Grants:Project/Rapid/"A WikiVoyage to Puglia". Transl/Editathon@Uniba/Report
Goals
editDid you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?
Our “A Wikivoyage to Puglia” project was developed with the aim of increasing the number of volunteers among students at our University with a special focus on the creation/improvement of Wikivoyage articles on the Puglia Region in the South of Italy. The working languages were primarily Italian and English, but this time we succeeded in targeting also other languages taught at our University (French, Spanish, German, Russian), which was a goal for this project. All writing tasks started in sandboxes under close supervision by University professors in Linguistics and Translation Studies for each language involved. Before publication, each article was revised by native speakers for language accuracy and by an expert Wikimedian User:Ferdi2005 for compliance with Wikimedia standards.
Outcome
editThe most important and valuable result of the project was the successful involvement of students and teachers working with languages other than Italian, extending the numeber of users interested in Wikimedia-based teaching activities beyond the usual Italian-English pair. The editathon was part of a specific module aimed at acquiring soft (aka transversal) skills, which was advertised in the university website and was acknowledge 3 credits (UTCS). See the University's official website advertising the activities promoted for the achievement of soft skills, featuring "A Wikivoyage to..." on top of the list.
Please report on your original project targets. Please be sure to review and provide metrics required for Rapid Grants.
| Target outcome | Achieved outcome | Explanation |
| Number of events: 1 launch event open to the general public followed by seminars and training sessions and at least 3 online/offline editing sessions | Number of events: 1 launch event open to the general public followed by seminars and training sessions and 4 online editing sessions (see launch event and full program | On the basis of our previous experience, we realised that the students might need more than the planned 3 editing sessions to become familiar with advanced editing skills for Wikivoyage and therefore planned 4 editing sessions |
| 50 participants | 39 participants Complete list of editors | We expected nearly 50 participants, resulting from 10 repeat participants from previous editions and 40 new participants. In fact there were no repeat participants as this activity was advertised as one of over 100 activities promoted by our university to develop transversal/soft skills. Potential repeat participants preferred opting for something new rather than repeating an activity similar to those carried out in the previous years under the same project |
| Number of new editors: 40-50 | 38 new editors | See above |
| 4. Number of articles created or improved: 35 | 21 | The numebr of articles was lower than expected because many students opted for team work on larger articles (e.g. the Wikivoyage entry for "Bari" in Russian was edited by 4 different students who merged the content of their sandboxes in one final entry) |
| 10 | 1 | As explained at #3 of the present list, in mst cases potential repeat participants from previous editions were attracted by the opportunity to attend other modules |
Learning
editProjects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:
- What worked well?
The launch event was a real success, involving both University governance (Rector and Head of Department), Local Administators and stakeholders, Wikmedia people, and over 100 attendees in the audience. The editathon itself was extremely successful in involving students using languages other than English and some of the articles that were completed were extremely good. Others were good at language/content level but were not accurate enough in the use of templates and listings. All articles are still undergoing a revision process.
- What did not work so well?
Targeting other language communities made the revision process a bit slower as User:Ferdi2005 is accurately revising all sandboxes prior to publication to ensure that every article is edited complying with all the standards of the target community.
- What would you do differently next time?
We would reach out in advance to members from the language communities involved in the tasks (e.g. French, German, Spanish, Russian)
Finances
editGrant funds spent
editPlease describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.
The grant was used to renew our access to Sketch Engine - a computational lingistics tool used to analyze authentic texts of billions of words (text corpora) to identify what is typical in language and what is unusual. All other costs were covered using University funds devoted to Wikimedia projects. We applied therefore for a rapid grant only to cover the following expense: • Academic Licence Sketch Engine: 3600 Euros (VAT included) Receipt of payment for Sketch Engine
Remaining funds
editDo you have any remaining grant funds? There are no remaining funds as the licence actually cost 3660 Euros (we used University funds to compensate for the missing 60 Euros)
Anything else
editAnything else you want to share about your project?