Grants talk:PEG/Dominic/GLAM NARA Events fund/Report

Reverted redirect

Hello, Dominic:

I removed the redirect here, since this grant will require a brief report, as instructed.

While WMUS-DC was the fiscal agent for the grant, we'll still need you (the person who executed this project) to answer the questions on the form.

Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 21:55, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Questions about your report

Hi, Dominic!

Thanks for the informative report. Thanks for the links to the pages and blog posts about the events and the pictures.

We have a few questions for you about this report. Some of the lessons you've learned will be useful to others doing similar work, so thank you in advance for taking the time to provide us with a little more information.

1. Your impact statement focuses on the relationship with the National Archives which is mentioned in the "Other benefits" section of your original request; however, in your original request you mention quality content and increasing participation in wikisource. Please share what impact your project had in these areas.
2. Since your main way of measuring the success of your events was turnout and the number of events you planned changed due to budgetary constraints, it is difficult to understand this measure in respect to the goals set forth in your original proposal. It seems like you achieved 35 attendees total (for two events) out of the 55 - 85 total attendees (for four events) you expected in your original request and so overall, the number attendees was not as high as expected. Am I understanding that correctly?
3. You mention you've improved your way of tracking outcomes for future events. Would you be able to share how you've improved your method of tracking outcomes? This information would be very helpful to others doing similar work.
4. In your request you mention that "Judging by past experience, this should lead to the digitization of hundreds of new documents for Commons/Wikisource and other edits." In your report you mention that the amount of content generated was not what was expected due to technical difficulties:
   • Can you elaborate on the technical difficulties experienced at the Archives II meetup so that we might better understand what was learned?
   • Would you please give us an idea of approximately how much content was produced at the events and link to this content from the report?

Thank you, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 19:08, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Hello, Winifred. I assisted with carrying out this project, so I can answer some of these questions. Regarding question 2, you correctly understand the situation. Regarding question 3, Wikimedia DC has since become more rigorous in reporting the outcomes of events; see w:Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/All Things GW#Outcomes as a recent example. The technical difficulties were experienced by me personally as well as the people I was working with, having to do with the technology supplied to us by NARA. We weren't sure how to make the scanner work with the computer, which prevented us from being more productive. Since then, Wikimedia DC has purchased two scanners of its own for use at events so that we do not need to figure out how someone else's technology works. harej (talk) 05:09, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Harej! That's useful information. The "Outcomes" section is a great addition in that instance! Technology (and especially getting scanners and projectors to work as expected) is often a challenge with events like this, unfortunately. When it's possible to test in compatibility in advance of an event that can sometimes head off problems like that at the pass, but we realize that's not always possible.

We're just waiting on Dominic's responses to #1 and #4b before accepting the report. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 14:15, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the first question, I think it is fairly straightforward in that the nature of an editathon is that the quality of Wikipedia is being improved. The whole premise of the event is that editors are coming together to improve the quality of the encyclopedia with the assistance of the institution with expertise in a subject matter. That is what happened, though the extent to which quality was actually improved is a different matter (which is what the next question was about).

TFor #4b, this is a difficult question to answer because one of the things we learned was how important it is to ensure we record the results of the event. That means both on the meetup page, like James mentioned (the editathon he linked to is one that I also helped run), but also making sure that content uploaded to Commons is put in a common category. Additionally, if it is to be used by the institution, for example in an online catalog, we should try to work with the institution to mark them somehow as community-contributed scans. I did a lot of work with NARA in the aftermath of these events to ensure better reporting so that we could answer questions like yours. All of which is to say that the best I can do is point you to the Commons category for the October scanathon (Category:October 2011 NARA Backstage Pass), though I can't guarantee it is comprehensive, and (since there was no specific outcomes reporting) the articles in that were listed as the themes in w:Wikipedia:Meetup/NARA 3#Details for the November editathon, though it is likely that editors worked on other articles. And we did have the general aim of also including Wikisource and not just making this a Wikipedia-specific editathon (as most are by default) but I can't tell you any particular transcriptions that might have been outcomes, for the reasons already mentioned. Dominic (talk) 02:09, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses, Dominic. It sounds like this is something you'll be able to improve upon for future events. Thanks again for all of your work on this project, and this report is now accepted. Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 15:59, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Note about changes to the project budget

These are some significant budget changes and you should have requested approval from WMF or notified WMF in advance. We are approving the changes to the budget retroactively now. Regards, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 19:08, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Still waiting on a response

Still waiting on a response from Dominic before accepting this report. See comments above. Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 21:15, 16 May 2013 (UTC)