions - language editing workshops and CEE spring. The amount received is the combined result of these two contests (articles improved or created). |
Counting the results of the competitions. Unfortunately, articles or corrections made as a result of our work outside of competitions (e.g. during trainings) are excluded from such counting. |
| Wikimedia Commons | Images uploaded 1000 | 1000 | 126 | Wikimedia Commons
The measured number is the sum of the photos from two photo expeditions. However, more pictures will probably be added as part of the already existing photo expeditions, and we are also planning to undertake more of them. |
Counting |
| Wikidata | Items created or improved 300 | 300 | 10 | Wikidata | In the first half of the year, we have not yet managed to take Wikidata to a greater extent, and therefore the measurable result is also small. |
| Wikiquote | Pages created or improved 100 | 100 | 54 | Wikiquote
We have launched a big campaign as part of the Year of Libraries. So we are already closer to our goal than we thought at the beginning of the year. |
Counting added quotes by librarians. |
| N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
9. Are you having any difficulties collecting data to measure your results?
- Mechanical counting is quite imprecise, so in the new year we will certainly test the tools recommended by WMF - perhaps our numerical data will be even more accurate.
I'm a bit confused at the moment about the difference between open metric and core metric. I also see that the open metric lines in the 2022 funding application are empty, I don't remember filling them in either.
10. Are you collaborating and sharing learning with Wikimedia affiliates or community members?
- Yes
10a. Please describe how you have already shared them and if you would like to do more sharing, and if so how?
- Our good cooperation partners in the field of scientific photography are, for example, the Swiss, with whom we are planning to soon increase cooperation in the field of GLAM. We still communicate more closely with our immediate neighbors and have taken part in the events and competitions of the CEE region.
11. Documentation of your work process, story, and impact.
- Below there is a section to upload files, videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, e.g. communications materials, blog posts, compelling quotes, social media posts, etc.). This can be anything that would be useful to understand and show your learning and results to date (e.g., training material, dashboards, presentations, communications material, training material, etc).
- Below is an additional field to type in link URLs.
- We have worked hard on our own website and tried to make it attractive. For this purpose, we have posted various experience stories, news, introductions about our daily activities, etc.
Link to our webpage: https://wikimedia.ee/ Link to our freshly released tutorial videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFlqvS0NddovS0fKhi2A1Uw/featured
Part 3: Financial reporting and compliance edit
12. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.
- 26419
13. Local currency type
- EUR
14. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.
- Upload Documents, Templates, and Files.
- Provide links to your financial reporting documents.
- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uuWSrZr-pWtHHLZ7X7IQBt-FlS7TZWwI46B_Q0QYU0s/edit?usp=sharing
15. Based on your implementation and learning to date, do you have any plans to make changes to the budget spending?
- No
15a. Please provide an explanation on how you hope to adjust this.
- N/A
16. We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being a grantee has been so far.
- Thanks for this additional question. I'd just like to say, that this portal makes things much more structured than in meta, thanks!