Grants:Project/Rapid/Wiki From Above 2016

statusFunded
Wiki From Above 2016
An aerial media and photographic competition for Wikipedia.
targetWikimedia Commons, Wikipedia (as many languages as possible)
start dateApril 17 (currently under way)
end date1 December
budget (local currency)R16,131
budget (USD)$1,027
grant typeorganisation
granteeDiscott
contact(s)• douglas.i.scott(_AT_)gmail.com• ndubaneds(_AT_)gmail.com
organization (if applicable)• Wikimedia ZA
website (if applicable)http://wikimedia.org.za/


Please see the sample Contest application before drafting your application.

Project Goal

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Choose one or more of the following goals. You can add or delete goals as needed.

  1. Add or improve content
  2. Recruit new editors
  3. Engage existing editors

Wikimedia Commons suffers from a lack of both video footage as well as aerial photographs. It has a particular lack of these sorts of media of places in Africa. This competition would increase the number of aerial photographs and video footage of places in Africa and Cape Town in particular. This is a continuation of the first Wiki From Above competition which was held in 2015, the report of which can be seen here and the grant application can be seen here. The main page for the 2016 Wiki From Above competition can be seen on Commons at the link here.

Project Plan

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Activities

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Tell us how you'll carry out your project. Be sure to answer the following questions:
1. What content will the contest focus on, and why is it important to your community? The contest will focus on aerial photographs and video media only with a particular focus on content taken by drones.
2. How will you let people know about the contest?

 
The first workshop for WFA 2015 participants in Cape Town, South Africa on the 25th May 2015. The event sought to show participants -mostly drone pilots- how to submit content to Wikimedia Commons and use it on Wikipedia and raise awareness of the event within the community.

We will/are notifying people in two ways. The first and most important is through drone and pilot community groups and getting their buy-in through face to face engagement. From the 2015 event we found this to be the most effective and reliable way to increase participation even though it is geographically limiting. This takes the form of workshops, speaking engagements, and campaigning by community champions/partners. The second is through social media using both free media (Wikipedia and Wikimedia ZA social media accounts for example) as well as paid social media such as Facebook adds targeting drone enthusiast communities specifically.
3. How will you judge the contest and award prizes? The judging formula will be the same as the 2015 competition. The judging has two objects, the first being to evaluate the submissions possible and actual usability on Wikipedia, the second is to ensure that submitted media is of a high quality. With that in mind I am proposing the following scoring system:

Points will be awarded for the following:

  • Can be used on a Wikipedia page = +5 points
  • how effectively it illustrates the topic of that page = score out of 15 points
  • Aesthetic quality of the media = score out of 10 points
Refers to the overall aesthetic value of the submitted media.
  • Technical quality of the media = score out of 10 points
This refers to things like the steadiness of footage if video footage, the size of the uploaded file (High resolution preferred), and overall quality of the media image.


4. For photo contests, what is the strategy to get images used on projects? The first is the establishment of a prize to incentivize participants to use submitted content on Wikipedia in the form of a "Best use on Wikipedia" prize. The second is through the organisation of edit-a-thons with the specific aim of using submitted content on Wikipedia.
5. Is there anything else you want to tell us about this project? The involvement of members of the local (South African) drone community in the form of the folks from Flying Robot will give us ,the organizers, access to the Drone community in Cape Town and South Africa more broadly.

Below is our proposed budget breakdown:

Description Requested Funds (ZAR) Requested Funds (USD)
Qty Rate Total (ZAR) Rate Total (USD) Notes
1 Prizes R12,421 $800
2 Workshops R2,158 $137 This includes R2,500 for transport (mostly for airfare to Johannesburg to run a workshop for the Johannesburg drone community) as well as for catering and unforeseen expenses.
3 Advertising R1,552 $100 This is for advertising expenses to publicise the event on Facebook groups focused on drone communities.
TOTAL R16,131 $1,027

The budget has increase a bit from last year's budget largely because we plan to host a workshop event in another city in South Africa (Johannesburg) so as to increase interest and support for the competition more broadly across the country. In last year's event the entries were dominated by participants form Cape Town and we believe this was largely due to the fact that the event organisers were/are based in that city and therefore all event promotion workshops done in 2015 were done in Cape Town.

We also want to add that the competition is currently under way. Although it is unusual for a grant request to come after a project has commenced we found ourselves in this unusual position for two reasons. The first was that the decision to run the competition for a second time in 2015 was taken at very short notice due to scheduling challenges within the drone community in South Africa and our desire to launch the event at an important national drone event in mid-April 2016 to maximise publicity. The second was that we had received prior notification about the soon to be existence of the rapid project grant and so held off until this grant type became available.

Impact

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Winning media from 2015
Best photograph. Currently used on two articles on en.Wikipedia, namely for Table Bay and Bloubergstrand
2nd best photograph. Currently used on three language Wikipedia's for the article on Pringle Bay and is "Most Valued" image for that category.
Best Video footage. Currently used on 3 Wikis.
2nd Best video footage. Currently used on 3 Wikis for the article on Rhodes Memorial. Was 'Media of the Day' on the 27 May 2015.
Best use on Wikipedia prize. Currently used on 6 Wikis, 3 on en.Wikipedia alone. Was 'Media of the Day' on 28 March 2015.

How will you know if the project is successful and you've met your goals? Please include the following targets and feel free to add more:

  1. over 15 participants
  2. over 130 of photos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons
  3. over 15 of videos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons
  4. over 45 entries used on Wikimedia projects
  5. over 75 articles on Wikipedia improved with entries used on them.

Resources

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What resources do you have? Include information on who is organizing the project, what they will do, and if you will receive support from anywhere else (in-kind donations or additional funding). We have a small number of volunteers most notably Alan Ball of Flying Robot who is our champion within the South African drone community.

Resources needed

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  • Funding for prizes
  • Funding for workshops (transport & catering costs mostly)
  • More connections with drone and aerial photography groups to get more people on board

Endorsements

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Community members are encouraged to endorse your project request here!

  •   Support Scrolling it quickly, it seems a very focused and good proposal. We do need more expertise in this field. It is worth the money.--Alexmar983 (talk) 12:57, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
let's inform some platforms