Grants:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Ukraine/2018

Application or grant stage: in progress
Applicant or grantee: Wikimedia Ukraine
Amount requested: 108,465 USD (98500 USD + 10% contingency) (-)
Amount granted: 108,400 USD (98,500 + 10% contingency) (-)
Funding period: 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2018
Application created: 1 November 2017
Recommended application date: 1 November 2017
Midpoint report due: 15 July 2018
Final report due: 30 January 2019

Application edit

Background edit

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. Grants:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Ukraine/2018/Staffing plan
  2. Link to your annual plan, for the upcoming funding period. Our annual plan is approved by the Annual General Meeting, usually held in the second half of December. We will prepare the annual plan for 2018 based on the feedback we collected from volunteers on the projects (current and new ones). We collected this feedback on the public page with the description of activities (tasks) and we asked community members to support them and indicate in what capacity (organiser, participant etc): Wikimedia Ukraine in 2018 (in Ukrainian).
  3. Link to your strategic plan, which includes the upcoming funding period. We do not have one at the moment. We are working on preparing one, with initial discussions during the Wikimedia 2030 strategy process that will be followed by a community survey before the end of this year.

Please add your grants metrics to this sheet. Note that requirements for shared metrics have changed for grants starting 1 January 2017 or later. Please visit this worksheet to view global metrics targets and progress.

Programs edit

Please describe any changes to your programs for the upcoming funding period, including the addition of new programs or any programs you are no longer doing. Include your rationale for any major changes to your programs here.

  • We reorganised our programmes into different groups. We have chosen the most prominent outcome as the most logical way of grouping programmes.
  • New major programme: Wikicamp 2018. The two main reasons of launch of this programme are, on one hand, the active development of the Wikipedia Education Programme activities in schools for the last two years, with a group of teachers from across the country involved in promoting Wikipedia in schools, and on the other hand, successful organisation of wikicamps in other CEE countries, notably in Armenia.
  • We put Crimean Tatar Wikipedia into a separate programme to highlight and dedicate more resources to this programme targeting this minority language. We are working on development of Crimean Tatar Wikipedia since 2013, but we are planning to organise them into a programme in 2018.
  • For the same reasons we put Physical QR codes into a separate programme. We are working on it since the first project in Odesa in 2013, but we did not have any organised effort in this direction. We intend to dedicate more efforts to it next year as well.

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

Content Gap

This programme is focused on bringing new content into Wikimedia projects. As growing Wikipedia and its sister projects is, in general, the goal of respective online communities, WMUA is willing to work on closing certain content gaps. Various online contests and field expeditions are designed for reaching this goal. While there are long-lasting projects like WLM and WLE photo contests and CEES article contest which will be held for the seventh, sixth and third time respectively (since their mission is believed to not yet be accomplished), we also plan some new projects.

Article Contests

Wikimedia Ukraine announces contests since 2011. The open competition proved to be one of the best ways to lessen content gaps that are identified, bring new content on specific topic and new editors into Wikiprojects. They also attract those users who are not interested in pressing Edit button until getting the motivation and appeal to write on the topic they care or know about.

The need for every contest was an obvious gap in content in some field such as theoretic physics (a topic too narrow to be written by amateur volunteers), military topics (as it was in 2014 when it was all in news) or cultural heritage monuments (topic too vast to be efficiently covered without promotion).

In 2018 we will continue organising article writing contests. Volunteers have already commited to organise CEE Spring 2018, Wiki Loves Monuments/Wiki Loves Earth article contest, Articles on Music, Scandinavian Spring.

Lessons learned from the article contest are documented here.

Photography Contests

We plan to bring again three photo contests (WLE photo contest (international), Wiki loves Earth Ukraine, Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine, Wiki Science Competition) that we organised in 2017 and previous years. Each year natural and cultural heritage sites under state protection get more and more images to illustrate articles but there are still significant gaps, such as entire districts without a single photo.

Five editions of Wiki Loves Earth (we launched it in 2013) in Ukraine brought images of 3301 protected sites out of 8170 in state cadastre. In the last few years we also developed cooperations with organisations such as ecological movements and natural heritage protection organisations to reach more audiences and get more content. This helped us generate both new media content (such as a special nomination on this year) and new article content (notably owing to donation of materials on natural sites).

Wikimedia Ukraine launched an idea of turning Wiki Loves Earth international 2014, and all four previous edition were primarily driven by Wikimedia Ukraine as an official organiser with an international team (covering countries from Belgium to Australia) behind it. Every year we reach more countries, particularly in Asia and Africa where we have both experienced organisers and strong newcomers who do their first photo contest ever. In 2018 we plan to continue running the international part of Wiki Loves Earth as a project driven by the chapter, but we will consider spinning it off in 2019 if we manage to organise a mature group capable of running the project independently in the way Wiki Loves Monuments is run.

Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest is an important part of our activities, as we run it since 2012 and get significant results both in terms of number of photos and participants (approx. 30,000 photos from roughly 500 participants each year) and outreach (significant attention from partners and general public). Our major challenges are improving coverage of monument lists (Ukraine has no official monument register, thus we have to contact national and local administrations to get their official lists) and improving regional coverage. We have built the biggest monument database ever in Ukraine with roughly 80,000 known monuments out of 150,000 existing in Ukraine, and after six years of the content we have images of about 26,000 of them. We are constantly working on improving the contest and collect the feedback from out participants.

GLAM (БоГеМА)

Libraries and museums professionals are among those who are interested in getting editing skills as a part of the professional development. Libraries and museums are our constant partners and places where we organise workshops, editing events and award ceremonies. Our efforts were also directed to encourage GLAM institutions to contribute to the Wikimedia projects as an integral part of their work.

The challenge for us is the general lack of digital strategies of Ukrainian GLAMs. Most of them have websites, but many of them think that publishing their collections online will drive visitors to the website instead of visiting the museum or library itself and thus harm them. Despite having very rich collections, arranging a content donation thus usually requires significant time for negotiations and trainings by volunteers and staff.

Content donations can be tracked on Commons (link, see institutions from Ukraine). We will keep pursuing further donations of free content to Wikimedia Commons and improving the content of Wikimedia projects by increasing the participation of the community in WMUA-GLAM activities and GLAM staff itself.

Wikiexpeditions

Wikiexpeditions bring opportunity for Wikimedians and newly registered users to visit places and sites with the goal of documenting topics that lack coverage on Wikimedia projects with media. Wikiexpedition participants are asked to create or expand corresponding new articles, illustrate them with images, and report on their contribution on the WMUA wiki and WMUA blog.

We run this programme since 2011 and we supported expeditions in almost all regions of Ukraine. They come in a variety of formats, including one-day cycling expeditions to some sites that lack coverage, two- or three-days tours to some specific places identified by expert Wikimedians (such as archaeologists or nature scientists) or long expeditions organised with partners and our partial support like Inside of Living. An example of the wikiexpedition report page is here, and media from our expeditions are on Commons.

Program Objectives:

  • to improve Wikipedia's coverage of topics that were prioritized by the community
  • to increase the quality and quantity of photographic content about protected nature sites, cultural heritage sites, photographic and other media content that help to discover science
  • to ensure photo contest content is used to illustrate Wikimedia projects through organising an on-wiki collaboration (contests)
  • to improve the content of Wikimedia projects by increasing the participation of the GLAM institutions and the participation of the community in WMUA-GLAM activities
  • to improve the content of Wikimedia projects by increasing content on locally-oriented topics

Program Metrics:

Shared metrics
  • Total participants: 3140
  • Number of newly registered users: 1255
  • Number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects: 118 700
Grantee-defined metrics
  • Number of volunteers involved: 40
  • Number of media files used: 13 550

Timeline:

  • March 1 – March 31: Scandinavian Spring contest
  • March 21 – May 31: CEE Spring article contest
  • May 1 – 31: Wiki Loves Earth Ukraine photo contest
  • September 1 – 30: Wiki Loves Monuments Ukraine photo contest
  • November 1 – 30: Wiki Science Competition

Increasing Participation

We seek to different groups and individuals, including under-represented in our community by supporting and organising trainings aimed at increasing participation in the Wikimedia movement. We are working with our community to find opportunities to increase participation and improve the climate for newbies in Wikimedia projects. This is done through outreach activities, partnerships with particular outreach institutions, on-wiki initiatives (such as Wikimarathon). These activities have parallel aims of improving content and attracting more participation from the target groups.

Wikimarathon

The 5th edition of the Wikimarathon dedicated to the 14th anniversary of Ukrainian Wikipedia is planned for January, 27-30. It aims to attract as many people as possible to enrich the free encyclopedia and to have a record number of new articles as for four days. The organizational stress is made on appeal through media to participate and on setting collaborations with libraries, educational institutions, and NGOs for hosting workshops led by Wikimedians. 20 volunteers have affirmed their interest in conducting workshops and/or engage nearby institutions to host them. Wikimarathon 2017 (link) resulted in 2031 articles (428 of them were created by bots) and impressive media coverage. The average daily number of articles was 4 times bigger than the average number of articles created in Ukrainian Wikipedia along the year.

Wikipedia Education Program

Wikimedia Ukraine organises Wikipedia Education Programme (WEP) events since 2011.

For the first years our focus was on working with university students, and we worked in two directions: one was to sign a memorandum of cooperation with university administration and organise workshops for lecturers hoping that they would implement the teaching model we offer, the other was to find already interested lecturers, answer their questions and help them work with students' articles during the semester. However, few years ago we found out that Ukrainian students usually come to higher education institutions with no idea of how to write an article without falling into plagiarism, are not afraid of plagiarism and do not try to avoid it. Since 2017 we focus primarily on cooperation with universities where we have already identified lecturers interested in working with WEP, and we intend to keep this focus in 2018.

Since 2016 we are actively developing work with high school teachers. We hope to engage a new large group of them into using Wikimedia projects in classroom which means teaching young students to work with sources and learn to be careful about possible plagiarism before they get used to it. So far we have organised around ten workshops for teachers from all over Ukraine, many of participants now feel empowered to spread the word in local circles of teachers. Many of them have organised successful Wikipedia classes in their high schools. Working with high schools is now the major focus of our Wikipedia Education Programme, and we intend to develop these activities.

Our commitment is to provide high-quality trainings (usually two-day long trainings for teachers, several sessions for students) to make sure they have necessary knowledge to become new editors. In 2017, for example, we reached 90 teachers with two-day trainings after getting request from teachers associations to bring such.

Wikicamp 2018

This is a planned event for high school students engaged in editing Wikipedia in classes led by teachers who passed our trainings. The camp is to be based in a sports and health complex affiliated with lyceum in Kremenchuk (Poltava Oblast, Central Ukraine) for 20-25 high school students. Project is led by Oleh Kushch. Initiative was inspired by the success of the Wikicamps in Armenia and education course on Wikipedia for schoolchildren by named teacher, and is in line with the development of the Wikipedia Education Programme for high schools in Ukraine.

Wikiworkshops on demand

There is a high demand for learning sessions on editing Wikimedia projects, and we have a significant track record in organising those. The demand may come from partner organisations who want to improve coverage of some topic on Wikipedia or from volunteers who identified an interesting opportunity. These trainings may happen in bigger cities where we have a developed community or in regions where we do not have experienced Wikimedians yet. They come in a variety of shapes from those targeting professional communities (notably librarians) to those targeting general public, usually in form of edit-a-thons.

Lessons learned from the workshops we organise are documented here.

Crimean Tatar Wikipedia and beyond

Crimean Tatars are a minority people in Ukraine, vulnerable due to the historic circumstances. We already established relations with several representatives and non-profits of Crimean Tatars, “ALEM” organisation to name one, in order to raise awareness about Crimean Tatar Wikipedia and bring more users to it as well as cover related topics in Ukrainian Wikipedia. We organised activities related to Crimean Tatar Wikipedia since 2013, but we never had a full-scale programme on it. In 2018 we want to develop these activities, notably by involving our partners in celebrating 10 years of Crimean Tatar Wikipedia.

Program Objectives:

  • to engage more educators by organising at least 10 trainings
  • to engage more students by organising at least 2 courses and 10 presentations
  • to continue the particular focus on under-represented regions, such as Southern and Eastern Ukraine, by organising at least one such training there
  • to continue responding to the requests of different communities by holding at least 5 Wikiworkshops for those who ask
  • to continue promoting Wikipedia in education by giving presentations of innovative uses of Wikipedia and related projects on educational conferences and fairs

Program Metrics:

Shared metrics
  • Total participants: 830
  • Number of newly registered users: 385
  • Number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects: 2150
Grantee-defined metrics
  • Number of volunteers involved: 40
  • Number of media files used: 50

Timeline:

  • January 27 – 30: Wikipedia birthday Wikimarathon
  • 2 weeks in June – August: Wikicamp
  • During the year: editing events

Community Support and Development

Wikimedia Ukraine has been offering support to the Wikimedia communities in different ways. We will continue organising events, offering microgrants and giving supportive gifties not only for WMUA members who are active offline volunteers but also for all editors that inform us of their needs and deserve to be encouraged. There is still a room for perfection to our communication with volunteers and showing our appreciation to them and thus we are committed to reaching it.

Community Events

Face-to-Face meetups are important opportunities for both chapter and wider community members as opportunities to strengthen online collaborations, share learnings and get new skill, as well as start new projects or launch initiatives to improve existing ones. They are especially important given that Ukraine is the biggest country in Europe and our community is spread across the country.

We will again organise Ukrainian WikiConference for the community (the annual meeting of Wikimedians, chapter members or not, from all over Ukraine) and the Annual General Meeting (mandatory annual meeting to approve reports, discuss plans and elect the new Board) for the organisation. We will also try once again to establish having regional events as we envision them (being gatherings of local Wikimedians from underrepresented regions with some invited participants from outside the region): we did not yet reach this goal in previous years due to lack of organising force.

Trainings for Volunteers

In order to have a stronger community, we provide trainings on specific skills that Ukrainian Wikimedians need. The topics for such trainings (and proving their need) emerge from after-events conversations, for instance, we had trainings on conflict resolution or social media in previous years. The need for more technical skills will be covered by Wikihackathon we plan to organise next year. Another need is to have trainings for trainers: due to increasing demand for holding Wikipedia workshops we need more people who can effectively present Wikipedia in front of the audience. There is vivid interest among volunteers in this kind of trainings for 2018.

Scholarships

Choosing community members or assigning staff members to participate in international events is an opportunity to learn from colleagues abroad, speak about our local projects and mediate experiences to our community. We would like to continue having positive outcomes of having Ukrainian Wikimedians at international events, such as Wikimania, regional Wikimedia CEE Meeting and thematic events, such as Wikisource conference, EduWiki etc.

Microgrants

This project is aimed to provide financial assistance for activities of volunteers that will result in promotion and/or contribution to Wikimedia projects. Each year we contact with organisers of festivals or public events to get accreditations for volunteer photographers, cover travel costs for attending events. We would be glad to purchase books or other small items which would make volunteer work on contributing to wikiprojects more comfortable (link to landing page of the project).

Thematic weeks/months

Thematic (collaborative) editing weeks and months is a bottom-up project that runs non-stop in Ukrainian Wikipedia. Anyone is welcome to announce the topic, writing period and invite users to start cooperative work aiming to improve and create articles focused on specific topic. Wikimedia Ukraine tries to pursue the project proposing to initiators of weeks an opportunity to choose the best contributor(s) of a thematic week/month and entrust us to deliver souvenirs. These can be wikisouvenirs that we have or sponsoring the purchase of special ones (related to the topic). Apart of these souvenirs, we also promote thematic weeks/months via WMUA blog and social networks. International editing weeks or months like Asian Month, Hungarian Revolution of 1956 also demand organizational support.

Wikizghushchivka (Condensed milk)

This project of encouraging most productive contributors of the month with a real can of condensed milk (as a virtual one is a token of appreciation native to Ukrainian Wikipedia, similar to barnstars in English Wikipedia) has been awarded since 2011, although with breaks due to organisational challenges. Each month we send a can to the most active experienced user and the most active newbie of each Ukrainian project (Wikipedia, Wikiquote etc.). Now we have volunteers to revive the project and all the contributors will eventually get their “prizes”. We are eager to continue supporting this unique initiative.

Program Objectives:

  • to increase the community participation and skill level
  • to empower users with the techniques and skills that needed for Wikimedia projects
  • to provide incentives to the community, supporting wide range of volunteer initiatives with the materials and souvenirs they can use
  • to ensure members and volunteers engagement and committing by supporting/organising online and offline events

Program Metrics:

Shared metrics
  • Total participants: 232
  • Number of newly registered users: 25
  • Number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects: 250
Grantee-defined metrics
  • Number of volunteers involved: 20
  • Number of media files used: 100

Timeline:

  • February: Wikihackathon
  • May: trainings for volunteers
  • June: WikiConference
  • December 21 – 22: WMUA Annual General Meeting
  • During the year: other activities

Promoting Wikimedia and Free licenses

Misleading information concerning Wikipedia and other Wikiprojects as well as free licenses keeps popping up in mass media. During last year WMUA members talked several institutions (incl. Ministry of Defense) into releasing content on their web-sites under CC-BY license. Now more media in Ukraine know what a free license means, how Wikipedia works, how to reuse content from Wikimedia projects, but the level of awareness is still lower than preferable. We see a need in preventing and resolving misunderstandings by providing readable information about Wikimedia projects and having talks with journalists, incl. in partnership with Creative Commons Ukraine.

Media Publicity

Wikimedia Ukraine considers media visibility and publicity to be an important resource for attracting volunteers, creating public trust and reaching out potential institutional partners. Since 2011 we regularly update our blog (with an average of 100 posts per year) which regularly become news articles in online media. Maintaining several pages in social media proved to be a good platform for getting and providing feedback on different issues, demonstrating notable results of our work and reaching out public persons with free knowledge related questions.

Free panorama advocacy

We continue spreading information about freedom of panorama among journalists and politicians. In 2016 and 2017 we designed related infographics and engaged in discussions on draft laws that touch free panorama and/or free licences topic, this will be continued.

Lessons learned from our experience with ordering/developing infographics are documented here.

Wikipedia-linked QR-codes

There was a successful pilot in placing QR-codes on historic monuments in Odesa several years ago but due to lack of volunteers it was not worked out further. We have commitment from volunteers now to revive this idea and work with local authorities in other cities on placing QR-codes that lead to Wikipedia articles on historic buildings.

Program Objectives:

  • to encourage regulatory and legislative changes that will benefit the Wikimedia projects, allow for freedom of panorama in Ukraine
  • to increase awareness of Wikimedia projects and respect for the licenses (copyright)
  • to improving understanding of free licenses and their usage in Wikimedia projects
  • to popularize Wikipedia by enabling easy electronic access to the information about city sites

Program Metrics:

Shared metrics
  • Total participants: 100
  • Number of newly registered users: 5
  • Number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects: 20
Grantee-defined metrics
  • Number of volunteers involved: 15
  • Number of media files used: 10

Staff and contractors edit

Please describe any changes to your staffing plan for the upcoming funding period. These should include increases in staff or contractor hours, new staff positions, or staff positions you are removing. Include your rationale for any staffing changes here.

One new position (Accountant) at 1.0 FTE, making our staff increase from 2.25 FTE to 3.25 FTE. All three other positions remain unchanged.

For each new staff or contractor position, please use the template provided to add information about each new staff or contractor you are planning for the upcoming funding period (or to describe significant increases in hours or changes in job descriptions for existing staff). You are not required to provide this information for existing staff where no changes are required.

  • The accountant position is our most recent hiring (she started with us in the end of October), the full job description is here. In our 2017 grant this was budgeted as accounting fees for an external company, but following our site visit report this year and discussions with WMF staff we decided to hire an accountant. She will be working full-time in our office in Kyiv, she is reporting to the Chair of Board and will work closely with the Treasurer. We estimate that half of the accountant's time will be spend on reporting to the state (which will reduce burden of the Chair of Board who had to submit these reports himself) and another half on accounting of expenses on our projects.

Budget and resource plan edit

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.

Google Spreadsheet, with a copy on Meta soon.

Midpoint report edit

This is a brief report on the grantee's progress during the midpoint reporting period: 1 January - 30 June 2018.

Program story edit

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

Local Cultural Heritage and Notable People: Аrticle Contest for Libraries

Progress edit

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.

Content Gap

Article Contests

  • During February we had first-ever contest in Ukrainian Wikivoyage. Support Wikivoyage in Ukrainian («Підтримай Вікімандри українською») was aimed at raising awareness about the project and motivating contributors to increase content. Over 120 articles were created about cities and remarkable sites of Ukraine and worldwide, and over 30 articles were improved. This increased the total number of articles in the project up to 764. Photographs from the Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments contests were widely used by participants to illustrate the articles. The contest was promoted only online, via social media and websites of regional municipalities who reacted to Wikimedia Ukraine's official letter of appeal to provide information support. Some of new articles brought by the contest: Bulgarian phrasebook, Boryspil international airport, 17th century in Lviv. Touristic route, Tbilisi.
  • In March an article contest dedicated to Scandinavian countries. The idea behind the project was to cover the region (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) that was underrepresented on Wikipedia and not covered in previous contests such as CEE Spring. This contest was organised in partnership with Ukrainian-Scandinavian Centre who hosted two promotional edit-a-thons and with support of the Embassy of Norway in Ukraine. 1095 articles were created or improved during the contest. We had a significant involvement of newbies (40 out of 91 participants were newly registered), with roughly 1/3 of participants learning about it from a source other than Wikipedia.
  • In April an article contest on writing about information security in partnership with Cisco Systems. 450 articles were created or improved, 30 participants took part. We have also organised wikitrainings in advance for those who wanted to find out more about editing. The contest was widely promoted off-wiki, particularly targeting information security students.
  • The CEE Spring article contest took part from March 21 to May 31. 1912 articles were created and 129 articles improved (list) which gave Ukraine the first place among all communities involved in CEE Spring this year and allowed us to improve last year's (already high) result. 78 participants took part, 23 of them were newbies, which is a high rate compared to CEE Spring in general (403 participants, 53 newbies). Finding jury members to evaluate over 2000 articles became a challenge for us (although a pleasant one): to make the amount of work bearable we had to recruit more than 20 jury members. The awards ceremony will be held during annual Wikiconference in August.
  • June was marked with another one month long contest. Wiki Loves Music contest was for creating or improving articles on any aspect of the music: music theory, elements, history, performers, composers, songs etc. The contest was split into two groups: one about music theory, history and instruments, more targeting music students and professionals, and another one about musicians, songs and events, more targeting music fans. The contest resulted in 473 new and 65 improved articles. Two juries (one per category) are currently scoring articles.

Photography Contests

  • In May we had the 6th edition of Wiki Loves Earth photo contest for Ukraine. 287 participants uploaded 10 562 files. In July the jury of seven will pass top-10 pictures that to the international round. About 4% of images uploaded are used across Wikimedia projects by the reporting time. This edition hit the record in the number of photographed environmentally protected areas and objects in Ukraine, the quantity that is more valuable for us than total number of photos submitted. But there's still a gap for this contest to close as six editions have brought illustrations of only 44% of ca.8200 objects in Nature Preservation Fund State Registry.
The international part of Wiki Loves Earth was again a joint effort of Wikimedia Ukraine and a volunteer international team this year. 32 countries participated in the contest this year. It brought 90 000 (stats tool) images in total. This result is roughly in line with the one from previous year, without India's participation (they needed a break to deal with over 30 thousands submissions last year). The international jury is to start their work in August.

GLAM (БоГеМА)

  • GLAM institutions actively participated in Wikimarathon (see Increasing Participation program). Volunteers have collaborated with the libraries to host wikimeetups, where everyone could come and take part in Wikimarathon and check books for information. In some locations librarians were not just guests, participants or hosts but also volunteered to coordinate meetup and introduce participants to Wikipedia rules.
  • Local Cultural Heritage and Notable People, article contest for librarians and readers achieved satisfactory results (more details in Mіdreport Program story).

Wikiexpeditions

Only one Wikiexpedition was held during the period, a long expedition to Chernivtsi Oblast to picture local wooden churches known for their particular style. This region is overall underrepresented on Wikimedia projects, particularly due to relatively small population and lack of active local community. In addition to wooden churches, participants also pictured other notable places (village council buildings, monuments etc.) on their way. Two participants have taken 634 photos, created 5 and improved 88 articles.

Increasing Participation

Wikimarathon

 
Facebook banner for Wikimarathon

Ukrainian Wikipedia turned 14 on January 30. According to the plan we had run Wikimarathon to celebrate the date. The main idea was to invite people to create at least one article to thank Wikipedia for knowledge it provides. This year Wikimarathon's edition lasted for four days: January 27-30. To make it easier for all interested and existing editors to take part in the motion and collaborate face to face, Wikimedia Ukraine inspired and supported meetups on these days. More than 40 settlements were on the Wikimarathon's meetups map, with 59 different events, and over 30 of them were hosted by public or university libraries. Wikimarathon resulted in 2509 new articles (750 were created by bots). So the average daily number was 3 times bigger than the average number of articles created in Ukrainian Wikipedia along the year. 600 users reacted to Wikimedia Ukraine's appeal by contributing a new article, among them 171 registered during Wikimarathon days.

Wikipedia Education Program

  • In EP we focused on increasing the participation of educators. However, these activities only give major results in the following period, in this case in the next school year (starting September). There were 3 trainings for school teachers from all over Ukraine (two 2-day trainings in Kyiv and one-day training in Nizhyn, Chernihiv oblast). Trainers, teachers themselves, introduced 28 participants with Wikipedia basic rules, practiced in creating articles and prepared teachers to work with Wikipedia in class, as a tool for research and for the main curriculum work.
  • Andriy Grytsenko, board member who is an educator himself and Education Program activist, presented Wikipedia Education Programme at conferences for educators EdCamp in Chernihiv, Nizhyn, Gluhiv and also for students of one of Kyiv university.
  • In the meantime, teachers continued organising education programme in their institutions, with institutions in Lviv, Cherkasy Oblast, Poltava Oblast and Sumy Oblast being particularly active. Courses targeting high school and university students resulted in over 300 new articles, and education programme overall had 165 participants (students and teachers participating in trainings) who created and improved 480 articles.
  • Work is currently ongoing on preparing a reference book for teachers willing to organise Wikipedia Education Program activities.
  • In addition, Wikimedia Ukraine supported a workshop targeting French Wikipedia as a part of French Mois de la contribution (Contribution month) in March, with 5 participants writing 5 new articles.

Wikicamp 2018

No progress was made on this project during the first six months.

Wikiworkshops on demand

  • On May 20, 2018, Wikimedia Ukraine held a Human Right's Wikipedia Edit-a-thon together with Amnesty International in Ukraine. 12 people took part in the event.
  • There were four webinars led by Wikimedians during the reporting period (a record number for us in six months.) Two of them happened to reach interested groups in cities we couldn't find volunteers to visit locally, and two more were for specific topic article contests and were organised on partners invitation.
  • About ten trainings have been conducted by Wikipedians/Wikimedians on demand for potential participants in article contests.
  • Six other trainings were organised with partner organisations. Kharkiv was the most active city, owing to increase in activity of the local group, while Vinnytsia had probably the most interesting one, with Harmony Centre for rehabilitation of disabled.
  • Overall we tracked 133 participants contributing 131 articles (some workshops did not have enough time or conditions to allow participants to create articles, while a vast majority did).

Crimean Tatar Wikipedia and beyond

  • No big progress was made on this project during the first six months. Crimean Tatar activist affiliated with Minor Academy of Sciences of Ukraine received training in our office but still is active only in Ukrainian Wikipedia project.

Community Support and Development

Community Events

The major community event in the beginning of the year was the Ukrainian Wikipedia Birthday. In multiple cities edit-a-thons targeting newbies were followed by meetups and celebrations targeting established community. We have supported wikimeetups in 15 cities and towns (for example, by funding birthday cakes). Metrics-wise, the progress of these events is tracked within Increasing Participation programme as most participants (all but two in fact) also participated in an edit-a-thon or online in Wikimarathon by writing an article. Having a community event have probably made these edit-a-thons more attractive, although specific impact is hard to measure.

Bigger events (Ukrainian WikiConference and the Annual General Meeting) will be held in later period.

Trainings for Volunteers

We provided financial support for an individual training on photography for volunteer and chapter member willing to attend events where notable people can be photographed. This volunteer later proceeded to obtain microgrants and photo accreditations to cover events involving notable people.

Scholarships

In the period covered by this report, we granted four scholarships:

We also awarded three scholarships to Wikimania in Cape Town held in July.

Microgrants

We supported volunteers with accreditations and travel expenses for three events:

Thematic weeks/months

Thematic month model was chosen for a joint project with Interdisciplinary Certificate Program in Jewish Studies at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy which came up with proposition to organise onwiki activity about Israel (culture, science, history etc) on occasion of coming 70th anniversary of the establishment of Israel as a state. During the month 238 articles by 35 contributors were added, and 14 articles were improved. Jewish Studies Program awarded top 10 contributors with books, Wikimedia Ukraine and Wikimedia Israel provided wikisouvenirs.

Wikimedia Ukraine also co-organised Sumy Week and WikiGap during this period. In addition, we provided souvenirs to most active participants of other thematic weeks whose organisers were interested in getting such support.

Promoting Wikimedia and Free licenses

Media Publicity

External video
  Interview with User:Fed4ev and User:Aced on their Wikipedia contributions
  • Wikimarathon was again an event of high interest for press. Besides plenty announcements in news media based on our press-release, regional TV news programs aired at least 10 reports om Wikimarathon. And our infographics was the source for the publication on most popular articles that was spread quickly to many other sites and was mentioned on TV.
  • We managed to implement an unusual idea of TV visit to Wikipedian's home because it was Wikipedia birthday time and we got request to help to make a TV story. Wikimedia Ukraine office also was filmed for TV for the first time.
  • Our social media pages kept growing, reflected by the growth in the number of followers on Twitter and Facebook. The number of followers on WMUA Facebook page increased by 10% (from 2443 to 2716 by June 30th). WMUA Twitter account indicates +200 followers increase.
  • After presenting the exhibition of award-winning photos on Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth awards ceremony in Kyiv in 2017, we again declared a joint exhibition of both contests winning photos available for touring. Until June 2018, 21 images toured to 3 cities more cities and were showcased in a municipal museums (Glukhiv, Zaporizhia) and library (Kherson). We consider it to be good promotional activity. Some pleasant feedbacks were left in visitor books that accompanied exhibition.

Free panorama advocacy

  • On May 15, 2018, Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine did not pass a bill #7539 on some amendments to the Law on Copyright, and the bill was returned to the Committee of Science and Education for further improvement. The bill was supposed to go back to Verkhovna Rada no later than June 15. The draft law introduces non-commercial "freedom of panorama", that Wikimedia Ukraine has tried to oppose before. This time Wikimedia Ukraine and Creative Commons Ukraine have created infographics explaining the weaknesses of non-commercial "freedom of panorama". Extensive explanatory text aired on our blog (link).

Wikipedia-linked QR-codes

No progress was made on this project during the first six months.

Spending edit

Please report your organization's total spending during the reporting period, or link to a financial document showing your total spending.

19397.00 USD, detailed report here.
Most of our expenses will occur in the second half of the year. The calculations are done using the exchange rate UAH-USD for June 30, 2018

Final report edit

This is the final report for your grant, describing your outcomes from the period January 1, 2018 - December 31, 2018.

Program story edit

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

We would like to present the Ukrainian Wikiconference as a programme story. We have a significant track record on it (it was started in 2011) and every year this event has a real impact on our planning and the way we work on other programmes and interact with our community.

Since the beginning of the conference it gradually shifted from presenting the results and tossing ideas in the air to discussions and planning. At Ukrainian Wikiconference 2018 Community Survey results were presented for the audience (the editors) to better understand the readers and other editors; there was a strategic discussion (probably first in-person strategic discussion in community) which will be continued at strategic sessions in 2019; there were discussions on the WMUA programs as in our annual plan: GLAM, Education program, thematic weeks, contests, Wikimarathon, Wikiexpeditions etc. Participants were asked to not only picture how it all should be but to propose specific steps we should take to come there. Wikiconference helps understand the volume of projects that volunteers are ready to undertake and which cannot happen without support from Wikimedia Ukraine.

Per our goal to build capacities of the community, we had several trainings and workshops in the program. Post-conference survey gathered ideas that came to people during and after the conference; this page, together with the page where volunteers signed up for the next year projects, formed the basis of our 2019 grant proposal.

Some findings from the conference (like, taking survey should be compulsory for scholarship recipients) were immediately used in the next conference that we hosted, CEE Meeting. And since we progress in learning to plan things early, the bidding process and volunteering to the core organising team for the next Ukrainian Wikiconference started right away.

Learning story edit

Please link to one learning story that shows how your organization documents lessons learned and adapts its programs accordingly.

Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2018 was the most important event in terms of lessons learned for our organisation this year. We already hosted CEE Meeting in 2014 so it is possible to compare how our organization documents lessons learned and adapts accordingly.

In 2014 Report we mentioned 5 things that we would make differently, and they were made differently in 2018: we started preparing early, we enforced better timing of the presentations and worked with speakers beforehand, we invited speakers from outside the CEE and sent the survey immediately after the end of the conference.

Member of WMUA was involved in organising Wikimedia Conference 2018 under Visiting Wikimedian program from WMDE, this experience was documented and passed to other members in person and by implementing some of the approaches into CEE Meeting 2018: timeline, forms, form responses analysis, email style, program schedule building process, calls with speakers, merchandise etc.

During the conference we made notes on the go about what is working and what could be made better in a shared google doc. After the conference we summarised the notes, added lessons learned from previous conferences, and in December sent them to Wikimedia Serbia, the hosts of CEE Meeting 2019. These notes became the basis for the CEE Meeting 2018 Report (see it for the details).

To summarise one type of the learnings from the CEE Meeting 2018 we started a learning pattern:

Results edit

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.

Metrics

Figures before the slash are outcomes, those after the slash are targets.

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of participants 11,909 / 4,100 (non-Ukrainian Wiki Loves Earth: 7397 / 2300, everything else: 4512 / 1800)

Target significantly exceeded for three main reasons. Firstly, participants in Wikipedia promotion events (2200 in total): figures significantly higher than anticipated as we did not set any significant target on that. These participants, however, mostly learned about Wikimedia and got some materials but did not edit there. Secondly, high involvement in Increasing Participation programme, most notably Wikimarathon (600 participants) and also Education Programme. Finally, target also exceeded on non-Ukrainian Wiki Loves Earth, driven by good results in Pakistan, Germany and Italy.

2. # of newly registered 7,381 / 1,680 (non-Ukrainian Wiki Loves Earth: 1162 / 780, everything else: 1162 / 780)

Target significantly exceeded for three main reasons. Firstly, Increasing Participation programme notably with good result on workshops (195 new users). Secondly, good results of Content Gap programme notably on GLAMs owing to good results of GLAM-specific contests (over 100 new users). Finally, target also exceeded on non-Ukrainian Wiki Loves Earth, driven by good results in Pakistan, Italy and Morocco.

3. # content pages 125,248 / 121,000 Overall in line, slightly below target on national photo contests (notably because there was no Science Photo Contest), slightly above target on Increasing Participation (notably on Wikimarathon) and on international Wiki Loves Earth.
4. # of volunteers involved 172 / 70 Very high volunteer involvement significantly exceeding targets. Efforts on recruiting volunteers were largely successful, with notably 58 volunteers organising Wikimarathon events, and over 20 people involved in CEE Spring (answering our call for community jury members) and Wiki Loves Monuments (following our efforts to launch a diverse volunteer jury).
5. # of media files used 10,087 / 13,760 (non-Ukrainian Wiki Loves Earth: 6876 / 7000, everything else: 3211 / 6760)

Target missed on both due to insufficient efforts targeting increase in media files usage: we neither organised national campaigns for 2018 photos (we did have Wikivoyage initiatives but they mainly increased usage of 2017 and prior photos) nor promoted such campaigns internationally.

Content Gap

Article Contests

Wikimedia Ukraine organises article contests for 7 years now. The year 2018 marks a record for the number of contests held in one year, and another one for the number of created articles during them, by a wide margin. There were seven contests organised and supported, six in Wikipedia and one in Wikivoyage. In these article contests almost 200 new users were engaged, and more than 4 thousand articles were created in Ukrainian Wikipedia. CEE Spring 2018 was the biggest contest of the year, more than 2 thousand articles were created or improved. A new tool was developed for the needs of this contest, WikiGrade by Юрій Булка, which made article evaluation process easier and more effective, and was immediately used again in the next contests.

There was a plan to support a contest or a thematic week on the topic of WLM/WLE, to create articles where pictures from photocontests would be used. This was not achieved (because the year was already busy) and the plan has been moved to 2019. Overall, even though some of the ideas for article contests were not implemented in 2018, this direction was successful because of the record rates of content pages and volunteer involvement achieved in 2018. The contests we held provided some valuable lessons on how to better concentrate on the quality of articles created throughout the contests and pay attention to the long-term outcomes of the contests.

List of organised and supported contests:

Photography Contests

Continuing the tradition, Wikimedia Ukraine organised three big annual photo competitions: Wiki Loves Monuments in Ukraine, Wiki Loves Earth in Ukraine and Wiki Loves Earth international. Number of images uploaded in Ukrainian WLM and WLE was lower than last year, but remained high, with 21000 and 10000 respectively. Wiki Loves Monuments featured "Jewish Heritage" special nomination for the first time; it was announced in partnership with Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies. This new partnership allowed the award ceremonies of the two contests to be held at Sholom Aleichem Museum in Kyiv.

Lack of international contest and insufficient volunteer interest made it impossible to organise Wiki Science Competition in 2018, which is why we decided to postpone this contest to 2019. Traditionally, photography contests are among our largest projects, and we managed to maintain their status and scope in 2018. The need for a closer integration of media files in Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects' articles has become clearer, and it is one of the directions we are going to work on 2019, while continuing to organize traditional large-scale contests, including the Science Photography Competition.

As in previous years, we kept being the basis for international Wiki Loves Earth. In 2018 32 countries organised a national stage, and the list of first-time participants included Chile, Italy, Jordan and the Philippines (with Italy being especially successful). As in 2016 and 2017, there was a special nomination in collaboration with UNESCO which was extended to Biosphere Reserves and UNESCO Global Geoparks. During the contest 89,829 pictures were submitted by 7,659 participants, 6,371 of whom made their first upload. Organisation-wise international WLE was rather challenging in 2018. We found out that to be run smoothly this project needs either staff support or a dedicated team with a dozen of volunteers for whom Wiki Loves Earth would be the main project (like this is the case with Wiki Loves Monuments). While our middle-term plan is to move this to a more independent team with a separate grant like Wiki Loves Monuments, we need to work on creating and onboarding a team of volunteers working on this project. Staff support we could provide in 2018 was not sufficient, thus we are planning to increase staff capacity in 2019.

Organised photo contests:

GLAM (БоГеМА)

2018 was rather active in terms of cooperation with GLAMs and engaging them in our activities. Local Cultural Heritage and Notable People article contest was aimed at libraries (with Ukrainian Library Association as its main info partner); 49 libraries took part in it, and some of them hosted wikitrainings. WikiKharkivshchyna article contest was also designed for libraries, and 12 libraries in Kharkiv Oblast hosted wikitrainings. Apart from producing text content, participants illustrated their articles as well. Therefore, the main successes we have achieved in the GLAM direction revolve around the involvement of GLAM institutions in our broader projects, most notable article contests. At the same time, there were almost no steps done towards releasing GLAM content under free licenses. With no incentives from the GLAMs side, we did not have enough resources to proactively promote this activity, and thus it remained an "important, not urgent" task, that wasn't addressed by busy volunteers in 2018.

Organised and supported projects:

  • July 20 — December 20: contest-marathon Bookcase («Книжкова шафа») in Ukrainian Wikisource
  • March 19—25: Local Cultural Heritage and Notable People (on the intersection of GLAM and article contests)
  • Нестеренко Оля visited GLAM forum in Yerevan and gave a presentation on achievements and mistakes of GLAM in Ukraine
  • November 5—8: WikiKharkivshchyna 2018 (on the intersection of GLAM and article contests)
  • Touring photo exhibition Monuments of Ukraine («Пам'ятки України») (top images from Wiki Loves Monuments 2017 and Wiki Loves Earth 2017 in Ukraine) visited Hlukhiv, Kherson, Zaporizhia, Pokrovske, Dnipro, and was exhibited for month or longer at each stop.

Wikiexpeditions

In 2018 this project was less active than in previous years, mostly because of lack of applications for Wikiexpeditions. In May there was a big shot of two Wikiexpeditions that pictured wooden churches of Bukovyna region (Chernivtsi Oblast). However, there was no effort towards evolving Wikiexpeditions as a project, particularly towards locating thematic gaps that could be bridged by Wikiexpeditions. We just did not have enough volunteers ready to regularly engage in working on Wikiexpeditions, with some of the people who used to be interested in this project before being less active in 2018. In 2019, Wikiexpeditions become part of Microgrants, which is expected to boost effectiveness of the project, particularly through making it easier to apply for an Wikiexpedition, while keeping the process of thorough reporting on particular expeditions' results (see 2019 sAPG).

Supported Wikiexpeditions:

  • Exploring Wooden Churches of Flat Bukovyna (642 F)
  • Exploring Wooden Churches in Mountainous Bukovyna (225 F)

Program Objectives:

  • to improve Wikipedia's coverage of topics that were prioritized by the community
      Partly done. On the one hand, lots of Wikipedia content was created and improved, the topics being chosen mostly by community members. Our community also prioritised working on Wikivoyage and Wikisource sister projects broadly, without prioritising specific topics due to small size of these projects. On the other hand, a community discussion was expected to happen for Wikiexpeditions to cover specifically gaps prioritized by the Wikipedia community (and we didn't want to advertise the project much until the time we know what to ask for), but this discussion hasn't happened yet.
  • to increase the quality and quantity of photographic content about protected nature sites, cultural heritage sites, photographic and other media content that help to discover science
      Partly done. Our contests brought additional photographic content about protected nature sites and cultural heritage sites, although somewhat below expectations. A focus was made in bridging geographic coverage gaps by encouraging travel to sites that were not pictured yet, instead of focusing on number of submissions or nominations for quality statuses. As a result, the number of quality images dropped (81 against 148 last year in WLM, 47 against 53 in WLE), and the total number of images dropped, but on the positive side, thousands of sites got their first ever picture this year. Finally, Wiki Science Competition wasn't held this year.
  • to ensure photo contest content is used to illustrate Wikimedia projects through organising an on-wiki collaboration (contests)
      Not done. The idea of a contest was later declined to avoid competition on whose pictures should illustrate the articles. A thematic week for Wikipedians would be a better approach and it will most probably happen in 2019. Some efforts to illustrate Wikimedia projects with photo contest content were present: WikiKharkivshchyna and Support Wikivoyage in Ukrainian participants illustrated their newly created pages, but these effort were scattered.
  • to improve the content of Wikimedia projects by increasing the participation of the GLAM institutions and the participation of the community in WMUA-GLAM activities
      Done. Two article contests aimed at librarians brought their results, and a partnership with Ukrainian Association for Jewish Studies allowed us to open new special nomination in WLM and bring new thematic content to Commons. Despite the fact that these instances are not the classical GLAM with batch uploads of content, they made very valuable contributions on topics of their expertise.
  • to improve the content of Wikimedia projects by increasing content on locally-oriented topics
      Done. The aforementioned Local Cultural Heritage and Notable People and WikiKharkivshchyna 2018 contests were designed to bring content on locally-oriented topics and they did just that. Wikiexpeditions, however few they are, also brought local content on Bukovyna region.

Program Metrics:

Shared metrics
  • Total participants: 8306 / 3140 (non-Ukrainian Wiki Loves Earth: 7397 / 2300, everything else: 909 / 840). International Wiki Loves Earth was again primarily responsible for exceeding this target notably driven by good results in Pakistan, Germany and Italy, while all other projects were slightly above expectations.
  • Number of newly registered users: 6760 / 1255 (non-Ukrainian Wiki Loves Earth: 6219 / 900, everything else: 541 / 355). Target exceeded both on Wiki Loves Earth (most driven by Pakistan, Italy and Morocco) and elsewhere (with a particular success of two projects targeting GLAM population that recruited over 100 newly registered users from GLAMs).
  • Number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects: 119 547 / 118 700. Overall in line with the plan, slightly below target on national photo contests (notably because there was no Science Photo Contest), slightly above target on international Wiki Loves Earth.
Grantee-defined metrics
  • Number of volunteers involved: 109 / 40. We had a very significant involvement of volunteers around contests, with the highest numbers of volunteers being involved in CEE Spring 2018 (3 core team members, 20 jury members, 1 developer plus on-wiki helpers) and Wiki Loves Monuments (6 core team members, 19 jury members plus local and on-wiki helpers).
  • Number of media files used: 10 007 / 13 550 (non-Ukrainian Wiki Loves Earth: 6876 / 7000, everything else: 3131 / 6550). Target missed on both due to insufficient efforts targeting increase in media files usage: we neither organised national campaigns for 2018 photos (we did have Wikivoyage initiatives but they mainly increased usage of 2017 and prior photos) nor promoted such campaigns internationally.

Increasing Participation

Wikimarathon

 
"Write an article for Wikipedia Birthday" Wikimania 2018 poster

Wikimarathon is already traditional way to celebrate the date of Ukrainian Wikipedia's birthday, a once-a-year celebration being the sufficient impulse even for less active Wikimedians to organise an event in their town. During January 27-30 we invited people to create at least one article to thank Wikipedia for knowledge it provides. A call to create articles is shared on-wiki (CentralNotice, village pump, user talk invitations), online (media) and through on-site posters in places of live gatherings. More than 40 settlements were on the Wikimarathon's meetups map, with 59 different events, and over 30 of them were hosted by public or university libraries. Wikimarathon resulted in 2509 new articles (750 were created by bots), so the average daily number was 3 times bigger than the average number of articles created in Ukrainian Wikipedia along the year. Apart from that, organizing Wikimarathon was beneficial for setting up new partnership connections and for boosting community capacity development in general.

We confirmed Wikimarathon to be a successful project, which is beneficial in helping attract new Wikipedia users and even boosting the awareness of Wikipedia in general. Thus, we used the experience of the 2018 Wikimarathon to organize the next one in 2019 and shared this experience internationally. For example, a poster with a road map of organising a Wikimarathon was presented by Ukrainian Wikimedians at Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town.

Wikipedia Education Program

At the beginning of he year, the Education Program mainly revolved around organizing wikitraining sessions for school and university teachers. The biggest ones were a two-day wikitraining in Kyiv in April and a wikitraining in May. The end of 2018 saw the emergence of a more strategic approach to the Education Program, which was formulated on a strategic session held in Lviv in October, parallel to the CEE Meeting 2018. This session helped identify three key directions: Wikibooks as a platform for wikilessons, creating MOOC about Wikipedia, and developing online trainings and webinars. In 2018, we started to see the first developments in these directions, such as the creation of guidelines for a wikilessons platform on Wikibooks. In 2019, we have yet to see how these three new directions of the Education Program will work out. In parallel, we continued activities on contribution of school and university students to Wikipedia, without actively seeking new partnerships but with supporting those where teachers and schools were interested.

Organised and supported events:

Wikicamp 2018

Wikicamp wasn't organised in 2018. With all its organisational matters that we have never done before, this project would be a big step, which we still lack experience for. A series of tragedies in Ukrainian summer camps this year made us think that we really need to have people with some experience before doing it. That is why it was decided to send delegates to the future International WikiCamp in Armenia to gain experience first, and then organise Wikicamp in Ukraine in 2019 or 2020.

Wikiworkshops on demand

Wikitrainings by Wikimedia Ukraine are usually held in scope of some project or partnership (such as during Wikimarathon, within projects GLAM institutions and/or during article contests), but we also answer to the single requests for a wikiworkshop from other organisations. There was a noticeable number of them in 2018; additionally there were several webinars, too.

Organised and supported Wikiworkshops on demand:

Crimean Tatar Wikipedia and beyond

There were no shifts in this direction due to lack of consistent interest from partners and no living community on wiki so far. In 2018 we taught user:Alem.lenura who now creates articles in ukwiki about Crimean Tatars. There are ideas and potential new partners among Crimean Tatar organizations to present the intangible heritage of the Crimean Tatars in Ukrainian and English language. Our understanding is, that Crimean Tatar Wikipedia is prioritised less due to lack of skilled language speakers and presence of other, more pressing topics in their agenda.


Program Objectives:

  • to engage more educators by organising at least 10 trainings
      Partly done. We did engage more educators, and exceeded expectations of participants from Education program but in number of trainings less than 10.
  • to engage more students by organising at least 2 courses and 10 presentations
      Done. Students were engaged in a number of courses both in schools (particularly in Kremenchuk) and in universities (particularly in Lviv), and we made over 10 education presentations. We also had many students joining Wikipedia as newly registered editors, with some of them becoming active ones and one becoming a chapter member.
  • to continue the particular focus on under-represented regions, such as Southern and Eastern Ukraine, by organising at least one such training there
      Done. Local Cultural Heritage and Notable People and WikiKharkivshchyna 2018 contests included wikitrainings for participants, which happened in these regions. There was also an education training in Kharkiv Oblast in Eastern Ukraine.
  • to continue responding to the requests of different communities by holding at least 5 Wikiworkshops for those who ask
      Done. There were three live workshops and two in a form of webinars upon demands of communities, and significantly more as a part of wider programmes (education, GLAM, contests etc.).
  • to continue promoting Wikipedia in education by giving presentations of innovative uses of Wikipedia and related projects on educational conferences and fairs
      Done. Our volunteers continued to attend EdCamp educational conferences and give talks at other occasions.

Program Metrics:

Shared metrics
  • Total participants: 1161 / 830. High figure of participants primarily explained by Wikimarathon exceeding expectationx with 600 participants, with Education Programme also exceeding expectations at 387 participants.
  • Number of newly registered users: 572 / 385. Primarily explained by workshops exceeding expectations (195 new users), although a significant number of these new users were also involved in other project (such as GLAM, thematic weeks or article contests), which is why we removed wikiworkshops as a separate line for the next year.
  • Number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects: 3346 / 2150. Mainly explained by Wikimarathon exceeding the target alone with 2509 articles.
Grantee-defined metrics
  • Number of volunteers involved: 100 / 40. Strong involvement of volunteers in Wikimarathon with 58 volunteers organising events all over Ukraine.
  • <Number of media files used: NA / 50. Target was mainly based on potentially workshop participants becoming uploaders on Commons which could have happened but was not really tracked.

Community Support and Development

Community Events

Organising events for the community is a very important aspect of our work because they help exchange ideas between movement members. Traditional annual Wikimedia gatherings in Ukraine are Wikiconference of the wider community and General meeting of WMUA members. This year WMUA also organised a third major event, Wikimedia CEE Meeting (covered by a separate grant). Community Events programme also include smaller events, such as contest award ceremonies, wikimeetups and edit-a-thons. Both the Wikiconference and the CEE Meeting proved to be a valuable experience for us (more details can be found in our Program Story and Learning Story, respectively).

The list of organised and supported community events includes:

  • award ceremonies of the contests (as mentioned in the respective sections of this report)
  • Ukrainian Wikiconference 2018 (Вікіконференція 2018) in Kyiv. For the first time it lasted for three days. 66 Wikimedians (including speakers) attended, 62 of them received scholarships. ~90% of respondents to the post-conference survey found it useful or very useful; same number of people were satisfied with the work of organising team. Most of the participants mentioned that they gained new ideas for realisation of existing projects. Inviting external speakers for topics of reliable sources, copyright and facilitation of discussions was appreciated as useful.
  • Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2018 in Lviv. 126 participants attended, 42 sessions were held. Full report is on Grants:Conference/WM UA/CEE Meeting 2018/Report.
  • Wikimedia Ukraine 12th Annual General Meeting. There was a pre-AGM day for candidates to the board with both presentations and practice about internal governance, bookkeeping routine of organisation and using Trello for tracking tasks. 29 organisation members took part in AGM. The first day of AGM was dedicated to discussing 2018 results and plans for 2019, changes to Bylaws, and internal Rules of Conduct. On the second day, Reports from the 2018 Board and Auditing Committee were approved and new Board and Auditing Committee members were elected.

Trainings for Volunteers

We are determined to give our volunteers the training they need for productive work. We didn't organise separate trainings in 2018, having decided to include more training sessions in other community events. This way there were different practical sessions at Ukrainian Wikiconference (facilitation of discussions; Wikidata & SPARQL; conflict management; partnerships) and a pre-AGM day for candidates to the board with training in internal governance, bookkeeping routine of organisation and using Trello for tracking tasks. We are also supporting requests for scholarships to attend external trainings; there was one instance of these in 2018, some requests are to be fulfilled in 2019. The trainings do have positive influence, for instance, the use of Trello was started after the training and it was used, for example, for tracking progress of writing this report. Our experience in 2018 showed that the model of funding external training sessions, as opposed to organizing our own, is most suitable for us at the moment.

Scholarships

In 2018 Wikimedia Ukraine offered scholarship to attend 8 Wikimedia events. Apart from WMUA funding, members of organisation were receiving scholarships in other ways, too (WMF scholarships to Wikimania, WMDE scholarships to Wikimedia Conference etc.). Their experience is documented onwiki and in our blog per WMUA scholarship requirements, some were presented at Wikiconference. Since the previous years, the quality of scholarship reports has increased, and the participation of Ukrainian wiki-community members in international events is increasingly useful for offering ideas on community developemnt.

Granted scholarships:

Microgrants

2018 saw the creation of a microgrants committee in order to boost the work of this project. While this has yet to finish its redeveloping in 2019 (we fully integrate Wikiexpeditions and thematic weeks support in microgrants, see 2019 sAPG), the creation of this committee has already proved useful in improving the flexibility and effectiveness of microgrants. Main directions of microgrants in 2018 were attending events for photo reporting and buying books for Wikipedians. Some traditional events, which we used to cover in the previous months, were not addressed due to the lack of volunteers or external factors, such as a failure to get an accreditation.

Microgrants-supported:

  • photographing Ukraine national Paralympic team accompanying ceremony to 2018 Winter Paralympic Games
  • photographing iForum 2018
  • photographing Razomfest 2018
  • bought 3 books

Thematic weeks/months

Support of thematic weeks/months in 2018 was done in a traditional manner: Wikimedia Ukraine granted support to the organisers who asked for it. We provided two types of support: informational (spreading information about the events on our blog and/or social media channels) and material (providing souvenirs for most active participants). Throughout 2018, we supported 5 thematic weeks, which, when combined, produced almost 2,000 articles in Ukrainian Wikipedia. Overall, our work with thematic weeks was successful, and their integration with microgration will make the system of thematic weeks' support more flexible and efficient.

Thematic weeks/months supported:

  • SF Works Month 2017 (sending souvenirs was done in 2018)
  • Israel Month
  • Sumy Oblast Week
  • Tanzania Week
  • Ukrainian Revolution and Statehood Month

Wikizghushchivka (Condensed milk)

Volunteers of Wikizghushchivka project did not determine the winners during the year and did this at the end of it; they hadn't send the condensed milk yet. On the one hand, it is better to wait with rewards because destructive contributions naturally filter out with time, on the other hand, this undermines the goal of the project itself. Since current model doesn't seem to work anymore with volunteers slowing the whole process down, we transfer Wikizghushchivka under Microgrants program in 2019, which will mean that it will need to go through the same application process as other microgrants to be renewed.


Program Objectives:

  • to increase the community participation and skill level
      Done. We had many new Wikimedians involved in our programmes and events and sharing their experience. Overall volunteer participation increased and efforts on recruiting volunteers were successful. As for the skills, we see Ukrainian Wikiconference as the main source for skill level increase in 2018, and most of the participants found it useful for them. In addition, attending international events also helped us get a lot of useful experience and ideas.
  • to empower users with the techniques and skills that needed for Wikimedia projects
      Done. We included a number of practical sessions into Ukrainian Wikiconference 2018, and most of the participants found them useful.
  • to provide incentives to the community, supporting wide range of volunteer initiatives with the materials and souvenirs they can use
      Done. We supported all the organising teams with materials and souvenirs and provided volunteers who spoke at external events with promotional materials, too. We print Wikipedia editing cheatsheets, photo contest booklets, event posters, and make buttons, pocket calendars, pens, pencils, eco-bags, slap-bracelets etc. with logos of Wikimedia projects.
  • to ensure members and volunteers engagement and committing by supporting/organising online and offline events
      Done. We organised awards ceremonies for the contests, which is widely perceived as a must-have for a project of this kind. Conferences added to the bonding feeling, too. We also used WikiThursday to discuss something with the community members.

Program Metrics:

Shared metrics
  • Total participants: 312 / 232. Slightly better than expected owing to high participation in community events and trainings and success of thematic weeks.
  • Number of newly registered users: 52 / 25. Target exceeded with reactivation of Wikizghushchivka project.
  • Number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects: 2501 / 250. Target exceeded as microgrants generated significant number of media files, and thematic weeks supported by WMUA produced significant amount of content as well.
Grantee-defined metrics
  • Number of volunteers involved: 22 / 20. On target
  • Number of media files used: 68 / 100. Target missed due to problems with microgrants accreditations: we did not manage to obtain accreditations to all events we were interested in.

Promoting Wikimedia and Free licenses

Media Publicity

Media publicity in 2018 was being achieved with traditional for WMUA methods: press releases, info partners, social media posts. Rather good publicity was reached during Wikimarathon: besides dozens of text announcements from the media and hosting institutions, there were at least 10 video pieces of news with Wikimedians, and infographics was even used in the TV news. We reached out to local authorities for help with announcing our contests, which gave good results for Wiki Loves Monuments and contest Support Wikivoyage in Ukrainian. For the first time, a new story by a major TV channel was filmed in WMUA office and at one Wikipedian's home. Besides, we actively developed the Instagram account of Wikimedia Ukraine, which was created during the last days of 2017, trying to reach out to a younger and more diverse audience. Interestingly, posting winning pictures from photo contests with attribution placed on images serves better in terms of complying with CC licences.

Free panorama advocacy

We continue our activities towards passing the bill about free panorama in Ukraine. The ultimate goal, which is the passing of a comprehensive free panorama bill, wasn't reached in 2018. In the tumultuous political conditions currently experienced by Ukraine, the questions like the freedom of panorama are being shadowed by other political issues, and thus it is hard to persuade others in importance of a topic like this in the wider political circumstances of Ukraine as a country. However, we did some good steps forward: we cooperate with Creative Commons Ukraine; have developed draft advocacy plan, which was actively expanded in late 2018; and started working on developing a promotional video, which is planned to be shot and published in 2019.

Wikipedia-linked QR-codes

There was no progress on this project as we did not have a suitable location that would both have local government interested in this project and volunteers available to run it.


Program Objectives:

  • to encourage regulatory and legislative changes that will benefit the Wikimedia projects, allow for freedom of panorama in Ukraine
      Done. We supported changes that would allow commercial freedom of panorama to the draft law #7539 which only introduces non-commercial "freedom of panorama". The law wasn't passed and work continues.
  • to increase awareness of Wikimedia projects and respect for the licenses (copyright)
      Partly done. We continue to promote Wikimedia projects, and with regular media coverage of our activities the awareness grows. We also attended fairs for NGOs where we could spread Wikimedia promotional materials. As for respect for the licenses (copyright), WMUA hardly changed the situation in Ukraine on this topic in 2018, we were rather reactive and contacted re-users who did not license works properly.
  • to improving understanding of free licenses and their usage in Wikimedia projects
      Done. Several institutions released the content of their web-sites under CC BY or CC BY SA licenses as a result of WMUA members' consultations. However, no sustainable monitoring of such instances is present.
  • to popularize Wikipedia by enabling easy electronic access to the information about city sites
      Not done. There was no progress on Wikipedia-linked QR-codes project as no location had both volunteers and partnerships available for this project.

Program Metrics:

Shared metrics
  • Total participants: 2385 / 100. Of these, 185 were people directly involved (writing blog posts, preparing infographics, supporting social media pages, partners with whom we worked on promotion of Wikimedia projects and free licenses) and 2200 were participants of events we organised. The original target of 100 did not include participants of events.
  • Number of newly registered users: NA / 5. While our promotional efforts (notably public presentations at youth events) should have resulted in some new user registrations, we could not track this.
  • Number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects: 21 / 20. Infographics and materials.
Grantee-defined metrics
  • Number of volunteers involved: 26 / 15. We had a high activity on our blog with 20 volunteers contributing to the blog alone.
  • Number of media files used: 12 / 10. Infographics and materials.

Spending edit

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.

  • Detailed report is here.

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

  • 98,487.5 USD