Grants:Project/WM HU/Editor retention program/Timeline

This project is funded by a Project Grant

Timeline for WM HU edit

Timeline	Date
Reaching 25% of the defined outputs	15 June 2019
Midpoint report	14 September 2019
Reaching 75% of the defined outputs	15 December 2019
Final report	30 March 2020

Monthly updates edit

Please prepare a brief project update each month, in a format of your choice, to share progress and learnings with the community along the way. Submit the link below as you complete each update.

March edit

Signing the grant agreement:
- sending the required documents and data for the agreement,
- finalizing the text and data of the agreement,
- board decision for accepting and signing the agreement,
- signing the agreement, then sending it to the Wikimedia Summit, where it was signed on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Filling the position of the community and project manager:
- preparation of the job application,
- board decision that the position can be offered,
- waiting for the applications,
- evaluation of the applicants,
- board decision about the choice,
- preparation of the contract,
- board decision about the contract,
- signing the contract.
Creation of the project pages on Meta.
Announcement of the project and the project start on Wikipedia and on mailing lists.
Preparation of a Google Summer of Code application for an advanced statistics toolset.

April edit

Task list for the project.
Translating and implementing the friendly space and the editor ban policies:
Coordinating and integrating the talk page consultation into the project.
Generating editor activity statistics:
Evaluating the Google Summer of Code applications for an advanced statistics toolset.
Based on a community discussion, deleting content of the discussion pages of the anonymous contributors (over 32 thousand edits): temporary solution until the short term solution or the long term solution will be developed.
Community consultation about Wikicamp 2019.
Discussion about the civilized discussions, resulted in a Wikipedia essay.
Organizing the May wiki-meetup.
Initiating to join the Growth program of WMF:
- application on the discussion page,
- translation of the Growth page,
- translation of the Growth newsletter,
- translation of the Newcomer_homepage page.

May edit

Organizing and realizing a wiki-meetup in Budapest
Personal interviews with active and already inactive editors
Research on the effect of the Flagged Revision's settings on the editors' number and activity
Community consultation on the Wikicamp 2019

June edit

Organizing and realizing a wiki-meetup with several presentations.
Online survey and feedback form about wiki-meetups.
Organizing WikiCamp 2019
- survey about the place and date of the event,
- program ideas,
- booking accommodation,
- registration form and promotion of the event.
Preparing the task for a statistical toolset (based on volunteering work).
Submitting a Wikimania presentation draft about the editor retention program.
Writing out three scholarships for Wikimania attendance (on behalf of Wikimedia Hungary).
Preparing to join the WMF's Growth program
- creating a page on huwiki for the subproject,
- translating the Growth newsletter for June,
- promoting the program and looking for volunteers.
Organizing a celebration event for the 16th anniversary of the Hungarian Wikipedia.

July edit

Decision about an event ban for one of the community members, consultation with the WMF's Trust and Safety Team.
Organizing and realizing a meetup celebrating the 16th anniversary of the Hungarian Wikipedia.
Organizing the travel of two volunteers for Wikimania 2019 through chapter scholarship.
Re-generate a statistical analysis about the flagged revisions and the dynamics of the Hungarian Wikimedia community (for this ticket) because of a methodological change how the number of editors is interpreted at stats.wikimedia.org/v2.
Organizing and realizing the WikiCamp 2019:
- collecting the registration fee,
- organizing equipment (screen, projector, roll-ups, power strips etc.),
- finalizing the accommodations,
- preparing the program,
- reminders, instructions and general information for the participants,
- managing the camp program,
- administration after the camp.
Writing out two scholarships for Wikimania CEE Meeting 2019 (on behalf of Wikimedia Hungary).
Preparing to join the WMF's Growth program:
- starting a community consultation about the introduction of the Growth tools,
- ongoing translations.

August edit

Surveys and collecting feedback: about the meetup in July and about the Wikicamp 2019 (also for non-participants: [1] + mailing lists).
Presentation submission for the CEE Meeting 2019.
Preparing the presentation for Wikimania about the Editor retention program.
Updating the activity statistics:
Preparing a new statistical page for newcomers.
Wikimania in Stockholm:
- panel discussion and presentation,
- discussion with the Growth team,
- discussion with the Space team,
- discussion with the Talk page team,
- discussion with the Research team,
- organizing an Editor retention meetup, workshops about editor retention, starting to build up an international community for editor retention,
- involving volunteer developers for the statistical portal,
- participating on the CivilServant's Summit,
- doing the administration of the chapter scholars travel for Wikimania,
- reports (1, 2) and a blog post about Wikimania.
Preparing surveys for
- newcomers,
- active editors,
- inactive editors.
Organizing and advertising events:
- a wiki meetup in Cluj-Napoca (together with the Romanian community),
- a communication training,
- a wiki meetup in Budapest.
Preparing Wikimedia Space for introducing for the (Hungarian) Wikimedia community
- creating a communication channel (subcategory) for the Hungarian community,
- testing and developing its features.
ORES/Wikilabels updates for the Hungarian Wikipedia:
Preparing a contract for a software development (about community service awards).
Preparing the midpoint report.

September edit

Sending out emails and talk page messages for surveys, and collecting feedback:
- newcomers,
- active editors,
- inactive editors.
Meetups in
- Cluj-napoca,
- Budapest.
Organizing a training and workshop about friendly communication:
- in Budapest.
Software development for the community service awards.
Blog post about the malicious attack on Wikipedia
Preparing the midpoint report of the project.
Preparing a presentation for the CEE Meeting.

October edit

Two team members participated on the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2019:
- gave a presentation about the conclusions of the statistical analysis on the Hungarian Wikipedia;
- organized an editor retention meetup;
- organized an editor retention roundtable discussion;
- participation on the learning day about motivation and retaining volunteers, conflict management and culture of experimentation;
- participation in the Recruitment, retention & managing volunteers workshop;
- participation in the Workshop on Community health;
- participation in the presentation about "Attracting volunteers for Bashkir Wikipedia through social networks"
- participation in the Community Capacity Development session;
- participation in the workshop about newcomers retention;
- discussions about the Growth experiments and about the Wikimedia Space project.
Finalizing the necessary tasks in order to join the Growth experiments:
- reaching consensus on the village pump about joining the project;
- discussing with potential mentors, list of mentors;
- translation the interface of the software;
- translation of the privacy statement;
- translation of the documentation:
- translation of the newsletters:
- filling out the necessary parameters for the deployment.

November edit

Participation on the Volunteer Supporters Network Meeting in Zurich
- presentation of the ongoing Hungarian editor retention program with some core experience,
- introduction of the WMF's Growth experiments and the Wikimedia Space,
- exchange of ideas and experience in the field of volunteer support.
Organizing a wiki-meetup.
Contracts and administration related to the project.
Introduction of the Wikimedia Space for the Hungarian community.

December edit

Organizing a Christmas party for the editors.
Introducing Discuss Space for the community:
- introduction on the village pumps, Facebook groups, mailing lists,
- initiating topics to start discussions,
- training and education how to use the forum.
Last work the community service awards' software (coordination of software development, administration).

January 2020 edit

Organizing a Wikipedia birthday party in collaboration with the Petőfi Literary Museum
Updates and new translations of the surface and documentation pages of the Growth experiment:
Deployment and testing of the Growth features to the Hungarian Wikipedia, and its introduction to the community

February 2020 edit

Organizing editor meetups in
- February,
- March and
- April.
Managing tools of the the Growth experiments.
Introducing the Talk pages project and the Replying beta features on the Hungarian Wikipedia.
Accounting the project costs.

March 2020 edit

Cancelling the March meetup.
Installing and testing jitsi for online events.
Experimental online meetup:
- surprisingly high participation: many community members participated, who don't participate on in-person events because of geographical distance or other reasons;
- our local jitsi instance could not serve more than 20 people.
Installing and testing BigBlueButton.
Registering for Google Meet (as part of the Google for Nonprofit program).
Introducing the new Talk pages features for the Hungarian community:
- blog post,
- on the village pump.

April 2020 edit

Testing the new Talk pages features
- collecting feedback from the Hungarian beta testers
- summarizing and reporting to the developer team
Blog post how the pandemic situation has changed the number of page views and the top read articles in March on the Hungarian Wikipedia
Finalizing the registration for GSuite for Nonprofits at Google
Testing online conferencing tools with larger number of participants (local jitsi instance, local BigBlueButton instance, Google Meet)
Cancelling the April in-person meetup
Online meetup with presentations (digest of the meetup)

October 2020 edit

Presentation of the results of the community survey on the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2020
Community discussion and voting proposal about the configuration settings of the Flagged Revisions on the Hungarian Wikipedia
Local community wishlist
Updating statistics for the service award
Contract with a developer for the statistical portal
Online meetup (digest of the meetup)

November 2020 edit

Local community wishlist
Voting about the configuration of the Flagged Revision extension (and task T210224)
Development of the statistical portal (first phase)
Updating the activity statistics:

December 2020 edit

Statistical portal is presented to the community:
- Wikipedia page of the portal
- First module of the statistical portal is available
Updating the activity statistics:
Updating statistics for the service award
Blog post about the new statistical pages
Blog post about the local and global community wishlist
Blog post about the results of the Wiki Loves Earth
Final report of the project
Project survey

Extension requests edit

Extension request button edit

Is your final report due but you need more time?

New end date requested edit

30 September 2020

Rationale edit

Dear @I JethroBT (WMF), dear WMF staff,

I am writing to you to request an extension of our grant deadline to 30 September. I apologise that this request comes after the deadline.

While we have made good progress on the activities foreseen in the grant, we have slipped behind schedule while some of the focus was taken by other chapter activities. (Indeed, we see this project grant as a stepping stone in a longer pathway to also increasing our chapter's capacities, as clearly there are bottlenecks.)

On the bright side, Wikipedia and Wikimedia continues to enjoy support in Hungary, also in terms of donations of 1% of the income tax of our supporters, which are time and purpose restricted grants. At the end of last year the board has decided that they would use a part of expiring "1% funds" to cover part of the cost of the community and project manager hired to manage this grant, allowing for the best use of funds. This allocation of own funds also acknowledges that in the last few months the community and project manager had split some of his focus to support volunteer initiatives (community organised contests for example) that were not part of this grant but that show promising signs of community health. This has meant that there are remaining funds available from the grant.

As we would like to see the activities originally foreseen (with online variations of any in-person events) come to their originally planned conclusion, we propose to use the remaining funds to cover the extension, rather than return the funds immediately.

Based on your feedback and approval, we can proceed now with the final analysis of the outcomes for a final report on the basis of this current status, or continue the project along this updated schedule.

Let me know, if you have any questions and if you think the above solution is workable.

Hope you are all safe in these challenging times,

best regards,

Samat (talk) 21:26, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

@Samat: Thank you for your request for an extension, and for explaining the circumstances around prioritizing using time-sensitive funding related to donations. I also appreciate that you will be working to convert your in-person events to online events where possible. Your request for an extension until 30 September is approved, and your final report will be due on 30 October 2020. When you can, could you ~~meet~~ let me know what remaining activities you plan to complete during this extension? With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:12, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Dear @I JethroBT (WMF), thank you for your answer and approval! I am available for a meeting any time next week, except Saturday. I prefer local evening time, but I try to solve the daytime meeting if it is better for you. Kind regards and see you soon, Samat (talk) 21:08, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

@Samat: Ah, I'm sorry, that was a typo in my previous message. Can you describe your remaining activities here? I don't think an in-person meeting is necessary unless you would prefer it. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

@I JethroBT (WMF): we plan to cover the following activities in the rest of the project:

Finish activities that are almost ready:
- introducing the community service award and
- evaluation and publication of the community surveys.
We have some ongoing activities we would like to continue, like
- active participation in tasks of the Growth team related to the Hungarian Wikipedia, and
- active participation in the Talk pages project.
Regular online office hours (personal help desk) for newcomers.
Regular online meetups and training (focused on active editors).
New and updated tutorials for newcomers (partly based on the Growth Team's research and design).
Survey and wishlist about the technological environment, tools, gadgets on the Hungarian Wikipedia.
Based on the results of this survey:
- applying already available tools on the Hungarian Wikipedia,
- smaller developer tasks.
Measuring and analyzing the metrics at the end of the project
Reporting

Let me know if you have any questions. Kind regards, Samat (talk) 16:22, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Extension request in May 2021 edit

New end date edit

~~30 June 2022~~ 31 August 2022

Introduction edit

According to the final report, the project used almost exactly half of the funds, therefore the other half of it remained unspent. The project team would like to continue the realization of the activities which are described in the original grant proposal in order to reach closer to the final goal: friendlier and more inclusive editor community, friendlier and more user friendly user interface and tools, and higher retention of newcomers and experienced old editors on the Hungarian Wikipedia.

Smaller parts of the proposal have not yet really started, like development of new guidelines/tutorials or improving tools/gadgets. Other parts of the project need continuous maintenance and efforts (activity statistics or organizing monthly meetups). And some of the activities were started, but weren't finished completely (or were completed in a less ambitious form than planned), like trainings for patrollers and administrators or enforcement of some friendliness principles, support for mentors, and the statistical portal. In addition, we would like to extend the original proposal with some new ideas, including some research and analysis ideas and software implementation and development.

Planned activities edit

The planned activities are structured similarly as in the original proposal:

Research

Analysis of the effect of the Flagged Revisions’ change in 2020.
Statistical analysis of the editor retention (e.g. based on the metrics toolkit).
Statistics/surveys about usage of new/broken tools.
Interpretation and evaluation of the completed community surveys and conclusions from the results of the statistical portal (first, completed module).

Community health

Friendlier platforms.
Kindness campaign.
Trainings for patrollers and admins (conflict handling).

Helping newcomers and experienced editors

New or updated tutorials for newcomers.
New or updated tutorials for tools and gadgets.
Open office hours in order to offer instant personal support.
Restructuring the mentoring infrastructure on the Hungarian Wikipedia.

Technical environment, software development

Implement (existing) tools from other wikis.
Development of new modules for the statistical portal.
Improve the communication part of the Flagged Revisions.
Community support for new software tools (e.g. Growth project, Talk pages project and Improved Templates).
Solving some of selected, most critical problems from the local community wishlist.
Implementing Matrix on Wikipedia (OAuth, surface integration).

Knowledge sharing

Events: regular (online and hopefully in-person) meetups with presentations/demonstrations of 1-2 topics at each meeting
Editor retention hub: collecting and sharing experience, ideas and tools with other communities

Movement Strategy edit

The activities and their impact fit very well to the prioritized initiatives of the Movement Strategy Recommendations:

In addition, the project supports the following priorities of WMF's Medium-term plan 2019 and the Annual Plan 2020-2021:

Supporting a Thriving Movement with programs and policies that foster a more welcoming, diverse, and healthy community.
Investing in Platform Evolution will make it easier to keep our sites updated, secure, and safe, and for communities to create and share richer and more locally relevant content.

Timeline edit

This phase of the editor retention program is scheduled to run 12 14 months from July 2021 to ~~June~~ August 2022.

Until the midpoint report of the extended program (due on 31 December 2021), the following activities are planned:

contract for development of the statistical portal, and realization of phase 3, 4 and 5 of the development plan
regularly updated statistics
monthly meetups with trainings/presentations/demos
preparation of contracts with applicants (for example software development, research and tutorials)
software developments based on the 2020 community wishlist
community support for new software tools (e.g. Growth project, Talk pages project and Improved Templates)
statistical analysis of the editor retention (e.g. based on the metrics toolkit)

Until the final report of the extended program (due on 30 June 2022), the following activities are planned:

completing the planned activities according to plan
final survey
reporting

Metrics edit

At least 75% of the planned program above is completed.
At least 8 community meetups/trainings.
Community survey with the following result: at least 75% agrees with the statement that the project helped the Hungarian Wikipedia.
We would like to see positive results in the editor retention numbers (metrics tools) as well.

On behalf of the Board of Wikimedia Hungary, kind regards, Samat (talk) 20:52, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

I changed the new end date and the timeline by 2 months above. Samat (talk) 22:59, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Approval edit

Noting here that Program Officer, I JethroBT (WMF), approved Samat's grant extension request for 30 August 2022. The approval and additional grant reporting information can be found in this post. -- JTud (WMF), Grants Administrator (talk) 17:56, 26 August 2021 (UTC)