Grants:Project/Rapid/Gikü/Wiki Loves Earth 2021 in Moldova/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/Gikü/Wiki Loves Earth 2021 in Moldova.
• 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

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

Two goals have been met out of seven total. Or four – depending how you count. See details below.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets. Please be sure to review and provide metrics required for Rapid Grants.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
2,000 uploaded images	1,922 (1,885 valid submissions) +140 July photos	This particular goal has never been reached in any year, but in 2021 we came the closest to actually doing so: 94.25% of the planned quantity. And this is the absolute record of uploaded images in a single WLM Moldova contest; previous record was in 2017 with 1,737 valid submissions. The 7th place Moldova got in the country ranking is also a record. But wait! This number accounts for the images uploaded during the official contest window (June 1–30). If we take into account the photo-expedition that had been extended throughout July, we come to a number of 2,025 total images, which exceeds the planned value, making it the first WLE Moldova contest to surpass the planned number of images.
300 images used in articles	171	The majority of the uploaded materials was repetitive and depicted well-known and already well-illustrated areas. Still a decent number when comparing percentages of different countries.
50 participants	39 (34 with valid submissions)	The anticipated 'appetite' that Moldovans would have had for re-discovering their own country during the pandemic was not as strong as expected.
20 newcomers	30	We had few returns this year, which is a further proof that the contest was saturated from the beginning – the past participants having emptied their archives in 2016–2018.
40 new items covered	35 +9 in July	Only thanks to the photo-expedition, which is responsible for half of this number.
800 photos from the photo-expedition	364	The initial plan failed, and I asked another team to go in the expedition. They did not have the same amount of time available, and did not agree to share the expenses as initially planned. Details here.
40 25 covered areas during the photo-expedition	26	The newly hired team still displayed a lot of enthusiasm and used almost all their available weekends to travel in the countryside and visit obscure protected areas.

More insight into the history of the project, below.

Metric	2016		2017		2018		2021
	planned	actual	planned	actual	planned	actual	planned	actual	+ July photos1
No. of uploaded images	3,000	N 553	2,000	N 1,737	2,500	N 1,073	2,000	N 1,885	Y 2,025
Images used in articles	300	N ± 190	300	Y ± 476	350	N ± 232	300	N ± 171
No. of participants (photographers)	30	N 25 (17 valid)	30	Y 62 (54 valid)	50	N 37 (28 valid)	50	N 38
No. of newcomers	20	N 15	20	Y 49	30	N 25	20	Y 30
No. of new items covered	50	Y 63	50	Y 88	50	Y 61	40	N 35	Y 44
Photos from photo-expedition	(N/A)	(N/A)	100	Y 300	450	Y 495	800	N 364
Covered areas during photo-expedition	(N/A)	(N/A)	10	Y 10	30	Y 36	25	Y 26

¹ Official contest window was June 1–30, but the photo-expedition took place in June and July. Expedition photos made in June had been uploaded prior to June 30, thus making it into the official statistics. The July photos, however, were uploaded in August. So there are two ways to count results: 1) only counting the materials uploaded during June 2) counting all materials produced by the project.

Learning

Projects 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?
  • Promotion through regional Facebook groups proved effective; the posts were been seen by tens of thousands of people, with hundreds of engagements and dozens of shares.
  • We got a new power uploader – Criss90kf, who uploaded more than a thousand photos during the last hours of the contest.
  • Despite not being able to follow the initial plan, the photo-expedition went very well, with high-quality images being provided by the partner team for 26 obscure protected areas.
  • The Google Forms survey proved itself right: we did reach 150 to 400+ uploaded images and 37 to 52+ illustrated protected areas.
    • From the survey emerged the idea of the photo-expedition.
  • The diverse prize pool proved attractive for the participants – all of the winners expressed positive feedback about the prizing structure.
    • Participants especially appreciated the postcards gift.
  • Given past experience, the process of purchasing the gifts was easy and rapid.
• What did not work so well?
  • Was not able to distribute all the gifts in the planned time period. The winners are busy people, and as [nature] photographers they tend to travel a lot. I myself had a week of overseas vacation in August. Because of all of this, at the time of writing the report (August 30) 3 of the winners did not receive their prizes yet. One of them can't be contacted at all.
  • Montage jury tool was buggy and I spent a lot of time trying to correctly pull it off. Switched to the WLX jury tool between rounds, causing confusion and increased workload for myself and the jurors.
  • Forgot to give the photo-expedition team my collection of books, and had to assist them through IM at times.
  • Postcards are too thin (250 gsm; a more suitable paper type would have been 300 gsm)
• What would you do differently next time?
  • Winners should be given a deadline of answering organizers' call to hand out the prizes. A similar rule is enforced at Wiki Loves Monuments, where participants are obligated to have their emails activated. Problem is, in my case, that one winner did not answer to the emails either. The matter was resolved after I re-ran the lottery one time to find another winner instead of the unresponsive one.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Item	Number of units		Price per unit (MDL)		Price per unit (USD)		Amount (USD)		Comments
	planned	purchased	planned	spent	planned	spent	planned	spent
$60 gift certificate from the outdoor sports store X-Style	max 6	3	1,054.13	1,000	60	55.1690	180	165.507	This $60 gift was chosen by IurieSvet for their 2nd place win, by Tanyaofearth for their 'Best fresh image', as well as by Emile var Emreis for one of their 1st place win. Unfortunately, the store only had pre-printed vouchers with fixed amounts on them, so I could not have chosen a different voucher than the 1,000 MDL as an equivalent to the $60 amount on that date.
$60 gift certificate from the photography store Fotomax.md	max 6	3	1,054.13	1,070	60	59.0308	180	177.0924	This $60 gift was chosen by Criss90kf for their 3rd place win and 'Largest number of monuments covered by a single uploader', as well as by Emile var Emreis for one of their 1st place win. Thankfully, I could request any amount on the voucher so I went ahead and asked for an amount in MDL as close as possible to the equivalent of $60 on that date.
500 MDL gift certificate from Fotomax.md	1	1	500	540	28.4594	29.7912	28.4594	29.7912	Complementary for second place prize – the prize went to IurieSvet
Trust Primo Thin RivaCase VA2410 Power Bank	3	3	349	349	19.8647	19.2540	59.5941	57.762	Lottery prizes
5x postcard sets + design services	5+2	9	~150	50	~1,050	450	59.7648	24.8260	45 postcards in total, 5 different postcard designs. 5 sets for the winners, 3 more sets for the jurors, one more set for the photo-expedition team
Fuel for the photo expedition							200	250	$200+$50 were transferred to SPPN (photo-expedition team) on June 11 – about 4400 MDL. $200 come from the grant, $50 was my personal contribution. It was agreed with the grantmasters that the $50 amount will be taken from grant money, in lieu of the money saved on other purchases.
Total							708	704.9786

Exchange rates per Oanda; 'spent' dollar values were calculated based on the Aug 5 rate.

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds? Depends on the following two matters:

1. I gave SPPN (photo-expedition team) $50 from my own pocket, in order to encourage them to travel more. Given that the spent amount adds up to $53 less than the planned amount, can I use them to reimburse my aforementioned $50? If not, I will return them to WMF.
2. I did not hand out all the prizes yet, so I don't have the signed confirmations of last three winners yet. Two of them (SerKo Photography – lottery winner – and Emile var Emreis – first place winner) are abroad, the third (Elena Ioan) can't be contacted. Are these prizes considered as not distributed within the grant period and thus should be returned? Or am I allowed to postpone the meeting with them to September, when they return from abroad? What to do with the untraceable winner, should I re-run the lottery one more time to find another winner and give that person the prize?

No. All the matters have been resolved before new report end date.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?