Grants:Project/Nattes à chat/Les sans pagEs/Midpoint

Midpoint report



Report accepted
This midpoint report for a Project Grant approved in FY 2017-18 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.
  • To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Nattes à chat/Les sans pagEs.
  • You may still review or add to the discussion about this report on its talk page.
  • You are welcome to email projectgrants(_AT_)wikimedia.org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.




Welcome to this project's midpoint report!  This report shares progress and learning from the grantee's first 3 months.  


Summary edit

In a few short sentences or bullet points, give the main highlights of what happened with your project so far.


We have focused on enlarging the community working on the gender gap in francophone wikimedia projects both through local initiatives and events and trying to maintain an active wikipedian page reporting all events, sharing information and insights. The goal was to identify local leaders who could be encouraged to build their own group and projects locally, this part being one of the the most challenging, as well as grow the online community on the project page.

All local groups have planned and organized events at their local level to reduce the gender gap on the francophone Wikipedia and Wikisource.

The activity of all groups has been tracked on on one single dashboard program here: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/campaigns/les_sans_pages_/programs

1788 articles were created and announced on the main project page.

Methods and activities edit

How have you setup your project, and what work has been completed so far?

  • Have local events organized by local contributors in Geneva, Grenoble Marseille, Montpellier, Nantes, Paris
  • Share and distribute information on how to create a project and manage it
  • Manage the main project page and communicate all activities through calendars and activity newsfeed
  • promote the project using media, social networks (mainly Twitter and Face book) and a wordpress blog
  • engage the community of online contributors
  • identify potential leaders for future development of local initiatives


Describe how you've setup your experiment or pilot, sharing your key focuses so far and including links to any background research or past learning that has guided your decisions.  List and describe the activities you've undertaken as part of your project to this point.

  • listing all events on a global calendar
  • set up project pages for all emerging groups
  • train local contributors to manage a project
  • inform about our work on social medias
  • encourage contributors to visit other groups ans join wikimedia events
  • encourage contributors to report on wikipedia and on a blog after an event



Midpoint outcomes edit

What are the results of your project or any experiments you’ve worked on so far?

1- extensive press coverage of the sans pages edit

Press review available here: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Les_sans_pagEs/Outils#Revue_de_Presse

2- figures edit

We have two sorts of figures concerning 1) direct measurable impact at local event 2) evolution of the online project on wikipedia. The link between the two is evident but hard to quantify.

Direct IRL impact edit

Online URL impact edit

The project on wikipedia has grown significantly. We have during the summer set up an evaluation process of the produced articles.

Link to the evaluation process: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Les_sans_pagEs/Outils#Veille_automatique_et_autres_pages_(labellisations,_etc.)

This enables us to follow up on produced articles and have an idea of the most read pages : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Les_sans_pagEs/Outils#Articles_les_plus_populaires_du_projet

We have allready exceeded our goals (1000 articles by the end of 2018) as the project has generated 1788 new articles in 2018 at the end of november. So one can estimate the indirect online impact as approx. 4 times higher as the direct IRL impact. Stats relating to the contributors announcing their articles on the project page can be found here: https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/fr.wikipedia.org/Projet:Les_sans_pagEs/Articles_récents?editorlimit=200

date number of new published articles views of the main project page
jan 2018 163 1796
feb 2018 155 1867
march 2018 191 1374
apr 2018il 149 2557
mai 2018 199 1863
june 2108 176 1480
july 2018 122 1095
august 2018 182 1997
september 2018 136 1457
october 2018 136 1687
november 2018 179 1375
Total 1788 18548

Evaluation of the quality of the articles edit

Our goal was to achieve 5 quality articles by the end of 2018, but for the moment we have none (the only one announced is there as a set exemple).

However 6 articles upgraded to "good articles" during the year. The amount of articles produced by the project is over 4200 articles in two year

Blog les sans pagEs edit

We have created a blog and an official email for les sans pages, with the idea of having contributors write about their experience.

Presence on social medias

  • Twitter: more than 1200 followers and 7000 tweets : https://twitter.com/lessanspagEs
  • Face book : more than 800 followers and interractions with newbies and supporters. We have shared more than 20 events on Face book
  • Instagram : a new account was set up but we are a little less active on there


Please discuss anything you have created or changed (organized, built, grown, etc) as a result of your project to date.We have managed to create a new group Les sans pagEs Méditérranée in the south of France.

Finances edit

Please take some time to update the table in your project finances page.  Check that you’ve listed all approved and actual expenditures as instructed.  If there are differences between the planned and actual use of funds, please use the column provided there to explain them.


Expense Approved amount Actual funds spent Difference
Local group funding Nantes 3750CHF 628.41 CHF 2371.59 CHF
Web site 250 581.40 CHF - 331.4 CHF
Grenoble local group funding 3,600.00 104.32 CHF 2895.68 CHF
Paris local group funding 3300 576.25 CHF 2723.75 CHF
Sion local group funding 3600 757.6 CHF 2242.40 CHF
Geneva local group funding 1200 814 386
Travel cost 4000 4739.68 CHF - 739.68 CHF
project manager 2000 236.73 CHF 1763.27 CHF
Total 21450 8 438.39 CHF 13011.61 CHF


Then, answer the following question here: Have you spent your funds according to plan so far?  Please briefly describe any major changes to budget or expenditures that you anticipate for the second half of your project.

We have spent the funds according to the plan exept for :

- website : the price we had to pay exceded what was initially planned. The person who ended up in setting up the website used wordpress as this was the system she already knew, and the person who initially was to do it experienced changes in her personal life that made it impossible to sustain her level of engagement. The prices were somewhat different from the estimation made initially.

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 are taking enough risks to learn something really interesting!  Please use the below sections to describe what is working and what you plan to change for the second half of your project.

What are the challenges edit

What challenges or obstacles have you encountered?  What will you do differently going forward?  Please list these as short bullet points.

  • training local project coordinators to project management and leadership when they are still learning how to edit Wikipedia
  • Having local coordinators understanding well what can be financed and what cannot, the challenge being that some would like equipment (computers, cameras), services (legal counseling when being harrassed) and these are not budgeted or not part of the funding policy of the wikimedia foundation
  • Communicating broadly about the possibility to have transport to events financed was a challenge
  • Reimbursing people avoiding transfer fees across countries
  • Having people committed to organize the events throughout the year given the implied workload
  • Including new locations willing to organize events and meetups
  • managing the notoriety of the project in the media is challenging (both in terms of time and exposure)
  • the online project management of les sans pages is taking increasingly more time with the sucess of the project and the rise in the number of published articles leading to criticism about the quality and, given the transparent feminist approach some criticism. Some of the disagreements even made it to the mainstream news for such an incredible thing as the deletion of a category (see 1 and 2). The president of the French chapter was interviewed on the subject as well.

What is working well edit

What have you found works best so far?  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.

  • Support of local Wikimedia chapters: we have been able to count on the increased support of the local chapters, Wikimedia France and Wikimedia Switzerland. The French chapter is offering a new contributor space in the Paris office which we have used once per month for Wikisource events (see https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Autrices

The Swiss chapter has offered help in organizing a new set of events in MAMCO, the Museum of modern art in Geneva. (see project page here: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Les_sans_pagEs/WikiMercrediMAMCO#LieuPage

  • New geographical-based local group emerged. In June 2018, Anthere and Sophiedidacressources took the steps to launch a LSP initiative in the South. It was called Les sans pagEs Méditerranée. The new group merged with LSP Montpellier at the same time. Whilst not initially planned a year ago, this group is being very active (about 2 to 3 activities per month) and has gathered local interest.
  • The notoriety of the online project makes it easier and easier to find institutions willing to host events, collaborate.
  • The local groups seem to be able to continue thriving after the end of the grants having found local institutional supports, most of all by secured locations for workshops and event hosting.
  • social network dissemination of our work on Twitter and Face book



Next steps and opportunities edit

What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your project?  Please list these as short bullet points.  If you're considering applying for a 6-month renewal of this grant at the end of your project, please also mention this here.

  • securing a stable motivation of new leaders for each location
  • focusing on the quality of produced articles on the online main project page
  • redistributing the budget to the most active sections and the ones that need it most
  • adressing the need of leaders of groups who report finding it hard to manage groups on a volunteer basis over a long period of time.
  • finding stable funding to be able to continue the local groups after the grant comes to an end

Grantee reflection edit

We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being an grantee has been so far.  What is one thing that surprised you, or that you particularly enjoyed from the past 3 months?ot want us to

It is a great experience but challenging with the growth of the project and the press coverage. One of the debates over the delation of a category (categorie:Matrimoine) even made it to the front news, which sets up a whole different range of issues and a sense of increase responsibility.

The workload is tremendous and not sustainable for volunteers overtime.