Grants talk:PEG/WM FI/WMFI 2014/Report

I did read some of your report and I'm impressed. As I said in my comment on your grant request currently under review, It seems like you did miss Glam wiki 2015 in the Hague (nl) in april. There was an important presentation by Sebastiaan Ter Burg about education GLAM's on the program. One of the more marked concepts to me was the concept and I liberally cite Sebastiaan : "Collaborating with Wikipedia doesn't mean Free Labour". When I see the metrics in your report that came immediately to mind. It's exactly that what you are reporting. The reason you should not do this is 2fold :

a) wikipedians are volunteers, they don't make the same kind of commitment as employees

b) wikipedians don work according to the same ruleset or engagement as employees

So if your GLAMś see the wiki volunteers as free labour, they will be disappointed and rather then getting more donantions/collaborations and recruitign new GLAM's thsi might actually work against you. --DerekvG (talk) 23:54, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

WMF comments

Hi Susanna. Thank you for this report and all your efforts in supporting WMFI. While not all of the proposed activities were conducted or developed in the way expected, WMFI was able to build important relationships with partners, move forward the Wikimaps development, and organize a number of outreach events. It seems 2014 was the year to try a lot of different things -- GLAM activities with editathons, education outreach, tools development, Wikimaps, etc. Based on these experiences, we hope and expect WMFI to be able to continue to focus more on what is the best balance between engaging existing and new editors and building a strong base of volunteers to lead your community forward.

We have a number of comments/questions on the report and look forward to your responses:

1. We appreciate the inclusion of estimated volunteer and staff hours for reach event and the value of institutional in-kind donations. This information helps give us context to the amount of work and resources that go into each event. --learning pattern needed--

   Done Susannaanas (talk) 09:33, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

2. The Tuo kulttuuri Wikipediaan programs looks like a good model for organizing a series of events focused on skill building.
   1. How many people came to multiple workshops?

      There were three kinds of participants:

      • course participants that had registered through Helsinki Summer University to all six workshops
      • volunteers and WMFI staff
      • representatives of GLAM organisations

      Altogether, 77 people participated the events, 20 of them multiple events.

   2. Do you have an update on the participants in terms of their editing behavior (it's great that you've tracked their 30 day post-event activity -- what about now?)

      No

   3. What type of follow-up has been done with these participants to keep them engaged?
      • we have been in contact with the participants that came to multiple events and gave their contact information:
        • after the course, we sent an email to thank them and ask for feedback
        • a few months later we invited them to our next edit-a-thon, Wikitriathlon at Museum Contemporary Art Kiasma (some did take part)
   4. Has there been progress with those institutions that participated and expressed interest in mass uploads and continued partnership?

      WMFI continues uploads and developing tools for them in a project funded by the Ministry of Culture and Education. The contacts with the institutions exist permanently.

   I am forwarding the question to Sanna Hirvonen who coordinated the event series and Teemu Perhiö who was involved with reporting the project. (Susannaanas (talk) 10:02, 30 June 2015 (UTC)) / Susannaanas (talk) 13:40, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

   It would still be great to have a response to this question. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 18:55, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

3. Similarly, for the 4 GLAMs that participated in the Commons for GLAMS training, have any of them progressed in terms of mass uploads?

   We have geared up for the GLAM upload tools project and have not conducted uploads with specific rigour before that. Now we have funding to develop tools for GLAMs, and we are very proud of the tools and the opportunity! With the help of the GWToolset and the forthcoming metadata enhancement tool we will be able to tackle the long list of uploads waiting to happen. Also, we will reconnect with the organizations and weave the upload methods to their practices. (Susannaanas (talk) 10:02, 30 June 2015 (UTC))

4. It's unfortunate that the community meetup funds have not been utilized. Do you have any idea why this is? Is this something they requested in the past? If not, how are you better understanding what their interests and needs are?

   They are simply not requested. Wikipedians have not been accustomed to meet in real life. The association activities have an opportunity to change that (if it needs to be changed). The community and readership survey will be a good guideline for directing resources to the volunteers. (Susannaanas (talk) 10:02, 30 June 2015 (UTC))

   I guess that the wikipedians very well may like to meet each othrer in real life, but they perhaps have preferred to do it otherwise than in public, let the meeting be arranged by WMFI or someone else . Thus, the only thing that has been very much lacking, to my opinion, is the initiative for public meetings, be the iniatiave made by WMFI or someone else. After having met wikipedians in real life both in organised private meetings outside of WMFI before becoming active in WMFI and then in events arranged by WMFI, I have understood that live meetings really are essential for the "community health" an d therefore they are likely to have positive outcome for the community, and therefore WMFI, or more widely anyone who has some intrest for the "health" of the the editing community (i.e. for example project partner organisatoions, if they wish some effect trough wikipedia or other wikimedia projects), should promote live meetings, although, however, no one can be forced to come into live events if they don't like. And because I myself have been active wikimedian many years before I became first a member and then for 2014 and 2015 a board member of WMFI, I think I (as well as, for example, Zache) can also speak as an experienced Wikimedian, and not only as board member of WMFI. But what we have been doing in WMFI the last two years, when I have been in the board, is that we have begun to arrange more and events where people, and also old wikimedians, and not only newcomers, as a byproduct of the event see each other and get involved with WMFI and with each other one way or another, and this is what we are going to do more and more, and what we are now learning to do better after having gained experience of how different kind of events work (this is what Susannaanas well explains in point 7 in this section). - And this is also what we discussed with the people oh WMSE, when they paid a visit in Finland in june, i. e. how it is important to have different kind of events that may conncentrate on outreah, or inreach, or in some occasions, both. And thus, when we see the general trend, then I find it less essential, what particular funds have been used. Of course we should have been arranging meetings more actively, but as every board member does wat he or she does at their spare time, and the working hours of the staff are also restricted, everything that should have been carried out on our voluntary basis as board members or wikimedians, has not been possible to be carried out. As a wikimedian, and as a member of the editing community with several tens of thousands of edits, I find this is a pity. But on the other hand, only now, as I have been taking part in events and seen how different events work, I personally have gained experience that, perhaps, can make possible to realize events on a voluntary basis later on. In 2014, and also 2015, my spare time has been extremely scarse, and I have not been able to realised all things (or, in practice, nearly anything) I wished I could work with in WMFI, and in 2016, I most probably will give chance for someone else. But especially from several presentations in Wikimania 2014 in london I learned the importance of community support, and to my opinion we are now proceeding quite well also into this direction. Of course we should have been more active, but we all have only those 24 hours a day, and this has been the restriction. But as the overall strategy of WMFI has been (to my opinion) healthy and the idea of the importance of the live meetings has been in deliberate concideration, we are proceeding unavoidedly into the right direction also in this respect, independently of from what moment of the budget the funds have become used or not. And personally, I must say, that only now, after having taken part in different events, and at the same time as an active wikimedian, I only now have gained the experience of how the different events work and in what manner they, perhaps, should be arranged and promoted within the editing community. I. e. learning by doing. --Jyrki Lehtinen (talk) 19:39, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

   Though some of our event's are dual acting as meetup. In example our event in Rupriikki wasn't planned to be meetup but it has become as de facto finnish Wikipedia's yearly Tampere meetup where people come to see each other and also to discuss about Wikipedia related things after the event. In example after last Rupriikki we meeted at pub and i started rewriting flagged revisions help page and guidelines of Finnish Wikipedia based on feedback what i got from other long time editors. --Zache (talk) 09:24, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

   Our lesson so far has been that Finnish Wikipedians will show up if there's some meaningful stuff to do. If a meetup is organized as a meetup, they'll stay home. The edit-a-thons with an expert lecture were one way to get local enthusiasts to participate and meet each other. This will probably work in other cities as well.--Tommikovala (talk) 18:15, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

5. Since the Nordic Culture Fund supported Wikimaps through June 30, 2015, can you please provide an update on the project?

   Partly due to the big lag with funding earlier this year, we have not been able to focus on completing Wikimaps Nordic and we have been granted an additional 3 months to complete it. The Project will end 30 September and the reports will be due early December. (Susannaanas (talk) 10:02, 30 June 2015 (UTC))

6. Can you provide more details on what was the largest benefit to having so many board members attend Wikimania, especially what skills/ideas they learned and implemented from the board training?

   I have forwarded the question to the board, who I hope will answer directly. (Susannaanas (talk) 10:02, 30 June 2015 (UTC))

   I am a social media trainer giving also Wikipedia trainings so the main focus for me for travelling to London for Wikimania (Fri to Sun) was to participate the Wikipedia train the trainers training (Mon&Tue). The training was very good and the Wikimania I enjoyed so much: so many interesting people, learnings, take-aways... I made a bunch of video interviews too to share my learnings with others [1]. As I was already in London on Thu I was also asked to participate the board training. Its key learning was the importance of the strategy but unfortunately I was not able to participate the strategy event WMFI arranged last fall. In general scheduling our activities is a bit of a challenge as Finland is a big country and some of us would prefer the working hours while others like evenings and weekends. So I met some board members for the first time IRL in London so it was important networking event for us internally too. --Jjanhone (talk) 14:38, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

   About of my my wikimania trip. I attented to hackaton, board training and Wikimania and after that to local open information meetup at London. I think that biggest reason why there was so many board members was just that the Wikimania was at London which is reasonably near to Finland so it was possible to go there with a larger group. I think that most useful thing with the gatherings like Wikimania or Hackatons is that people are seeing each other there and it gives a feeling that Wikipedia is global movement. What I learned and i think was most useful afterwards was wikiresearch-workshop and Aaron Halfaker's Erik Zachte's statistical information tracks about what is happening / happened in wikipedia and how to read statistic. I founded YuviPanda's Quarry from those tracks and it is used at fiwiki now. In hackaton I made also some Lua and Wikidata examples, which was later used in fiwiki to cross check infobox values against wikidata values. (In example if fiwiki birthdate doesn't match with wikidata birthdate then raise an visible error). About board training, biggest thing was that it pointed out that we should have better (written) practices in Wikimedia Finland. --Zache (talk) 08:28, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

   Wikimania London offered a great selection of tracks that were relevant to our situation. Being there with so many members meant that we had the chance to have at least one participant in every important piece of programming. The Board Training Workshop was valuable to us. As Zache mentioned, it helped us realize that we need clear written policies. Perhaps even more importantly, it helped us prepare for a situation where the scope of our activities starts to expand. We dealt with the risks inherent in expansion and the different mindset it takes to plan strategically. Our current Board has several members who have professional experience in this sort of management, but having a training session that focused specifically on managing a volunteer organization definitely helped us pinpoint our challenges. It didn't directly answer all our questions but it helped us define them. For example, figuring out qualitative metrics is crucial for our GLAM projects. The workshop explained why these metrics are necessary in the first place.--Tommikovala (talk) 18:15, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

7. As we have discussed frequently, our main concern is the lack of membership, and more importantly, a volunteer base that can lead and support off-wiki activities. The report speaks to the hope that WMFI "will be able to tie in with the dynamics of the Wikipedia community more, and invite more of the existing community members into the workings started out by the association." You also talk about trying out lots of different methods to engage existing members and the fact that the events are "attracting many community members." This is an area we will explore more in your open proposal, but it would be great if you could provide more information on the different methods you have seen to be more successful. What is working? What's not?

   We will most probably continue experimenting with different methods.

   The Wikidays concept has been an attempt to address the existing community (it is still being proposed) but it seems to need revision. A full-day event is not likely to work in an everyday pattern. We are hearing the commentators' suggestions and evaluating different options. We are interested in trying out the Wikiday in other cities, presenting an array of various Wiki-related activities over the course of a day. In Helsinki, the concept will be geared towards a library meetup. In addition, we can put up more hacking-oriented Wikihacks. The idea of going mainly online does not attract either old or new participants. Instead, we will investigate putting out more Finnish-language learning materials, also videos.

   We are currently very concerned about advocating (Wiki)data literacy to actors of knowledge production in the Finnish society. We hope to engage the volunteers in learning and teaching the skills. This is a big challenge.

   Some simple actions will connect the association more to the community. We have started to be more active in the chapter wiki, hope to enhance the chat, build voting and discussion options and present projects more widely. Also, I personally changed from refraining from editing Wikipedia into editing more Wikipedia. I had considered editing as an employee a thing to avoid. Connecting is a gradual process, and at the same time we build new communities. (Susannaanas (talk) 10:02, 30 June 2015 (UTC))

   It's also important to note that the Finnish Wikipedia community is already punching above its weight. There's a comparatively small population from which to recruit in the first place. That said, there are still ways to engage less active Wikipedians locally. Many of these, such as Wikidays, don't require a lot of commitment on our part so we will try them all and see what works best. Additionally, there are many knowledgeable retirees who don't edit Wikipedia because they feel they lack the technical skills. Getting them involved will increase the level of expertise in fiwiki and address some neglected major topics such as literature. Adult education is one simple way to organize this.--Tommikovala (talk) 18:15, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

   In addition to this, I would put much hope also in our education project with Finnish university students and university students in general. Many of our active editors, in fact, are university students, or university alumni of all ages, and this the direction, that I personally find the most promising. The retired people, of course, have most time (and when some of our top editors in something like ten years or so will retire, I only can imagine, what will happen), but also students have some time, and for those who have a university background, editing is easy. And also for NGOs like local heritage associations that are a widely spread movement in the nordic countries, the wikimedia projects, to my opinion, form a good media for publishing and workin on different kind of issues. --Jyrki Lehtinen (talk) 19:55, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

I will complement with new points when needed and expect contributions from other association members. Regards, Susannaanas (talk) 21:17, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Please let us know if you have questions about the above. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 19:52, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Request to use remaining money from PEG WMFI_2014

Hi, this is official request from Wikimedia Suomi per email discussion between Susanna Ånas, Winifred Olliff and Kacie Harold at november 2015 to use remaining $5,228.11 from https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/WM_FI/WMFI_2014 to cover cost of community participation in Wikimania 2015 (eg travel costs of Teemu Perhiö and Sanna Hirvonen) and Wikimedia Suomi's accounting costs of 2015. --Zache (talk) 14:40, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi Zache, I can confirm that the Wikimania travel expenses were approved in an email with Alex Wang on 7/7/2015, and the accounting costs were approved on a phone call on 9/25/2015. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 29 April 2016 (UTC)