Grants talk:PEG/WM UA/Programs in Ukraine 2013/Report

Report Comments

Thank you for this report! We recognize that reporting takes time (especially when you have 3 to do!) and appreciate the effort it takes to create a valuable report. We have the following questions/comments and look forward to hearing your response soon.

• Do you have the total number of participants for your events, not just new editors?
• We're happy to hear you will be tracking new editor activity going forward. The report mentions using the education extension for WEP activity, but you can also use Wikimetrics. Please see the edit-a-thon program resources page for more information about Wikimetrics and other helpful tools.
• Wikiexpeditions: Great photos from Along Carpathian expedition and Novosanzharskyi raion! Does WMUA provide any guidelines or tips for photographing heritage sites? This would be a good next step in ensuring the expeditions produce high quality images. The photo event resources page provides some basic guidelines and tips.
• Wikiexpeditions: It looks like the expedition that had the highest number of participants focused on a particular group. Has WMUA thought about reaching out to photography clubs or historical societies to increase participation?
• Wikiexpeditions: Similar to WLM, it would be great to track how many photos from the Wikiexpeditions are integrated in wiki projects.
• Wikiconference Vinnytsia and Armenia: Can you provide more information regarding the goals, shared learnings, outcomes, and follow-up from the conferences?
• WLM: Congrats on a very successful competition! Your participation, photo, and integration numbers are really impressive! Why do you think there were so many new editors (500) that participated? Did you do a lot of targeted media outreach? Can some of these participants be engaged to participate in Wikiexpeditions throughout the year?
• Media coverage: Your press coverage is really impressive (475). Can you share any strategies or learnings regarding media outreach? Many chapters find media outreach challenging and it would be great to share your experience.
• WikiBio Contest: It looks like the themed writing contest was quite successful and will be a good model to replicate going forward.
• WMUA General Meeting: Are there any specific outcomes or action items from this meeting? Did the members provide relevant feedback regarding chapter strategy or activities?
• Reallocation: We will deduct the remaining funds from your 2014 grant.

Thanks, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 02:21, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Alex and thanks for the interesting questions!

• total number of participants for your events → we had 604 participants in WLM, 21 participant in Wikiexpeditions and about 120 participants in Wikitrainings. Concerning the other projects, I could also find figures for article contests: between 80 and 100 participants alltogether.
• tracking new editor activity → the main problem is registering all user names somewhere. As during most wikitrainings all participants share the same IP, in most cases there are people who are unable to create account, and it is hard to request accountcreator flag on Meta each time. Thus it is more or less easy to track contributions during the event, but a bit harder to check what participants were doing after the event. WMUA members have attended meeting in Prague and Belgrade and have also found several ideas concerning edit-a-thons and Education Programme.

Is the main issue sharing the same IP address and reaching the 6 account limit? If so, here is a Learning Pattern that suggests ways to overcome this problem (including having people sign up for usernames and provide you with them before the event, if possible). Once you have the usernames, you can use Wikimetrics to track them over time. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:10, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, this is exactly the issue. We try to ask people to register in advance, but in most cases they forget or just come without registering in advance (except cases were professors make wikitrainings mandatory, we usually do not know in advance who will be there). It would be great if trainers could get an accountcreator flag, but it is to complicated to request it on Meta each time — NickK (talk) 16:03, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi NickK! I wanted to add a couple ideas to Alex's. Another thing you can do is request emails during an in-person event. This way, you can follow up with a simple google form to ask for their usernames or to remind them to sign up on meta. Note that if you solicit their usernames directly via google form, they need to be provided with an opt-in form, which can be found here. Once you have your usernames, you can use wikimetrics! There is a learning module on meta and a youtube video walkthrough. Please let me know if you have questions! --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 17:30, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

• Wikiexpeditions/photo quality → we have a guide for Velowikiexpeditions on what to picture, and we also have a similar guide for WLM. We try to do this to participants using WMUA camera (-s, as we are buying the second one from our 2014 grant), and we ask participants to send some example photos if they have never uploaded anything on Commons before.
• Wikiexpeditions/outreach → we have a partnership with the National Union of Local Lore Researchers of Ukraine (who also helped us with Korosten Wikiexpedition), and we also have a partnership with a Kyiv Cyclist association for Velowikiexpeditions. This year we are expecting to develop a new partnership with an association promoting active tourism. We have a partnership with the national photo society for WLM, but they are not that much interested in long-distance expeditions so far.
• Wikiexpeditions/photo usage → my quick calculations show that 1099 images were used (I counted number of images used, not image usages)
• Wikiconference Vinnytsia and Armenia → 1) Main goals of Wikiconference Vinnytsia were sharing experience and ideas concerning future developments of Wikimedia projects, as well ideas and projects of collaboration with other institutions. The programme can be found here and covered a wide range of topics: from the current state of the movement (like presentation of the state of Ukrainian Wikiquote or presentation of music-related topics in WIkimedia projects) to some future developments (like strategy for social networks, inviting journalists to contribute to Wikinews or external cooperation). One of the outcomes was signing the agreement with National Archives of Ukraine who attended the conference and got interested in collaboration with us, as well as some discussion on improvements to activities of Wikimedia Ukraine. 2) The visit in Armenia was more dedicated to exchanging experience with our Armenian colleagues and looking for common projects and future collaboration. Presentation of WMUA members can be found here. The follow-up of the conference was in deepened collaboration with Wikimedia Armenia, including participation of Armenia in Wiki Loves Earth, exchanging best practices on organising various wiki-related events etc.

Excited to hear about the partnership with the National Archives. Please do keep us updated on how the relationship and activities develop. If you are interested in how other chapters have worked with GLAM institutions, please let us know and we can provide some resources. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:10, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

I guess we should have a couple of chapter members subscribed to GLAM mailing lists and participating in GLAM portal at outreach wiki, thus I guess we have people who will be able to find the necessary information — NickK (talk) 16:03, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

• WLM → we did made a targeted outreach, in particular, we made announcements on various photo websites, in social networks, on local websites (inviting people to upload images of their home cities and towns) etc., and a banner made its job as well. A centralised WLM questionnaire was sent to all participants in order to find out if they are interested in further participation, and some users were interested in participating in other Wikimedia activities. One user who joined Wikimedia projects during Wiki Loves Earth (not WLM however), already became an active participant of Wikiexpeditions, and one user who joined for Wikiexpeditions became an active WLM participant (it works this way as well).
• Media coverage → firstly, Ukrainian media are generally interested in Wikipedia/Wikimedia as such (and sometimes we had quite bad media, for example, in July we had to write a community response to the article accusing us of deleting articles for political reasons, while in reality a group of non-notable articles were merged to a larger one), secondly, we have a huge base for sending our press releases, with each release getting at least a dozen of publications, thirdly, we try to find interesting subjects, as people always like to read that Ukraine has a leading position in some project (e.g. 2nd place on WLM) or their region had some unique achievement (e.g. the photo of this region has won the contest or a person from their region has won the article contest) etc. We have to notice however that most of 475 publications are on the Internet and not in printed media.
• WikiBio Contest → the particularity is not just that it was themed (all our writing contests are themed) but that it was focused on quality (good and featured articles) and not on quantity
• WMUA General Meeting → except some routine staff (board and auditors elections, reports etc.) we have discussed our 2013 results and plans for 2014, as well as discussed amendments to our bylaws (that were finally not adopted). We did not manage to have a strategy discussion for a longer period (2020?) due to lack of time, we hope to have one later

Best regards, WMUA treasurer — NickK (talk) 09:27, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Report Approved

Thanks for the quick and informative responses. The report is approved. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:10, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much! — NickK (talk) 16:08, 20 June 2014 (UTC)