Grants:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Belgium/2019

Application or grant stage: grant in progress

Applicant or grantee: Wikimedia Belgium

Amount requested: € 16500 (15000 EUR + 10% contingency fee) ($18761)

Amount granted: € 16500 (15000 EUR + 10% contingency fee) ($18761)

Funding period: 1 February 2019 to 31 December 2019

Application created: 30 October 2018

Recommended application date: 1 November 2018

Midpoint report due: 15 August 2019

Final report due: 30 January 2020

Application

Background

These two requests are required of first-time applicants. In future years, you can use reports to substitute for these requirements.

1. Link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements in the past year.

   Public domain month celebration; Edit-a-thon Amnesty International Vlaanderen; Upcoming photo contest: Wiki Loves Heritage
   See for other reports: Reports
   See for an overview of activities at: Activities

2. Link to one learning story you have created or contributed to, that demonstrates how your organization documents and applies learning.

   Organising a Wiki Takes...

Link to these documents, for the upcoming funding period, only if you have them.

1. Link to your organization's staffing plan, for the upcoming funding period.
   

   This organization is not requesting staff.

2. Link to your annual plan, for the upcoming funding period.
   

   Annual plan 2019

3. Link to your strategic plan, which includes the upcoming funding period.
   

   Included in our annual plan 2019

Please add your grants metrics to this sheet. Note that requirements for shared metrics have changed for grants starting 1 January 2017 or later. Grants with start dates before 1 January 2017 should still use the old Global Metrics.

Please visit this worksheet to view global metrics targets and progress.

Programs

Please use the templates provided to add information about each program you are planning for the upcoming funding period.

More details of the programs can be found in the annual plan.

Writing weeks program

The writing weeks program consists out of a set of activities to organise two writing weeks in Belgium. In the past years we organised multiple writing weeks and like to continue to organise them in 2019 as well. For the coming year we have not yet defined on which topics they will be focussed on.

• Brussels writing weeks: In 2016 and 2017 we supported the initiative of a local user and organised together the Brussels writing weeks (2016 & 2017 info). The project is in its core online, but we notice at the same time that new users find it difficult to start on their own, from home, and we have found the local libraries willing to collaborate with Wikipedia. They are interested in growing their role of supporting local Wikipedia editors with their first steps. Together with local libraries, experienced volunteers from Wikipedia formed on-site contact points where questions could be raised by new editors. Also there was space to work on articles under guidance. Our project was in 2016 and 2017 supported by the Flemish Community Commission (VGC). They provided us with access to their network of libraries, as well as organisational support in communication towards both the participating libraries and the rest of Brussels. We started the project first with introduction sessions for library staff in Brussels.

See further in the Annual plan: Writing weeks program.

GLAM program

The GLAM program consists out of a set of activities and projects, all organised together with cultural institutions (GLAMs). In this program we work intensively together with PACKED vzw, the Centre of Expertise in Digital Heritage.

• Image & data donations: In 2016, Wiki Loves Art provided us a nice introduction in museums and heritage libraries. More and more institutions are interested in collaboration, while we only had about 15 cultural institutions we started with in 2016. The focus is on organising edit-a-thons and workshops to get more articles written in Wikipedia, on releasing images for Wikimedia Commons, on releasing data for Wikidata, and more. Meeting with the institutions creates a personal connection, gains trust, and prepares for the practical parts of the collaboration with Wikipedia/Wikimedia. With each partner organisation we always keep in mind what material is useful for the work of our community and for the growth in knowledge on Wikipedia, Commons, and Wikidata. We especially look for holes in the available materials, but more important, try to continue on the successful Wikidata project of 2015-2016 (link) and its successors. For a part the institutions will add the media/data to Commons/Wikidata, another part will be done by our community. As our community is limited, we only take up projects we have the voluntary capacity for. Specific focus will be for the performing arts in Belgium. Performing arts have Brussels said as being the contemporary dance capital in the world, but in Wikipedia the knowledge documentation is extremely limited. There are multiple projects ongoing to enrich Wikipedia/Wikimedia with more material from this scene.

• Edit-a-thons: During the year we expect to give about 15 to 20 edit-a-thons and workshops around Wikipedia & more (open and closed) in collaboration with various institutions in Belgium, just as we did in 2016, 2017 and 2018. We think it is important to reach out to the various organisations that are interested in learning more about Wikipedia, providing knowledge from their libraries and archives for the volunteers or institute members that participate in a workshop. Only those edit-a-thons and workshops are done of what we think they help to support the mission of the Wikimedia movement, as well as what we have the capacity for to do them. At each session we have one or two volunteers available to give the presentation and to provide guidance to the often new users writing articles. In principle we have the organisation who hosts the particular event pay for the costs for the used space, meals, drinks, guided tours, etc. Wikimedia Belgium will supply cheatsheets and info materials.

• GLAM ambassadors: In the GLAM and arts sector, we want to educate ambassadors in the local knowledge institutions in how to use Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata to share materials with (data and media files), and have them serve as liaison for the museum towards Wikimedia. They then can themselves upload images to Commons and upload data to Wikidata. With the larger growing movement of sharing knowledge online and sharing it open, as well as that in December 2017 a regional government of Belgium has set the default policy for the cultural sector to publish cultural content as open under a free license, we expect in the coming years a growth in both the sharing of images under a free license on Wikimedia Commons as well as sharing cultural data on Wikidata. By educating ambassadors we enable them largely to process the images and data themselves, have the collected knowledge on Wikimedia platforms more used and have activities organised to enrich the Wikimedia platforms (like edit-a-thons).

• Data import: Wikidata has become more and more important in the world, but especially in the cultural sector. Various institutions donated datasets of their collections for import in Wikidata and many more are preparing datasets for the import. The import of these datasets is combined with the adding of persistent identifiers to Wikidata to be able to uniquely identify the items. Besides the individual support provided for knowledge institutions with their specific situation in importing data, we also intent to organise Wikidata workshops to introduce the platform and how it works to a large audience from the cultural sector. In October 2018 we organised together with our partners a Wikidata workshop to introduce Wikidata to the cultural sector. The workshop was highly successful and was fully booked with a waiting list of more organisations being interested to join the workshop.

See further in the Annual plan: GLAM program.

Education program

The Education program consists of a set of activities and projects executed in collaboration with educational institutions in Belgium and Luxembourg. This includes (but is not only limited to):

• Kortrijk: Two classes of students write in a year time a Wikipedia article in the Dutch language Wikipedia under the guidance/review of a teacher from the local college (Vives), supported by volunteers from the community. The students get a degree for the work they have completed, based on the input and dedication they show. Up to 4 meetups can take place. Further we provide basic info materials to enable the students to start better prepared.

• Louvain-la-Neuve: A team from the university wants to organise a university-wide writing activity and/or contest on Wikipedia around science. The goal is to get sciences better covered on Wikipedia in all the various fields the university has faculties in.

• Ternat: As part of secondary education, classes learn about how to write neutral and how to critical research sources, do research to local heritage sites, take photos of them and write Wikipedia articles about local heritage. In this program we work together with our partner, the library of Ternat, and schools in the area. The project involves 10 classes with the total of about 250 students.

• Various schools in Antwerp: Various educational institutions in Antwerp have shown interest in starting an Education course on Wikipedia. After an introduction about Wikipedia, how it works, what the rules are, and more, students draft their own articles in Wikipedia. During the process they get feedback on their work to get the most optimal results as output.

In the education program we help educational institutions to work with Wikipedia as part of classroom activities. We teach students how to edit Wikipedia, after some time we evaluate with them their written articles and this results in new Wikipedia articles and the improvement of existing articles. On top of that students learn how Wikipedia works (by doing), how knowledge gets on Wikipedia, and that they themselves can add knowledge to Wikipedia (during the classroom activities and beyond). With working with the students, we try to build a long-term structural collaboration with these institutions to enable more scientific knowledge to flow to Wikipedia.

See further in the Annual plan: Education program.

Wiki Loves program

The Wiki Loves program is a photo contest that is to be organised in the Summer month(s) of 2019. The volunteers from Wikimedia Belgium organise since 2011 various photo contests, at average one a year. It started in 2011 with the organisation of Wiki Loves Monuments, a photo contest to have the public take photos of cultural heritage monuments for the use in Wikipedia and beyond. Also in the years 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2016 we organised this photo contest about monuments. In 2015 we skipped a year to be able to organise in 2016 the photo contest called Wiki Loves Art (info). In this photo contest we asked the public to come to the 13 participating museums and heritage libraries and to take photos of the art heritage for Wikipedia/etc. Thanks to our efforts, in the Summer of 2016 Freedom of Panorama was introduced in Belgium, meaning that people can now also take photos of modern buildings and artworks in the public environment and upload them for use in Wikipedia (etc), while this was legally not allowed before that time. To celebrate this change in the Belgian law, we organised in 2017 the photo contest Wiki Loves Public Space. In this contest we asked the public to take photos of buildings, artworks, monuments, memorials and other subjects visible from the public space. In 2018 we organised during the European Year of Cultural Heritage the photo contest Wiki Loves Heritage. This photo contest focussed on all kinds of heritage, including immovable heritage, movable heritage, immaterial heritage and maritime heritage.

Also in 2019 we want to organise a new photo contest to enable the photographers in our community to participate in an activity specially for them. The topic of the 2019 photo contest is chosen in 2019 through discussion with our partners and community.

See further in the Annual plan: Wiki Loves program.

Staff

Please use the templates below to add information about each staff or contractor position you are planning during the upcoming funding period.

Budget and resource plan

Link to a detailed budget for the upcoming funding period. This budget should include all of your organizations expenses. Please specify which expenses will be covered from your APG. : {{{Budget}}}

Midpoint report

This is a summary report on the grantee's progress during the midpoint reporting period: 1 February - 31 July 2019, due 15 August 2019.

We report on the progress for our major projects, and some additional activities, and results, that contribute to our long-term vision, partnerships, member benefits, and chapter expansion.

Program story

Please link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period.

Activities in the first six months

Progress

Please add text or a link to a page with details on your program progress. This should including reporting against each of the SMART objectives form your proposal.

Writing weeks program

The goal of this program is to support editors in creating content about their region, as well as recruit and train new editors for Belgian community. The goal of this program is to ⁽¹⁾ organise two writing weeks ⁽²⁾ in at least two languages, all together ⁽³⁾ to get Belgium better represented on Wikipedia, in comparison with neighboring countries. We hope to have with each of the writing weeks over 300 new articles, 50+ articles improved and over 100 participating editors.

Bi-weekly Wiki Club

Every 2 weeks since October 2018 we organise a Wiki Club Brussels together with Open Knowledge Belgium. At every session there are between 5 and 14 participants. Since the start of the campaign we welcomed 120 unique participants. 268 pages have been created and 823 pages were updated. 27 out of 80 new editors were retained after 7 days.

We are writing about well-known Women in Red (Forbes list, management, science, and technology). We explain why to write for Wikipedia, how to write a good article, about the structure, sourcing, references, and licensing. We emphasize why it is important to write about women, and explain the origin of the Gender gap. People from different backgrounds are present. The majority being polyglot and having a university degree. They come from other countries, even other continents, as Brussels is really multi-cultural. Articles are written on the de, en, fi, fr, nl, and sp Wikipedia. We present notions of Wikidata. The majority of the participants are coming multiple times, some are always present, others become member of the association. Negative aspect from a Wikipedia viewpoint: at each edit-a-thon Multiple articles get deleted by moderators, pretending that the subject is not relevant. This is not encouraging for our bird-of-a-feather participants.

On 29 January 2019 wmbe:Open Knowledge Belgium organised together with Wikimedia Belgium in BeCentral a special Hack The Gender Gap edit-a-thon, with an extended marketing via Facebook, national radio, TV, and national newspapers. 60 participants were present. They were split in 4 groups, each of them coordinated by one or more coaches. The goal was to let women write about women that do not yet have a page on Wikipedia. We reached a lot of Brussels women-oriented organisations. We got quite a lot of communication on the French-speaking radio, television, and in the newspapers. The activity was really a huge success. 20 pages were created and 11 amended.

Mois de la contribution Francophone

The target is to write about French-language subjects. See w:fr:Wikipédia:Mois de la contribution 2019/Namur for more information.

Training sessions "Writing for Wikipedia"

We organised 2 training sessions "Writing for Wikipedia" in the public library of Ternat. Another 2 training sessions will be organised in the 2nd half of 2019. In 2018 we already had 2 other sessions.

Every session we have 5-8 participants, some being new, others coming repeatedly. As a stimulus, and after successfully creating a page on Wikipedia, students receive the boek Writing for Wikipedia (Q56762209), written by Lodewijk Gelauff, ISBN 978-94-6356-079-5.

Students learned how to write historical and heritage pages associated either with their region, or about important Generals from Napoleon Bonaparte.

Collaboration with the national television

A weekly "Page not found" article is published at w:nl:Lijst van afleveringen van Pagina niet gevonden in Iedereen beroemd and in parallel a 4-5 minute TV program is broadcasted about the page that is being written. You can see some of the programs at Belgium TV Een web site. Very nice experience how to let collaborate national television with Wikimedia Belgium.

What have we learned?

• Facebook is the best medium to reach a lot of people, with relatively few effort
• Word-of-mouth helps a lot; talk about Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, GLAM, Heritage
• Public relations, having a Press release, and contacting radio and TV makes the organisation known to the public (and the journalists)

• For the Women programs:
  • Extend the subject for notability (choose interesting articles)
    • Try to translate (good) articles that already exist in other languages (there exists a tool)
  • Make lists of articles before the session
  • Pages get deleted by administrators:
    • Follow-up of new pages (and make sure they stay)
    • Have an administrator that is aware of the edit-a-thon
  • Have more participants:
    • Contact women organisations - who - where - when?
    • Build contact lists

• Participants are helping each other:
  • Sometimes 3 new Wiki participants
  • 5 repeating participants

GLAM program

The goal of this program is to ⁽¹⁾ support cultural institutions to collaborate with Wikipedia/Wikimedia to build trust, to create awareness about free knowledge, and to grow partnerships, all in the end to enrich Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia platforms with more materials, as well as to ⁽²⁾ have them share their knowledge in images, data and articles on the Wikimedia platforms, ⁽³⁾ having training sessions and workshops to inform them about how Wikipedia/Commons/Wikidata works, and ⁽⁴⁾ have them organise edit-a-thons to have more articles written about Belgian subjects.

Open Belgium

On 4 March there was a national Open Belgium event, organised by Open Knowledge Belgium, with the support of the government, where a presentation on Wikidata was given. During the accompanying Open data community day on 2 March, people were informed about the possibilities of Wikidata in public data gathering and reporting. Wikidata cheat sheets were distributed amongst the participants.

Wikidata for Beginners

On 8-9 March another presentation Wikidata for beginners was given by Geertivp on the WikiConNL, the Wikimedia conference of WMNL in Utrecht.

Wikify Antwerp

On 27 April Wikify Antwerp was organised, in collaboration with the University of Antwerp, about documenting cultural and historical subjects and objects in Antwerp. 20 students, all new to Wikipedia, wrote each an article about the rich Antwerp history or culture, as a group task in their curriculum in the library of the University. A presentation was given about Wikipedia, and the Wikimedia organisation. Other volunteers joined the group to give advise about how to write a good article. They were assisted by Wikimedia Belgium volunteers, and assistants from the university.

International Wikidata conference

We organised in July, together with the University of Gent, department of Digital Humanities, the Wikidata conference UGent, a 3-day international conference how to install, configure and use Wikibase together with Wikidata. 6 teams, in total 35 persons, were working on a GLAM project to register data into a separate local Wikibase instance. Presentations were given and coaching on how to create a logical data model, to mass-upload data, and to link with Wikidata. The first day was open to the public, with in total 50 attendees including collaborators from musea, to learn about the possibilities and characteristics of Wikidata.

National heritage inventory

We create and amend Belgium-related items in Wikidata, that are then translated into other languages. Doing so we promote our local culture. We make sure that e.g. all our national churches get documented, with an picture from Wiki Loves Heritage. We are using tools like AWB and WDFIST. We apply Wikidata Infobox to Wikimedia Commons Categories.

One volunteer is documenting the art catalogus of the Koning Boudewijnstichting.

Writing and photographing for Heritage.

We promote the app Wiki Shoot-Me to show on an OpenStreetMap where missing photo's can be located.

Collaborations

We have a close collaboration with other organisations, and institutions. We work together with:

• multiple universities (Digital Humanities, History and Art)
• Heritage organisations, and libraries: PACKED, FARO, Herita, Library of Ternat
• Edit-a-thon about Belgian women at the Chiroux library

What have we learned?

• Statistics for GLAM donations upload are less than predicted => We plan for a National library Public domain day in January 2020?
• We need to involve more with Free knowledge and Open data organisations like:
  • Universities
  • Open Knowledge Belgium
    • Citizen Club
    • HYF involvement
    • Open Belgium
    • Foss4G
  • FOSDEM
• Keep on contacting museums
  • In collaboration with PACKED

Education program

The goal of this program is to ⁽¹⁾ support (at least two) educational institutions to collaborate with Wikipedia/Wikimedia and ⁽²⁾ to let students have a real-world impact instead of throwaway assignments. Besides the output created, we think it is important to create awareness about open access and open science and to build a long-term collaboration to stimulate a flow of scientific knowledge and materials flowing to Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia platforms. We forecast that students can write 250 articles and take 250 to 500 photos.

Collaboration with universities

We organised an edit-a-thon with the Erasmushogeschool in Brussels.

With the University of Antwerp we organised an edit-a-thon where art and history students had the opportunity to write about missing Antwerp historical, and cultural subjects.

We organised together with UGent a European Wikidata event with 50 participants.

Lexemes project

We started together with WMNL a project to upload Lexemes from the Dutch Wiktionary to Wikidata. There is a colaboration with the University Gent to publish statistics about the knowledge of Flemish and Dutch words. Flemish words that are less known in the Netherlands are documented in the Dutch Wiktionary.

Inclusive education projects

We collaborate with Hack Your Future to give ICT courses for refugees. Every year about 50 high potential students are trained in web programming. This is also an occasion to tell them about Wikimedia.

2 board members follow the Wikimedia Education course.

What have we learned?

We can organise much more activities related to education:

• Try to have Wikipedia in the class: explain how children can search information; how they can estimate the quality, completeness, and correctness of an article.
• Wikipedia for non-native language users
  • Integration program with the municipality for foreign people learning Dutch to translate local articles in their own language. This way they learn the local language, how work with Wikipedia, and for the local community their culture and heritage is described into foreign languages.

Wiki Loves program

The goal of this program is ⁽¹⁾ to encourage and facilitate the capturing and uploading of photographs to have in this way a better coverage of heritage monuments, memorials, remarkable buildings, and artworks in the public space in Wikipedia, etc⁽²⁾ to ensure continuity in our activities towards our photographing community and stimulate them to upload their photos, and ⁽⁵⁾ further develop our relationship with the different collaborating organisations. We hope to have, similar to our past photo contests, over 100 participants, that upload more than 2000 photos, with in the end 10%+ used in Wikipedia articles and Wikidata.

On 23 February we held the prize award session in the Antwerp photo museum for Wiki Loves Heritage 2018 Vlaanderen.

There were meetings with Packed, FARO, Herita, Oost-Vlaanderen to prepare for the contest Wiki Loves Heritage 2019.

The Wiki Loves Heritage 2019 event has started on 1 July 2019, and runs till 30 November. The photo contest is organised by Wikimedia Belgium, with the collaboration of PACKED vzw, FARO, Herita vzw, the province Oost-Vlaanderen, some local musea, and volunteers of Wikipedia.

We have created a program page on Wikimedia Commons. This way an inventory is kept of the contest, with easy click-through links to additional reporting and statistics.

We collaborate with museums: Industriemuseum Gent, KOERS museum Roeselare.

What have we learned?

The campaign of 2019 is having the same shaped S-curve for daily image uploads for the first 2 months, but the upload count is only 50-60% relative to last year.

Very easy report to build statistics via the following tools:

• Mediawiki Commons Categories
• GLAMorgan (Wikimedia Commons Category -> Wikidata Infobox) then read the summary statistics
• Event metrics statistics:
  1. Refresh the campaign event data
  2. Download reports - all edits - download CSV
  3. Filter for uploads
  4. Copy/Paste
  5. Build an Excel pivot table of file upload count by day.
  6. Cumulative sum the counts by day
  7. Make a chart (so you can compare campaigns by year)

You can repeat the reporting on a weekly basis. Please find here the result, and the Campaign details: Google docs. Of course, it is mandatory to have the campaign setup in a proper way. }}

Other accomplishments

Organisational capacity

As an organisation, we have grown in (legal) administration, financial reporting, and follow-up. At any time we can run a balance, and income & expense account to verify if we are on track, and to detect any ledger anomalies or potential budget overrun.

We prepared together with Wikimedia France the WikiConvention francophone, a 3-day international conference in Brussels 6-8 September 2019 for the French speaking Wikimedians.

We investigate together with the Koning Boudewijnstichting how to better finance our projects.

Public relations

A radio interview with the VRT (Belgium national radio broadcasting) about the yearly Wikimedia fund raising. Was quite interesting and the journalist asked really to the point questions.

We offered one of our most active members a 2-day Wikimedia conference in Utrecht.

One of our Board members followed the Board member training in Berlin.

We sponsored the Wikidata conference at the Gent University, department Digital Humanities.

Streamline our web sites and communication strategy. Our web sites got an upgraded layout, and up-to-date and complete content. We are communicating in 4 languages. We are on Facebook and Twitter.

Subtitling of video's: Knowledge Belongs to All of Us (Dutch) and published it on our wmbe:chapter wiki.

Meeting in Brussels with the (to be established) User group Litouwen.

Metrics

We started to use Event Metrics to report on editor retention and about edit statistics. We do find it an effective tool to follow-up what individual writers have performed, and to generate overall statistics, so to prepare e.g. this report.

Culture

We write about other cultures, like education and agriculture in Rwanda.

What have we learned?

• Need more (regional) project leaders /activities
• Use a public telephone number with a shared mobile phone (protect the privacy of board members)
• Use shared mail accounts instead of personal accounts -> more easy hand-over of tasks and responsibilities
• How to handle Facebook, Twitter, and other Websites to contact the members and the public
• Organising activities is about linking people with activities, and organisations

Spending

Please report your organization's total spending during the reporting period, or link to a financial document showing your total spending. We are on track with the budget spending. Detailed reporting is available.

/Midreport/Spending

Final report

This is the final report for our grant, describing the outcomes from the period February to December 2019, due 30 January 2020.

The below is a summary report on the grantee's progress since the midpoint reporting period: 1 August 2019 - 31 December 2019.

We will not repeat activities from the first half of the year, since one can read them above. We report on the progress of our major projects, and some additional activities and results, that contribute to our long-term vision, partnerships, member benefits, and chapter expansion.

Program story

Please link to one program story that showcases your organization's achievements during the reporting period.

Activities in 2019

Results

Please add text or a link to a page with details on your program results. You should report on each of the objectives you included in your Simple APG application.

Writing weeks program

The goal of this program is to support editors in creating content about their region, as well as recruit and train new editors for Belgian community. The goal of this program is to ⁽¹⁾ organise two writing weeks ⁽²⁾ in at least two languages, all together ⁽³⁾ to get Belgium better represented on Wikipedia, in comparison with neighboring countries. We hope to have with each of the writing weeks over 300 new articles, 50+ articles improved and over 100 participating editors.

Bi-weekly Wiki Club

The bi-weekly Wiki Club now runs for the 2nd year. During 2019 we had 19 sessions. We attract a diverse public of volunteers that are willing to write about a variety of subjects in languages nl,fr,en,de,es,sv. In addition we attracted and started two new clubs: Wiki Club des Grands Lacs (writing about Rwanda/Burundi/Kivu/Ouganda), and Le Delta in Namur (cultural, libraries, Women in Red).

WikiConvention francophone

There were about 250 participants at the WikiConvention francophone, the first time it was organised outside of France. It is the first world-wide Wikimedia conference that was co-organized by WMFR/WMBE. It was a real success. There was also a well-appreciated pre-conference training session for Affiliate volunteers.

We were able to attract the Brussels city council and their cultural responsables; they participated at a panel discussion about free licenses, the European copyright, and government institutions.

A lot of Belgian French speaking volunteers were present, because of the short distance, and no need for hotel. We were able to contact a lot of volunteers and could talk about potential projects.

We learned about potential Public domain projects and free license projects to digitize books by a well-known professor-author who died but have proactively signed a free license agreement. The goal is to start with this project in 2020. The target is to write about French-language subjects.

Training sessions "Writing for Wikipedia"

We organised 4 training sessions "Writing for Wikipedia" in the public library of Ternat. We will continue the "Everybody Wiki" project in 2020 for the 3th consecutive year; 6 sessions were already organised in the past. In addition we will implement in 2020 a 75 year memorial End-of-WW-II heritage project. We will implement other Heritage projects with the region Pajottenland en Zennevallei. We have contacts with other heritage organisations like Steenokkerzeel.

What have we learned?

Wikimedia training projects in general

The largest project is the user training of Wikimedia techniques like Wikipedia, Wikidata and other MediaWiki projects. Knowing how to edit Wikipedia is the fundament of the other chapter projects like Writing weeks, Wiki Loves, GLAM, and the Education program. Therefore we gave more trainings about Wikimedia projects to selected target audiences like libraries, musea, schools, and cultural and heritage institutions.

In a recent statistical survey more then 50% of the Wikipedians are +45. We should make sure to reach this part of the population to make them aware about how Wikipedia is written. Quite a lot of +60 are intelligent and educated pepole, that are often (early) retired, and are very interested to start a new hobby. Some of them do not like writing, but are (really) good in photography. So we might need to convince them to upload and document their media files to Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.

Wikipedia training

Wikipedia is the most important Wikimedia project, with a strong interconnection amongst Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. Wikipedia is the primary application that is implemented on top of MediaWiki. Enterprises can benefit from implementing a private Wikipedia instance on their intranet. Trainees need to learn both the techniques of editing, but also how to gather and structure their content. They need to be advised about the agreed policies on Wikipedia.

Wikidata training

Wikidata is a major and well-known Triple-store database, implemented on Wikibase. How to edit, structure, and upload open data content. About the architecture, the data model, other Open data projects. The original functionality was interlinking other language wikipedias. Now it has really become an open database, being able to describe any object in the world. Closely related to Reasonator. We should also describe how to propose new properties.

Training Wikimedia Commons

Photography, metadata, how to create video subtitling. Structured metadata. Has a strong link with copyright and Creative Commons.

Wikitools training

About related projects like Reasonator, Wikidata Query, QuickStatements, CSV to quick statements, writing and running wiki bots. How to install and configure MediaWiki.

Collaboration with the national television

The French Belgian television RTBF has broadcasted an a prime TV journal interview with several participants of our "Writing for Wikipedia" and "Wiki Club Brussels" sessions. Since then we receive weekly request for training session participation about Wikipedia. Also the Flemish television VRT has done an interview but this is not yet broadcasted. It is important to have television broadcasting about Wikipedia. This is a primary source of public relation contacts.

Usage of the Programs & Events Dashboard

We are using now the Programs & Events Dashboard instead of Event Metrics. We believe the new dashboard can fulfil all functionality of the Event Metrics. It has much more functionality and allows to setup campaigns and sessions to register and monitor students. To view our results: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/users/Geertivp (historic campaigns can be added at will...)

GLAM program

The goal of this program is to ⁽¹⁾ support cultural institutions to collaborate with Wikipedia/Wikimedia to build trust, to create awareness about free knowledge, and to grow partnerships, all in the end to enrich Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia platforms with more materials, as well as to ⁽²⁾ have them share their knowledge in images, data and articles on the Wikimedia platforms, ⁽³⁾ having training sessions and workshops to inform them about how Wikipedia/Commons/Wikidata works, and ⁽⁴⁾ have them organise edit-a-thons to have more articles written about Belgian subjects.

Successful booth at the national Library Conference

We had a very successful booth at a large 2-day conference "Informatie aan zee", organised by the VVBAD, the organisation of Flemish libraries and archives in the Kursaal of Oostende, in collaboration with WMNL. We have contacted a large number of library and archive responsables and handed out our library whitepaper. From contacts we have met here we will organise evening presentations in February 2020 for adult schools.

Other GLAM activities

Two writing sessions for the Flemish VGC archives in Brussels.

One volunteer could attend the Hackathon in Prague.

Wikimania: 2 board members attended Wikimania.

Wiki Techstorm 2019 in Amsterdam: two women could participate with Wiki Techstorm. They will present to our members their experience.

One volunteer could attend a technical conference about OpenStreetMap.

Maison Losseau: 5 Photo training sessions at Maison Losseau.

We made new collaborations with museums, schools, and universities

What have we learned?

We need to keep contact with archives and libraries to show them how they can benefit from free license Wikimedia applications.

We raised the question about the necessity to write a new French book "Écrire pour Wikipédia", because the previous edition is out-dated (nothing in there about the Visual editor). A lot of volunteers would like to write on Wikipedia but do not know how to do it.

Training about Free licenses

Copyright, copyright laws, legal constraints, Free content, Creative Commons. Licenses are too less known. Therefore we frequently encounter copyright problems. We want end-users to be aware of copyright. Users should be aware on how to correctly determine and assign the right copyright.

Education program

The goal of this program is to ⁽¹⁾ support (at least two) educational institutions to collaborate with Wikipedia/Wikimedia and ⁽²⁾ to let students have a real-world impact instead of throwaway assignments. Besides the output created, we think it is important to create awareness about open access and open science and to build a long-term collaboration to stimulate a flow of scientific knowledge and materials flowing to Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia platforms. We forecast that students can write 250 articles and take 250 to 500 photos.

SmartMonday presentation

We had a lecture SmartMonday at the ULB University Brussels. We talked about the Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata ecosystem.

Boekentoren

We have given two writing sessions at the University Gent central library Boekentoren, one of the large archives of books scanned by Google under a CC BY-SA license, which can be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles.

What have we learned?

We want to collaborate specifically with universities, high schools, and even elementary schools. Students should be made aware of the importance of sources and references, and how to document all aspects of a subject/object. Universities become are resources for collaboration, and for finding volunteers. We plan to have a project with Greek language students at the University of Gent. We need to continue to have or to start new contacts with universities.

Schools are another target, because we know people between 20 and 30 are very active on Wikipedia. But they could get a helping hand to do so in a proper way. Especially on the NL wikipedia social relationships are required to be polished.

• Universities are willing to collaborate with us to setup projects to structure their research.
• With high schools we could collaborate to learn their students how to write (together) on Wikipedia articles or Wiki Books
• With elementary schools we would like to talk about "fact checking".

Wiki Loves program

The goal of this program is ⁽¹⁾ to encourage and facilitate the capturing and uploading of photographs to have in this way a better coverage of heritage monuments, memorials, remarkable buildings, and artworks in the public space in Wikipedia, etc⁽²⁾ to ensure continuity in our activities towards our photographing community and stimulate them to upload their photos, and ⁽⁵⁾ further develop our relationship with the different collaborating organisations. We hope to have, similar to our past photo contests, over 100 participants, that upload more than 2000 photos, with in the end 10%+ used in Wikipedia articles and Wikidata.

We organized together with PACKED and the National Library a Wiki Loves Heritage photo contest and campaign during the summer and autumn. This program did produce less uploads than its 2018 session, but the quality is higher. We have selected 8 winners, some of them were finalists in previous sessions.

On Wikimania, the yearly Wikimedia users conference, a tool ISA = “Information Structured Acceleration” was announced to update structured metadata for Wikimedia Commons based on a Commons Category using a dedicated Wikibase linked to the general Wikidata database.

We have immediately created a campaign “Wiki Loves Heritage Belgium 2019”: https://tools.wmflabs.org/isa/campaigns/18.

This way people can administer missing “Depicts” and “Captions” properties for all the images.

What have we learned?

We need to make more publicity. Collaboration with heritage organisations. In 2018 it was the European Heritage year, that attracted more participants than in 2019.

Photo (structured) metadata on commons can be maintained via different tools. Photo's can be subsequently used on Wikipedia. When adding the {{Infobox Wikidata}} on Commons categories, usage statistics can be easily obtained.

Other accomplishments

Whitepapers

We have written multiple whitepapers about our projects and programs.

Presentations

Volunteers have translated presentations. As a Board we do not need to do all by ourselves. We have a standard way to have polyglot communication using Deepl text translation (Windows App) which has much better quality and a better interface than Google translate.

Tax exemption for public gifts

We succeeded to file a request for tax deduction for Belgian citizen and company gifts via tax exemption by the Belgian government. This will give us more possibilities to implement projects about culture, social support, heritage, and free knowledge in general. This way Belgians citizens and companies can oblige the government to invest in projects of Wikimedia Belgium. Projects need to be approved by the wmbe:Friends of Wikimedia Belgium Fund. We already started public communication to inform people about the possibility of this fundraising.

What have we learned?

The general public is willing to give money to Wikimedia chapters, especially when the government offers tax compensation.

Public relations

Public relations is extremely important to have a successful organisation. People have to know us. They need to understand our mission and why we do certain projects and activities. They need to participate with our activities.

• Social platforms
• Facebook activity
• Twitter: we also started a (fr) version
• Mailing list maintenance (4 languages; 1100 addresses)
• Membership list (105 members)
• Statistics: 500 active volunteers in Vlaanderen, 400 in Wallonia.
• Web sites are maintained and monitored.

Condition of the Chapter

• 3 junior board members
• New grant manager
• New treasurer
• New public relations person
• New project manager
• New website maintainer

Luckily we have an early retired person that is willing to do all of these tasks. We need additional volunteers, which is the case: we have currently multiple volunteers that have signed-in for specific tasks:

• Writing sessions coach(es)
• Translating presentations

Planning for the future

We plan to have Monthly video conference Wiki Café @Home. We have the infrastructure and the capacity. It will avoid physical displacement and is good for the climate and availability of volunteers. Anybody can come and go to ask a question and get an immediate answer.

Continue with active participation into Foundation programs:

• Assist with Rebranding Wikipedia
• Assist Strategy 2030 recommendations
• Assist the WMF Fundraising campaign (text translation into "Belgian" Dutch)
• Assist into OTRS ticket handling

Next year

• Continue with and to have more impact by implementing a volunteer support program
• Have more project leaders
• More contacts and projects with heritage organisations, museums, universities (75 years end of World War II, 75 year bicycling in Flanders)

Wikipedia

• The volunteer community is small, relative to the huge and diverse content of the encyclopedia.
• We need to continue to use more tools to have more automatic editing and easy maintenance.
• Volunteers require more coaching about licenses, copyright, and plagiarism
• We need global templates
• Automatic infoboxes with Wikidata; why not implementing everywhere {{Wikidata Infobox}}?

Spending

Please link to a detailed financial report for your spending during the grant period. This should be in the same format as your detailed budget from your Simple APG application.

Spending report

Please include the total amount of Simple APG funds you spent during the grant period.

We are within budget. We have spent our budget as planned and agreed.

Total spending for 2019

Result	Amount
Actual spending from grant 2019, excluding provision	€ 12,595.58
Approved provision; move forward from grant 2019 to late project invoice February 2020	€ 2,570.00
Actual spending from grant 2019, including late invoices February 2020	€ 14,398.69
For information: (approved) actual spending for January 2019 from 2018 contingency	€ 399.10
Total actual spending, including part of 2018 contingency reallocation	€ 14,797.79