Grants talk:PEG/WM EE/2013/Report

On behalf of Wikimedia Eesti I invite You to present your questions and specifications here to clarify and ameliorate present grant report! We will try to respond to Your questions and remarks as swiftly as possible!

--Misosoof (talk) 20:10, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Report accepted

Thank you for this detailed report and for all of WM Estonia's great work! We appreciate your honest reflections. This report is accepted. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:54, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

We do have a number of questions/comments below and it would be great to get your response.

1. Motivational events: What type of follow-up is conducted after the events? Are there any lessons learned from the last year regarding how to improve outreach?
2. WLM: Great work in holding exhibitions in a number of different locations. Do you have a sense of which location/type of location attracts the most interest and viewers? What is the "individual approach" for next year? We encourage you to engage on the WLM mailing list for new ideas in attracting partcipants. Also, an important metric for WLM and any photo project is the # of photos intergrated on wiki projects x months after an event. You can use the glamrous tool to track this. Please see our Program Resources page on photo events for more metrics, tools, and best practices.
3. Great photos from the Science and HELP and Eesti Loodus photo competitions! It would be great if you can run the glamrous tool to see how many photos are integrated on wiki projects from those competitions.
4. Tammsaare article competition: Great to hear you were able to engage Wikimedians who did not previously participate in offline events. Did you use particular strategies that made the media coverage so strong? Can these strategies be used for other types of events?
5. Estonian-Armenian cooperation month: This is an exemplary program model we'd like other groups to adopt. It would be wonderful if we could collaboratively write a blog post about this exeprience! We'll follow-up.
6. Education program: Congrats on a successful program and your partnership with the Ministry of Education. How many universities and how many teachers are participating in the program?
7. Digitization: It sounds like there are a number of groups in Estonia working on digitization. Would it be a better use of WMEE's resources and time to focus on activities that encourage wikisource volunteerism -- transcribing digitized books into wikisource? Wikisource has a low barrier to entry, especially for folks like seniors or those intimidated by the more contentious aspects of wikipedia.
8. Tartupeedia: Can you provide an update on the QR project? Have the QR plaques been installed? If yes, the number of scans on each QR code can been measured.
9. Illustration project: Beautiful portraits! It would be great to have a short blog post on this project!
10. International travel: Was the London board training a useful workshop and relevant to WMEE's situation? Any lessons learned?
11. Expense docuemtation: Thank you for such well organized expenses.
12. Reallocation request: The reallocation request is approved.
13. General feedback: The numerous competitions WMEE run are obviously impactful. However, considering the amount of volunteer/staff resources it takes to run each one with varying levels of participation, it may be better to focus on 3-5 larger competitions througout the year. This of course depends on your local community and cultural context, but is an option you might want to consider.

Please let us know if you have any questions about the above. We look forward to hearing your responses. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:54, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Comments of Wikimedia Eesti

Dear representatives of Wikimedia Foundation,

Thank you for the interest in our project! We will give the responses in the same order as questions and comments were presented.

1. This year the motivational events were targeted towards increasing off-wiki volunteerism among members of the organization and people who posed their candidature during public recruiting. For follow-up private meetings with the volunteers were organized to discuss their specific projects. After discussions some of them decided that they are not really up for it, but there are some volunteers that participate in the activities of Wikimedia Eesti. As to outreach, we are implementing a new strategy of making funding applications to institutions that have an important position in society. Some of the applications are funded and we think that this increases the credibility of the organization and public interest in the activities of Wikimedia Eesti. We will see the results of such approach in the future.
2. As to itinerant exhibitions - big shopping centers in big towns attract the most people, but on the other side the exhibitions loose their significance in such environments. As a result we are mixing different types of exhibition locations in order to reach out to different people with different Wikimedia potential. Although we have had good comments on these exhibitions, we still lack clear evaluation system of their usefulness. We are working on it. The individual approach for this year means including targeted wikiexpeditions in order to gather pictures from locations not yet covered. We have also an idea to reach out to car orienteering enthusiasts, but this plan still needs some work. We would also like to carry out training for some of our contributors from previous competitions, who have delivered quantity, but sometimes lack quality in their pictures. We appreciate the Program Resources page - it is really of good value! Thank You for the link to the glamorous tool. 21% of the pictures of Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 competition are integrated in Wikipedia articles, in 51 different Wikipedias. Mostly in Estonian Wikipedia (308 pictures used) and English Wikipedia (103 pictures).
3. HELP 4 - from 540 photos 200 are used in Wikipedia articles (37%) in 386 articles in 33 Wikipedias. The most popular picture is Morning in Viru moor, which is used in 15 articles. Photo competition of Eesti Loodus - from 20 photos 19 are used in Wikipedia articles (95%) in 40 articles in 14 different Wikipedias. Science photo of the year competition 2013 - from 130 photos 34 are used in Wikipedia articles (26%) in 63 articles in 18 different Wikipedias.
4. In Tammsaare photo competition no special strategies for media communication were used. Our press releases got picked up as a result of the name of one of the most important Estonian prose writers figuring in them. We have learned from this that including popular names and important institutions (e.g. ministries) in the project are of significant help in outreach efforts. On the other side media popularity does not guarantee high levels of participation.
5. We think that cross-country collaboration projects are good for Wikimedia / Wikipedia communities and give a good motivation for participation. As to blog post, we feel that Wikimedia Ukraine as the initiator of such collaboration projects is more apt to write the post.
6. We are working with different universities, but the main focus is on University of Tartu. Most of the articles are produced on the bachelor course in Faculty of Science and Technology. Most of the work is done by Wikimedians who evaluate the articles and give constructive feedback during the writing process. For 2 years there has been a special course concentrating on Wikipedia, which is run by an active member of our community User:Kruusamägi and frequented by other important figures in Estonian Wikipedia. Other courses are more of one-time projects, although there are already some teachers who propose writing Wikipedia articles as one possible way for passing the course.
7. We are currently working on questions related to digitization program and we agree with your constructive criticism. Our focus at the moment is to convince other digitizers in Estonia to publish their work on Wikisource. It also make sense to use low barrier of Wikisource to get people wiki-addicted. We will be discussing the future and possible strategies of the digitization program with the board.
8. Tartupeedia project - QR-plaques are not yet installed. Nevertheless we have received a positive opinion from the new mayor of city of Tartu and will be proceeding with the project. As there are already several intelligent solutions in Tartu we are currently discussing possibilities to include all of them on one plaque. Also most of the objects related to QRproject are protected cultural heritage sites, which also sets criteria for the plaques. We will get back to you if there will be significant developments.
9. We are glad to hear that you are happy with the results of the illustration project. We will also be happy to share our experience with the wider community with a blog post.
10. London workshop was useful and relevant to Wikimedia Eesti. The board member who participated on the workshop shared her learnings with other members and it brought about some lively discussions. Hopefully it will be also useful during the discussions of strategy. Wikimedia Eesti is also moving toward the expansion of the board to 5 members - workshop confirmed that we are on a right track.
11. Wikimedia Eesti is thankful to Wikimedia Foundation for receiving expenditure documents in other languages than English. The only way to ensure that this practice works is to organize these documents in a clear manner.
12. Thank you for approving the reallocation!
13. Thank you for the note concerning the high number of competitions! We understand your concern related to the use of our scarce human resources and we will discuss this question with the board and if needed implement new strategies.

Thank you once more for fast report reviewing and interest in our activity! Hopefully you will find our comments to your comments useful! We will be available for any further explications-specifications.

Best regards, --Misosoof (talk) 20:39, 20 June 2014 (UTC)