Grants:Project/Rapid/TRahman/Amar Ekushey Article Contest 2021/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2020-21 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/TRahman/Amar Ekushey Article Contest 2021.
• 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?

The aim of the contest was to improve the quality of articles that are already present but holds negligible information with a special focus on the articles on women’s contribution and participation. Through this contest, we wanted to recruit new editors and engage existing editors also.

In this year’s contest, we specially invited the participants to work on the articles representing women, their rights, and violation of those rights in the week of International Women’s Day. A list was created mainly from the stub article category.

More than 1000 users registered for the contest. The contest was not easy, as individual participants had to translate at least 2000 words-long articles into Bangla; but considering various aspects, it was much needed to ensure the quality of these articles. A total of 220 articles from 127 contributors got improved in the whole contest. According to the rules of the contest, contributors need to translate the whole article from English to Bangla; and following them, a total of 114 articles got accepted for the contest. The articles were reviewed by the experienced Wikipedians and further checked by the organizing team.

Throughout the contest, weekly meetings were organized, where participants and organizers were present. The organizers provided answers to participants’ queries about the contest.

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
Number of articles improved: 200+	220	The contributors improved a lot of articles in various forms.
Number of participants: 150+	127	It is a challenging time for all of us. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools, colleges, and universities have shut down their campus activities. Students constitute the largest part of Bangla Wikipedia contributors, and they always participate the most in these contests. But due to the closure, many of them are residing in their own areas with poor network conditions.

See the related blog post on Diff

Media coverages

• Techvision34 (25.02.2021)
• Daily Naya Diganta (26.02.2021)
• RisingBD (24.02.2021)
• The World News (24.02.2021)
• Shadow News (26.02.2021)

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 press coverage of the event in local online and print media helped attract the attention of participants around the country, with more than 1000 accounts registered for the contest. There are many articles on Bangla Wikipedia with no significant information. But the importance of those articles is indisputable as they are some really fundamental topics. It has been a long-term community desire to organize something like this. Through this contest, articles on different areas including science, technology, biography, environment, philosophy, etc. are chosen and improved. Articles like Sound, Environmental engineering, Electric current, Sadness, Edgar Allan Poe, etc. were improved through this contest. In the week of International Women’s day, a new category was added and the participants improved the articles like Wife, Domestic violence, Equality feminism, etc. In the month of March, the active editor number was the highest this month considering both content and non-content pages The weekly meetings were helpful for the participants to solve their confusions; so that newcomers can get the necessary support.

The user who achieved first place in this contest is a complete newcomer and the user started contributing Wikipedia during the contest.

• What did not work so well?

Although the contest attracted notable attention from the newcomers and achieved a significant active editor number throughout the contest, many of them couldn’t finish their tasks.

• What would you do differently next time?

We shall consider providing more resources so that newcomers face fewer challenges while contributing.

Finances

Grant funds spent

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

Facebook Promotion: BDT 4,000
Gift Voucher for Winners: BDT 21,500
Gift Voucher for Reviewers: BDT 6,500
Certificates & Envelope Prepare: BDT 5,000
Certificates Printing: BDT 650
Courier Charge: BDT 1,560
Transport & Logistics: BDT 5,500
Zoom Subscription: BDT 17,196

Total: BDT 61,906

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

Remaining funds have been used or will be used for other approved mission-aligned activities. This use has been requested in writing and approved by WMF.

Yes, BDT 42,694. If possible, we would like to spend the remaining funds on other ongoing or planned WMBD programs.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

As explained above, unforeseeable Covid-19 restrictions were one of the major obstacles to this article contest. Moreover, this type of article contest (article improvement-only contest) was the first of its kind on Bangla Wikipedia. That being said, it took some time for many contest participants to familiarize who are usually familiar with article creation-focused contests. Therefore, many submissions couldn't be accepted (as the reviewers decided not to compromise content quality). The inefficiency of the MediaWiki content translation feature for section by section translation was another obstacle for participants who wanted to use the feature to avoid a relatively complicated wikitext editing style.

Aside from the regular support system (on-wiki page, VRT queue, social media, other email support, etc) The weekly Zoom support and discussion meetings were very successful in helping new editors. The participants also came to know the reviewers and were able to get direct help and suggestions. We have received many valuable suggestions from the participants and reviewers which we hope to implement in our future article improvement contests and similar programs.