Grants:Project/Rapid/School in Common Wikipedia 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/School in Common Wikipedia 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

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

We met most of our goals and are very happy with how the project developed, it was our first time organising an edit-a-thon and we got a lot of positive feedback. The workshop was particularly useful, and we were able to help 12 new editors on that evening to make their first edits to Wikipedia.

The two consecutive editing days were successful, we had a group of dedicated editors who were motivated to make quality edits to Wikipedia.

Something we felt was really important was to create a space that was not intimidating, hierarchical and welcoming. With School in Common, we want to work with the notion of hospitality in different manifestations. We find that, in particular due to the contribution of Wikipedia which allowed us to buy snacks and provide lunch, as well as our efforts to create different seating areas and provide some art-works for people to engage with, we created a good atmosphere. We had participants come back for all three days to continue working on their edits, which was something we did not expect but were extremely happy to see.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Project metrics

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
30-50 participants	27 participants	We expected slightly more participants based on the interest on social media. We think that our learning curve here is to make the event less intimidating in advance (we asked people to prepare by creating a username and signing up to our dashboard, which may have been too much work for people to complete at home). We also think that in the future we might add some more programming throughout the days to draw people to the event, so they will stay on afterwards.
50 edits	137 edits	Despite our expectations of having 1 article edited per participants, we realised that participants were able to work on more articles, and generate more content. In total they contributed to 58 different articles and made 137 edits in them!

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?

The workshop worked very well, people were excited about the possibility of making small edits (adding references and linking to other articles) in just a short time. The atmosphere in the space was also something we were really happy with. We provided people with enough different places/positions to sit and work, and enough snacks and sandwiches to stay on for more than just 1-2 hours. We were very happy with the collaboration with Index who hosted us, they were a great support. The financial support from the Czech Institute Stockholm to hire a yoga teacher and provide traditional Swedish pastries (all vegan) was also really great, the yoga class focused on making people more relaxed, and feel positive and rejuvenated to start editing. We also think that having this class stimulated people to come and stick around for editing afterwards, even if that was not their initial plan.

We were very happy with the results overall: 137 edits to 58 pages! We were also very happy that people edited in many different languages - we expected only edits in English and some in Swedish - but we had contributions in: Spanish, English, French, Dutch, Chinese, Portuguese, Swedish and Greek!

What did not work so well?

We think that having two consecutive drop-in days, without any perks for people throughout the day to draw them to the edit-a-thon may not have been so smart. We think that perhaps in addition to that, we put too much emphasis in advance on the preparation for the edit-a-thon, we asked people to come with a username and a connection to the dashboard. We were afraid that we would not be able to provide one-on-one assistance, which is why we stimulated people to do these things at home, but this may not have been necessary, and could have caused people to be intimidated.

What would you do differently next time?

We would provide daily short workshop sessions in addition to the longer workshop we gave this time. In addition to that we would communicate more clearly to people what they can edit in a shorter time-span (for example, add references in just 1-2 hours), so that they do not feel like they need to come for an entire day (or even two consecutive days). We might also create a little bit more programming around the editing, for example a talk in the middle of the day, that will attract some more people to the space who then stay longer to edit.

Finances

Grant funds spent

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

We spent a total of 1629.35 SEK of this 1521.35 SEK went to bread, crackers, dips, vegetables, coffee, tea and snacks (chocolate & crisps)

The remaining 108 SEK was spent on paper cups and napkins.

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

370.65 SEK

Remaining funds from this grant have been returned to WMF in the amount of 370.65 SEK/US$43.98.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

We had an amazing time and hope to repeat this in the future with more editors and even more edits! Here is a link to School in Common's website where we will soon post an overview of our process in organising the edit-a-thon, and some images of the days at Index.[1]