Grants:Project/Rapid/Artexte Art+Feminism edit-a-thon/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid 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/Rapid/Artexte Art+Feminism edit-a-thon.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Yes we achieved our goals, we hosted one Art+Feminism editathon and met our two main goals. We were also able to encourage new women to become editors for Wikipedia as 90% of our editors were women and for many of them this ediathon was their first experience. Secondly, we contributed to closing the gender gap in Wikipedia by creating and improving articles about artists and authors from groups that are underrepresented in Wikipedia, including women, people of colour and people from the LGBTQ+ community.

The librarians at Artexte developed training tools in English and in French to support the editathon. This being their first training, the Wikipedian community in Montreal, Canada has now gained two new experienced trainers.

We also had a good mix of new and experienced editors. Experienced Wikipedians not only participated in the event, they also shared their knowledge with new editors in a collegiate fashion.

Another one of the goals for the event was to make it accessible for editors with children. In order to address this need we contracted a local non-profit organization, founded and run by women to offer a full daycare for infants and children. This service was used by many families, however, next time we will advertise a sign-up form earlier in our publicity to make sure target families of the service are aware that it is being offered.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1 event	1 event
40-50 participants	28 participants and 8 children	As this was our first event, it was difficult to predict the number of participants. Although there were less people than we had originally planned, all participants stayed for the entire afternoon. We had planned that there would be a turnover. In terms of engagement of editors, we believe that the objective was fulfilled.
20 new editors	20 new editors
30 articles created or improved	37 articles created or improved	The yield of the day included 16 new articles and 21 improved articles. Of the new articles many were translation of articles in English into French. In total, more than 20 000 words were added.
N/A repeat participants	N/A	This was our first event therefore we are unable to measure repeat participants for our space. However there were at least 5 repeat Art + Feminism participants.

Learning

Our partnership with the Musée d’art contemporain worked very well as we were able to make the event widely known in the community and encourage participating thanks to their strong social media following. We were also able to borrow artist files from the Museum’s collection making a greater number of resources available for editors to use.

Through our media communications before the event we encouraged people to create their Wikipedia account in advance. This was helpful because it saved time and meant that most editors were ready to start editing right away.

The training session at the beginning of the day was helpful to new users, but in future we would add more emphasis on translating articles, in particular how to use Wikipedia’s translation tools, as many new editors prefered to translate existing articles than create entirely new pages. The training was perhaps too technical and could have included more information on notability, what to expect afterwards in terms of how the page might evolve with future edits and how to use talk pages.

We also found that most users benefitted from one on one assistance, even after the training so it was necessary to go around to each user, to make sure they had all the tools they needed to start editing.

The public discussion at the end of the day went very well and almost all of the editors stayed to participate. This is something we hope to continue to do in future editathons as it helped to contextualize the days activities and generate ideas of how to best use wikipedia as both a contributor and a researcher and how it can bring greater visibility to artists.

We hope to make this a annual event and look forward to hosting another Art + Feminism editathon in 2019.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Food and drink = 130 USD (170 CAD)
Child care (including equipment and insurance) = 765 USD (1000 CAD)

Total spent = 895 USD

Total approved by Rapid Grant = 750 USD

Remaining funds

There are no remaining funds.

Anything else

Media coverage following the event included an article on the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal’s blog.

Another article was written about the event in McGill University’s student Newspaper Bull and Bear.