Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikimedia Korea Strategic Annual Plan 2023

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Applicant details

Wikimedia username(s):

User:Motoko C. K.

Organization:

Wikimedia Korea

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?

Yes

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

N/A

M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?

No

M1. Fiscal organization name.

N/A

Additional information

R. Where will this proposal be implemented?

South Korea

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:

Local

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)

N/A

M. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?

No

M1. Fiscal organization name.

N/A

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?

Our vision is that people from all around the world, especially, Korean-speaking people share all knowledge developed by human-being and Korea-specific knowledge.

To achieve our vision, we established our strategies, and planned our specific activities. These strategies are based on our past activities and learning.

We know we have to support the community's volunteer activities to encourage them to share knowledge, and the community needs to be productive. We have financially supported offline meetups and online edit-a-thons voluntarily hosted by users.

We also know the community needs to be more welcoming, and include diversity for our vision. We supported users who make guidelines for new users, and we helped sexual minorities, teenagers, and women to create their articles and share their knowledge by hosting edit-a-thons and photo-walks.

Our service still has systemic biases such as gender gap and geographical bias, and we know we have to solve it. We held some edit-a-thons to reduce the gender gap, but we learned we need to develop more effective activities to engage women users. Meanwhile, we have hosted photo walks to reduce the geographical bias, and we evaluated that it has been successful.

Our vision is not limited to Korean wikipedia, and we have put a lot of effort into activating Wikimedia sister projects. For example, we encouraged users to edit documents written in Old Hangul on Korean Wikisource, and it has been very successful and productive.

We also plan to improve Korea-specific contents through this proposal, because we are based in South Korea. We have improved contents related to Korean monuments, and we will support the improvement of contents related to Korean cultural heritage or pop culture.

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

We expect the community to be more volunteer and productive, because Wikimedia’s contents are created and maintained by the community. The Korean Wikimedia community is faced with a variety of problems. For example, constant and unproductive conflicts caused many users to leave the projects. The community’s unwelcoming atmosphere led to new users leaving. We need to solve this issue in the long-term.

We also expect the project to be more professional and diverse. Wikipedia aims to collect the sum of knowledge, but Korean Wikipedia lacks professional knowledge such as medicine, and engineering, because users are systematically biased. The project also lacks contents related to sexual minorities and the disalbed for the same reason.

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

To achieve the changes, our main strategies are:

Inclusive and healthy community
Diverse contents
and Capacity Building

For Inclusive and healthy community, we will:

support voluntary and productive user activities
cultivate a welcoming and safe environment
provide support in accordance with user’s life cycle
and support underrepresented group activities (e.g. women, teenagers, and disabled people)

To achieve the change, this strategy is urgent, because the Korean Wikipedia communitiy’s activity level is dropping. Cultivating a welcoming and safe environment is especially important, so that the community is constantly maintained.

We learned that the activity levels of users change as they age. For instance, many Korean Wikipedia users are middle school, high school and university students. They tend to leave the project after they get a job. We need to understand their life-cycle and plan some activities to engage them in the project constantly in accordance with their age and life-cycle.

Engaging underrepresented group activities is also necessary for less biased knowledge. They can point out that an article's viewpoint is biased or they can contribute to more diverse contents about the disabled, and sexual minorites.

For Wikimedia’s diverse contents, we will

reduce systematic content bias (e.g. gender gap, geographical bias)
improve Korean-specific contents
improve professional contents

and activate sister projects (e.g. Wikisource, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons)

Because Wikimedia’s systematic bias can’t be solved naturally according to statistical data, we need to intervene in this issue. We have run many activities to reduce content bias and improve professional contents, and we realized these approaches are effective and productive. The community of Korean Wikimedia sister projects are not active, so our activities to activate them are essential for a variety of Korean educational contents.

To achieve the above two main strategies, we basically need to build our own capacity. We believe that we can accomplish it by enhancing networks between volunteer members and our group, building partnerships with other groups. For example, we can plan a new activity in the wake of a suggestion from a disabled member.

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

To support voluntary and productive user activities, we have supported financially offline meetups and online edit-a-thons hosted by users. After the Covid-19 pandemic, supporting online edit-a-thons was relatively successful, but most of the voluntary meetups stopped, and we need to revive it next year. We also will encourage volunteers to help us to host our edit-a-thons and events.

We will support users who create guide videos for newcomers to cultivate a welcoming environment. We will host a conference to discuss over Wikimedia’s current issues and find solutions to them. We will follow the Universal Code of Conduct and the Friendly Space Policies in all of our events for a safe environment.

To support underrepresented group activities, we will enhance partnerships with other groups. For example, we hosted photo walks for teenagers in cooperation with Seoul Youth Center, and we provided them opportunities to share their pictures on Korean Wikipedia by renting laptops for the participants. We also built a partnership with Three Oceans, a neurodiversity-advocacy group, and we increased relevant Korean Wikipedia articles. We will maintain this approach next year.

We have put an effort to reduce systematic content bias by hosting edit-a-thons and photo walks. The photo walk aimed to reduce geographical bias on Korean Wikipedia, and participants have to take photos of monuments in Korean rural areas, and upload them on Wikimedia Commons and Korean Wikipedia. We think it was productive and we will host it next year. We will participate in Wikipedia Asian Month project to improve Asia-related articles on Korean Wikipedia. We will also host edit-a-thons and offline events to reduce gender gap on Wikimedia.

This year, we established our vision, and our board members suggested we need to improve Korean-specific contents including Korean cultural heritage and pop culture. We will host edit-a-thons and photo walks for both teenagers and adults to achieve this goal.

Improving professional contents is necessary for Korean Wikipedia to be an encyclopedia, but Korean Wikipedia lacks many professional articles. We concluded we especially need to improve articles related to medicine and engineering next year. We will award editors volunteer hours through a government-run platform to attract people who major in the subjects.

To activate sister projects, we designed an activity called “Old Hangul document digitization project.” In this project, editors typed documents written in Old Hangul on Korean Wikisource, and we awarded them volunteer hours. This activity was so successful that we ran this activity for two years, and we will continue this approach next year.

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.

WMKR 2023 Timetable.pdf

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

Yes, we have the team to implement our goals and activities. We have eight board members and paid two staff members. The board sets up our group’s strategies and makes decisions. The staff plans activities and executes them. The board members host some edit-a-thons and online events as volunteers. This year we plan to enhance the network between our general members and our executive office. It means our group will support our member’s volunteer activities and accept their opinion more. For example, one of our members has autism and he helped us to build a partnership with Three Oceans, a neurodiversity-advocacy group, this year.

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.

Socioeconomic Status, Sexual Orientation, Geography

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.

First of all, we learned many teenagers from low-income families don’t have their computers, and they don’t have any opportunities to learn how to edit Wikipedia. Our partner gathered teenagers from low-income families. We rented laptops for the teenage participants and taught them how to edit Wikipedia articles and share their photos on Wikimedia Commons.

Secondly, we identified a geographical content gap on Korean Wikipedia. Articles about rural areas lack photos more than urban areas. We host photo walks to reduce this content gap every year. In this event, participants visit a rural area, take photos of the area, and share them on Korean Wikipedia. We reimburse their travel expenses after the event.

Lastly, Korean Wikipedia lacks articles about minorities such as sexual minorities and disabled people. We realized this issue after we hosted edit-a-thons for minority groups. We will list articles that we need to improve in cooperation with other minority organizations.

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.

Education, 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.

Sexual Orientation, Disabilities, Age

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

We awarded volunteer hours to editors in order to attract new editors and less edited articles, using our non-profit status. We piloted this approach two years ago and we applied it to our other activities. For example, we gave volunteer hours to editors who typed Old Hangul documents on Korean Wikisource. It was so effective that we could attract new editors and activate the Korean Wikisource project. We also could improve articles related to autism and neurodiversity, and draw new editors, taking this approach.

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?

We strongly comply with Friendly Space Policy when we host our online and offline events. We endeavor to prevent sexual harassment and protect participants' portrait rights in offline events. We always announce the policy just before our offline events, and employ staff to protect participant's safety.

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.

Before submission of the proposal, board members discussed over next year's strategies. It was the first time for the board members to meet to plan strategies, and it justified the strategies more.

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

Yes

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.

Next year we will mainly build partnerships to reduce systematic content gap and support unrepresentative groups. We need to motivate our potential partners by suggesting shared goals. For example, we built a partnership with Seoul Youth Center. Our goal was to engage teenagers from low-income families in Wikimedia projects and their goal was to support teenagers’ educational activities. We suggested that our shared goal was to support educational activities of teenagers from low-income families. We also cooperated with Three Oceans, a neurodiversity-advocacy group, this year. Our goal was to improve articles related to disability and their goal was to promote the neurodiversity movement to the public. The group thought it could be helpful for their goal to improve articles related to neurodiversity on Korean Wikipedia.

These partnerships can include various types of contributions such as communication, mobilisation, and advocacy. Because we cannot easily reach out to teenagers from low-income families, we usually use our partner’s network with public schools. The partner promotes our activity to the public schools, and we rent laptops for participants in return. Partners can also help us to list articles to be improved. For example, when we want to improve articles about disability, partners can help us list relevant articles with their professional knowledge.

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

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.

We failed some offline activities because many Wikimedia users want to keep themselves anonymous and they are reluctant to attend offline events. To reduce this risk, we hosting some of our events both online and offline. We also need to contact potential participants directly and listen to their opinion.

At our strategy planing meet-up, we concluded that we need to award participants and event organizer proper rewards to engage them in our activities. We will contact active users and potential organizers and talk with them about what they want.

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.

Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Improve User Experience, Innovate in Free Knowledge

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.

Yes

https://docs.google.com/document/d/128PgF1RFPzCTk9Le7gORSwx8EkuCvgy-hpZsopfJRBA/edit

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation

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

In terms of Inclusive and healthy community, our learning questions are: 1. What factors motivated users to continue to contribute more actively? What factors act as barriers? 2. Do new organisers feel empowered and supported to organise new activities? 3. Were we effective in making people feel welcome, safe, not intimidated? What are some of the ongoing challenges? 4. How was our new strategy effective? Was it reasonable? 5. How many partnerships did you build to support underrepresented group activities? Were they successful or effective? Are our partners willing to continue the partnership?

In terms of Wikimedia’s diverse contents, we want to learn about: 1. Were our approaches to reduce systematic content bias effective? What was successful? 2. Are participants satisfied with our activities or approach? 3. Where could we gather volunteers to improve Korean-specific and professional content? 4. Do new editors have the skills needed? What form of training and support was most/less useful in gaining these skills? 5. How many sister projects did we activate? What factors acted as a barrier?

In terms of internal organizational outcomes, we want to learn about: 1.Has building our plan strengthened our organization or relationship to communities in any way? Have we managed to bring in underrepresented groups into the planning? 2. Did we communicate with our members efficiently? Did you engage them in our activities?

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
Number of members	The number of paid members	40
Number of events in which members participant		3
Number of professional articles related to medicine and engineering		70
Number of articles related to underrepresented groups	Number of articles related to underrepresented groups such as sexual minorities and disabled people	50
'		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	4
Number of strategic partnerships that contribute to longer term growth, diversity and sustainability	N/A	4
Feedback from participants on effective strategies for attracting and retaining contributors	N/A	10
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	400

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	200
Number of editors	N/A	N/A
Number of organizers	N/A	5

**Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project**
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target
Wikipedia	N/A	400
Wikimedia Commons	images and videos uploaded	120
Wikisource	Wikisource pages created or improved	30
Wikiversity	Wikiversity pages created or improved	5
N/A	N/A	N/A

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

N/A

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

We measure metrics manually, when we award volunteer hours. We often use Programs & Events Dashboard and Fountain Tool.

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.

80000000 KRW

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

55765 USD

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

WMKR 2023 Budget.pdf

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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