Grants:Project/Rapid/Interference Archive 2018 wikipedia programming/Report

Report accepted
This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2017-18 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.


Goals edit

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

We are very pleased with how this project went; it provided us with the opportunity to continue existing ideas and projects by hosting a second Indigenous Peoples' Justice edit-athon (our first was in the fall of 2016), and it also allowed us to try new things: we have hoped to organize an editathon in conjunction with one of the regular exhibitions at Interference Archive in order to take advantage of exhibition resources as editing sources, and we did this for the first time with our Radical Education editathon; we also have talked at length about meeting with other activists and organizers to discuss how Wikipedia can be used as a platform to increase awareness of social issues, and funding from this grant allowed us to attend the Allied Media Conference and host a very engaging session on this topic.

We definitely met our goal of recruiting new editors, both by helping new editors engage directly in editing work at two editathons, and by sharing our experience and the value we see in this work with participants in a session at the Allied Media Conference.

We also saw some improvement in the skill of existing editors (including ourselves); this series of programming also allowed us to identify issues that we believe we can rectify with altered editathon trainings and procedures at future events.

We met our goal of adding and improving content by seeing editors work on 35 articles across our two editathons, of which 8 were new.

We did not meet all of our quantitative goals in spite of trying some new outreach methods -- with regards to the number of participants at each session -- but we feel that we did see good momentum build through our programming, and we'll adjust some of our quantitative goals as we look ahead to future programming.

Outcome edit

Please report on your original project targets.


Target outcome Achieved outcome Explanation
3 events 3 events We hosted two editathons and ran one train-the-trainer session at the Allied Media Conference
100 participants 57 participants We saw a lower turnout than expected at our editathons. This projection had been based on events in our space in 2016 and 2017; after a lower turnout than expected at an early 2018 editathon in our space we thought we could pick numbers back up by tring some new outreach methods to media outlets we hadn't tried in the past, but ultimately this wasn't successful. We believe that a higher frequency of editathons in New York City has contributed to the drop in turnout at our own events, and we will adjust our future expectations for editathons accordingly.
30 new editors 35 new editors Approximately 15 of the participants at our Train-the-Trainer workshop were new to Wikipedia, and approximately 20 of the participants across our two editathons were new editors
60 articles created or improved 35 articles created or improved We fell short of this target because of the lower turnout than anticipated at our editathons; we will adjust future targets accordingly.
15 repeat participants 8 repeat participants (not all repeat participants registered on the dashboard for each event) We fell short of this target because of the lower turnout than anticipated at our editathons; we will adjust future targets accordingly.


Learning edit

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?

Our Train-the-Trainer session was an incredibly inspiring conversation with a group of really engaged community organizers who came to understand the value that editing wikipedia can have for both teaching tech skills in their communities, as well as for increasing representation of social issues. Participants identified how wikipedia can be used, for example, to correct misinformation surrounding immigration policies or health issues, or to increase awareness of alternative narratives of activism.

  • What did not work so well?

Our turnout was lower than expected for our editathons. We did try some new outreach methods and may in the future continue to experiment with different outreach strategies, but we will also adjust our target expectations and focus on doing more in-depth training and editing work with fewer editors.

  • What would you do differently next time?

In the future, we will change some of the training procedures at our editathons to allow for more quality control of new articles before they are published.

Finances edit

Grant funds spent edit

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

Train the Trainer session at Allied Media Conference

  • Registration: $0 (we had budgeted $150 for this but received free registration from the conference for all our team members, and so we put this money towards our travel and accommodations instead)
  • Travel: $453.89
  • Accommodations: $500

October editathon at Interference Archive

  • Food: $149.67
  • Childcare: $79.75 (an Interference Archive volunteer offered to do childcare for free, so that instead of spending these funds on the hourly rate of a caregiver we could purchase supplies for a children's craft activity.)
  • Supplies: $21.20

December editathon at Interference Archive

  • Food: $152.34
  • Childcare: $80.61 (an Interference Archive volunteer offered to do childcare for free, so that instead of spending these funds on the hourly rate of a caregiver we could purchase supplies for a children's craft activity.)
  • Supplies: $18.27

Remaining funds edit

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

We do not have any remaining funds. Our grant was for $1450, and we spent $1455.73.

Anything else edit

Anything else you want to share about your project? The meetup page for our October editathon can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Indigenous_People%E2%80%99s_Justice The meetup page for our December editathon can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Radical_Education_Edit-a-thon