Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2017-2018 round 1/Wikimedia Argentina/Proposal form

Hola Wikimedia Argentina Team. Muchas gracias for this proposal. We'll be reviewing it in the next few weeks. Delphine (WMF) (talk) 15:38, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you Delphine (WMF)! Here we are to answer any questions! Hugs--Anna Torres (WMAR) (talk) 15:41, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Grantee-defined metrics

Hello! I am reading your proposal with great interest - and have a question on the grantee-defined metric of "% of girls/women who feel empowered and confident as Wikipedia editors through the Education program." Personally, I love the idea of measuring 'confidence' and 'feeling empowered', but my question is: How? How will WMAR know that they feel empowered/confident? Will 'confidence' be broken down into measurable attributes, or other proxy indicators of confidence? I struggle with measuring similar characteristics in my own work outside Wikipedia, so know the challenges!

I have a similar question on the Culture and Open Knowledge program. Once again, I totally see the need to expand to "measuring cultural changes within organizations and society, by analysing to what extent these groups have appropriated the “free culture” as a way of building more open and reliable knowledge." Again, my question is: How? Again, I'm coming from the position that cultural change is worthwhile to measure, but hard to do in practice unless thought through in advance. Thanks! Bishdatta (talk) 11:33, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Hello Bishdatta,

Thank you so much for your questions and sorry for the late response!

In regard of Education.:

During 2017 we have evaluated our results in the classroom through the number and quality of the content created but we have also noticed that the "learning-path" to the result is sometimes even more important.

In this regard we see two main opportunities:

• Does our program make feel girls more empowered to participate, rise their voice, feel confident to express themselves while working on an assignment with Wikipedia?
• Are new girls/women's editors feel comfortable with our online community?

How are we going to measure this?

Mainly through "before & after" project's surveys that would cover the following measurable attributes:

• Ability to negotiate her ideas: express ideas, propose themes/topics to work on.
• Self-recognition of own abilities: recognize their fundamental role in the creation of knowledge, among others.
• % of active participation in our activities: how they feel by working together with male students, among others.
• Record the experience of the girls/women after working with the online community.
• Retetion.

Our final goal is to publish a qualitative/quantitative assessment of girls' participation, what role they play when working with Wikipedia or some of the Wikimedia projects, how they feel and how they interact with our online community, mostly male-headed.

We believe that from this study and this discussion that we are not having, we can first, understand how girls and women in school and university arenas perceived or not themselves as generators of knowledge and secondly, to analyze what actions and strategies we can carry out so that girls and women are increasingly empowered to create knowledge.

In regard of culture:

Measuring the impact of our program within cultural organizations is a natural process as of the results we have been obtaining. Cultural institutions in Argentina are archaic and their methodology and processes are far from free culture. During 2017 we involved very diverse institutions in long-term working partnerships.

In this sense we want to know:

• The staff's and communities' perception about free culture, before, during and after our trainings, projects etc.
• The % of material that the institutions release and how they modifying their licences policies.
• % of cultural leaders who join our #OpenGLAM network as promoters of Wikimedia projects.

Again, we want to analyze the results and publish them at the end of 2018.

Hope these responses answered your questions. Please, feel free to contact me for any other question!--Anna Torres (WMAR) (talk) 17:26, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Many thanks for this helpful, detailed answer. Bishdatta (talk) 13:11, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

I see that the survey is mentioned next to an item which includes online training, so I don't understand what's the audience involved in the survey: just anyone who attended some initiative, or some subset (e.g. people who actually contributed some content and had direct experience of the projects)? Also, given that you mention a Wikisource writing contest at some other point of the proposal and that Wikisource is known to be more friendly for women, do you plan to include it in this effort? --Nemo 15:12, 12 November 2017 (UTC)