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Grants:Project/Rapid/Interference Archive 2019 Wikipedia Programming/Report

< Grants:Project | Rapid | Interference Archive 2019 Wikipedia Programming
Report accepted
This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2018-19 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.


Goals

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

Goal One: Recruit new editors: We were very successful with this compared to our experience in previous years.

At our first editathon in the series, we brought in a subject expert to give a talk; this brought a large number of new editors who were interested in hearing the speaker, and then realized that they had the skills and ability to also edit wikipedia.

At our second editathon in the series, we had a great turnout of new editors who were really excited about the topic -- community radio. Perhaps one of the biggest successes of our editathon programming this year was matching the theme of two editathons to the theme of exhibitions at our venue; this brought out people who were really interested in the theme and who learned about the editathon because of their interest in the exhibition. A few of these new editors remarked that they hadn't looked at the possibility of editing wikipedia since the addition of the visual editor, and realizing how easy it is to edit with the visual editor made them much more interested in doing more editing in the future.

Our third editathon had low turnout because of an incredibly cold snap, but we still had one new editor who dove in and did a terrific job of editing. He commented when he left that editing wikipedia was much easier than he expected.

Goal Two: Add or improve content: We exceeded our expectations in terms of the number of articles created or added to, and our editathons created new articles that we're very proud of, because their importance was identified by exhibition curatorial teams as crucial for representation on wikipedia.

Outcome

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Please report on your original project targets.


Target outcome Achieved outcome Explanation
3 events 3 events Our events were scheduled as planned.
18 participants at each event, for a total of 54 20 editors at first event; 15 editors plus two other attendees at second event; 7 editors at third event. Total: 44 participants Our numbers were impacted by an unexpected cold snap for the third event, which then had only about 1/3 the attendees we planned for.
15 new editors 19 new editors We had much better than projected turnout for new editors. In general, New York City editathons have seen a decrease in new editors in the last few years, and we set our expectations accordingly. However, we tried new things: organizing editathons to draw on subject-area interest cultivated by exhibitions, and bringing in a subject specialist to speak at an editathon. These strategies attracted more new editors than expected.
54 articles created or improved 81 articles created or improved We saw a lot more new articles created and improved at our events than expected. We made editing very easy, by preparing a lot of source materials to match with well-curated lists of suggested articles for creating or editing; this was likely the cause for our high level of productivity!
10 repeat participants 5 repeat participants Because our editathons were related to a range of very different themes, we didn't see the same rate of return with participants that we hoped for -- they came more to edit about a specific topic, and less because they wanted to edit wikipedia more generally. As a result, they didn't come back as often to other editathons.


Learning

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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? We had a very good rate of articles created or improved; we believe that this is a result of putting a lot of work into curating lists of articles to create or edit alongside selecting and making available relevant source material.
  • What did not work so well? It was difficult to convince editors to return to multiple editathons; they came to our events largely because they were interested in the topic, and less because they wanted to come repeatedly to edit wikipedia.
  • What would you do differently next time? We're interested in having an event related to use of the Commons: potentially a Commons Upload Party related to a specific topic or event, and/or an event that would help editors insert Commons content into articles.

Finances

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Grant funds spent

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

Projected Expenses per editathon:

  • Food and drink (at $7 person)= $126
  • Childcare supplies = $50
  • Supplies (name tags, printing) = $20

Total per event: $186 Total budget (3 x 186): $558 NOTE: We realized after this budget was approved that the total per event ($126+$50+$20) should have been $196 rather than $186. As a result of this incorrect math, we asked for too little and had to adjust accordingly

Actual Expenses: Editathon 1:

  • Food and drink: $123.80
  • Supplies: $19.88
  • Childcare craft supplies: we used donated craft supplies, to save on funding and make up for the request shortfall noted above

Editathon 2:

  • Food and drink: $55 + $73.41
  • Supplies: $17.37
  • Childcare craft supplies: $57.04

Editathon 3:

  • Food and drink: $53.99 + $79.31
  • Supplies: $31.85
  • Childcare craft supplies: $49.20

Total spent: $560.85

Remaining funds

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Do you have any remaining grant funds? No


Anything else

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Anything else you want to share about your project?

Our editing was tracked on event dashboards: Dashboard for Women Make Change editathon Dashboard for Resistance Radio editathon Dashboard for Housing and Homesteading editathon

Our Resistance Radio editathon received press coverage in Hyperallergic

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