Grants talk:PEG/WM UA/Programs in Ukraine 2014/Report

Thank you for this very thorough grant report and all your work on WMUA's activities over the last year! We appreciate the time and effort it takes to report on your annual activities and hope it is just as useful for WMUA and your community as it is for us. Your innovative programs, improvements to "old" programs, and learnings are all very applicable to other communities and we hope to share this great information more broadly. We also appreciate all the work your volunteer community is doing. You have an impressive group of very active offline volunteers who consistently engage in organizing activities, tracking progress, and thinking of new ways to engage new and active Wikimedians. We also understand with the current political situation in Ukraine, a few of your planned activities could not be completed and many people are focusing on higher priorities than editing Wikipedia.

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

Thank your for your comments and questions. Answers are inline — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikiworkshops

1. WMUA organized a high number of Wikiworkshops, many of which were targeted at teachers and students in an effort to launch education programs. We assume only a portion of those workshops resulted in further cooperation and the establishment of actual education programs. It would be great to know how those that did succeed in establishing programs are developing. For example, the cooperation with Chernihiv National Technical University. How many classrooms/professors is WMUA's Education Program currently working with? Do you see the Wikiworkshop model as the best way to establish those partnerships? We noted in your learning section that you hope to focus less on general Wikiworkshops and more on more practical series of trainings. This is something we have found to be effective in other communities.

   First of all, our Wikiworkshop model is very flexible and we organise such workshops for very different audiences: general public, university students, university faculty, GLAM staff and others. Of course, presentations are different as well, e.g. for general public we provide very practical-oriented workshops, for faculty we explain how to use wikis in education, for GLAM staff we explain how GLAM projects work etc. Thus we do think that this is the best model to teach people how to use Wikimedia projects and edit (with a model adapted to goals of the audience, of course).

   However, this is not the way to establish a partnership: usually we contact the university first, discuss potential partnership and then we organise the first workshop. We do not establish a partnership by rushing into a university and organising a workshop immediately, of course, this is not the way things work

   The success of the programme also depend on the motivation of the faculty and university staff. So far we worked with some 10 universities, about 15 classrooms and something between 100 and 200 students (depends on whether we count all students or only those who completed all assignments). Success varies a lot from one university to another: for example, we had really good results with Ukrainian Catholic University this year, but Chernihiv National Technical University was not a success this year due to low involvement of the university faculty, instead, in Chernihiv we have a successful partnership with Chernihiv National Paedagogical University with a WikiStudia project in 2014. — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

2. Congrats on a really successful first Wikiflashmob. It’s a great concept and wonderful way to honor Ihor Kostenko. It would be great to have a Learning Pattern on how to organize this kind of event (and similarly the Wikiday).

   Organisers of these events will prepare these learning patterns — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

3. How was the Wikiday in Libraries organized? It sounds like there were not Wikimedians present at each event and this made it challenging. How is WMUA taking advantage of these new networks?

   Below is the information from Pavlo Shevelo (talk · contribs) who was one of the organisers:

   1. We were approached by Bibliomist library network who was interessed in organising an event across their network, so we discussed what such event can look like
   2. We received lists of libraries who were willing to participate (each library provided estimated number of participants for each library, time of their event and their contacts)
   3. For cities where we had active Wikipedians, we checked if they were available for a workshop (many events were on Friday), so we got first couples "library-Wikipedian"
   4. For cities without active Wikipedians, we have chosen libraries in biggest cities (biggest reach, we tried to promote events ourselves) or with most potential attendees (best local promotion) and invited active Wikipedians to travel there.
   5. We organised workshops:)

   @Ліонкінг:, who was another organiser, will summarise this in a learning pattern.

   Concerning taking advantage of these networks, we organise further events in libraries of this network, for example, for Wikiflashmob-2015 — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

   @AWang (WMF): The learning pattern is ready: Grants:Learning patterns/WikiDay — NickK (talk) 00:47, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Wikiexpeditions

1. Wikiexpeditions are a great resource for the community. It looks like there are experienced Wikimedians on all of these trips. Are there also photography experts? Do participants receive guidelines for what is most useful to take photos of and how? Looking at all the expedition photos, it seems like guidelines and more instructions on what to take photos of -- what's most useful for using in Wikipedia articles -- would be help increase the quality.

   We try to invite experienced Wikipedian photographers to these expeditions. However, we cannot say they are photographer experts: they are good amateurs but not pforessionals. We had a visual guide of what is useful to picture (here) and this year we had a new text guide (here). We ask participants to follow this guidelines and we evaluate expeditions according to them — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

2. For the “non-Wikipedians”, do they receive training on uploading and article integration after the event?

   We give them a basic training (either we show them how to upload on Commons and show them how to add photos to articles, in addition, we can provide them materials about editing Wikipedia). We cannot give them a full training, however, as this requires an hour or two in a place with good Internet, something we cannot organise during most expeditions — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

3. Are all the destinations chosen based on content gaps?

   Yes, this is our criterion for choosing destinations. In some expeditions participants even made deviations to picture large towns without photos — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

4. There is a range in the amount of photos from the Wikiexpeditions that are actually used on the projects. A 30% or higher usage rate for these types of expeditions would be appropriate -- focusing on quality and not quantity. For example, the Shevchenko Ways in Podolia Wikiexpedition had a lot of group shots of the participants (not useful for articles), while the Wikiexpedition to Pishchanka Raion, Vinnytsia Oblast and Wikiexpedition to Budjak, Odesa Oblast had high numbers of quality photos of important sites. It's not clear why it is needed to go back to sites that have already been photographed, such as Chernihiv Raion, unless it is to develop partnerships with the local community.

   We typically ask participants to upload at least 100 photos and use them in at least 20 articles, giving 20% usage rate. We cannot avoid, however, the situation where participants upload not just the best photos but all photos (including group photos). We understand that those photos are not quite useful, of course except a participant becomes notable...

   Concerning Chernihiv Raion, it is one of the biggest raions of Ukraine (approximately the same size as Luxembourg or Rhode Island). Here is the map of expeditions to Chernihiv Raion, all of them covered different parts of this raion, and it is completely impossible to cover the entire Chernihiv Raion over one day (this requires travelling over 500 km and picturing over 1000 objects) — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Photo grants

1. Please provide the correct link for the Commons category related to "Media supported by Wikimedia Ukraine". The current category only has 47 files, but we understand there are over 10,000.

   It has subcategories for various types of events, in particular commons:Category:Files generated with Wikimedia Ukraine Nikon D5100, commons:Category:Files generated with Wikimedia Ukraine Canon SX280 and commons:Category:Photos taken with WMUA camera all contain media supported by Wikimedia Ukraine. Not all 10,000 images are from photo grants, of course, however — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Wiki events

1. Ukrainian WikiConference: How did you receive input from the community on the conference program? Through a survey, site notice/banner pointing to a discussion page, social media? It’s useful for other communities to learn what you've found as the best methods of outreach for these types of events.

   We mostly contacted potentially interested speakers personally, which is probably not the best way to do it. For WikiConference 2015, we are doing it better by organising a survey: wmua:Вікіконференція 2015/Опитування — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

2. What was the benefit of having international guests from Poland and Russia at the WikiConference?

   Guest from Poland (User:Julo) shared learnings from Polish Wikiexpeditions and GLAM (see slides here). Guest from Russia (User:Drbug) did not make any presentations, but his attendance was funded by WMRU, so we are fine with that. We also had informal exchanges about potential cooperation with WMPL and WMRU — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

3. It’s great that you were able to better document the WikiConference for the benefit of the broader community and you were able to make progress on a lot of projects.
4. Education Cooperation Kickoff Meeting: There are several good ideas listed for further actions, including the train the trainers session and a series of more practically-oriented sessions instead of one-off workshops (see comments above).
5. Great results from the NATO article contest in terms of filling significant content gaps!
6. The military article contest produced very impressive results in terms of both number of participants and articles created/improved! How did you do outreach for this contest? We really like the idea to review submissions two times and give participants an opportunity to improve their articles based on feedback. With so many submissions and 7 reviewers, that must have taken a lot of time and it's helpful to know that this was too much for the judges. Great that some of the new editors have remained active! Were they added to the WMUA mailing list or other channels for staying engaged with the community?

   Unfortunately, it was not we who did an impressive outreach for a military contest, it was the war who did it for us... This was just a topic that was very interesting for Ukrainian community, so we got an excellent result with a usual outreach (SiteNotice banner plus press release, social networks, partner's comunication channels)

   Concerning new participants, it is not common for Ukrainian organisations to have mailing lists not for members, most people consider such emails as spam. We have a public mailing list mailarchive:wikimedia-ua-announce, but it has public announcements about or internal affairs, but maybe we can try to arrange something. Instead, we use MassMessage to inform participants about relevant events on their talk pages — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Earth

1. It’s very impressive that WMUA had so many high-quality submissions and that there were photos from all regions of Ukraine -- congrats! It’s also great that you were able to collaborate with ecological organizations who were able to improve lists, provide sources, and even donate images. This is a useful tip for other countries.
2. Considering the relatively high quality of submissions, we would have expected the usage rate to be higher than 7%. We understand promoting integration of photos into articles will be a focus in coming years and definitely support that strategy.

   According to Glamorous tool, we have 8359 distinct images used, which gives 11.76% image usage. Please note that we counted not only Main namespace, as image uses in other namespaces (e.g. Portal, List etc.) also mean that images are useful, and some countries have their lists outside main namespace. That's not a perfect result, so we are effectively promoting better integration of these images in articles — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

3. A BIG thanks to WMUA for organizing the international contest of WLE 2014.

Other

1. Thank you for the updates on souvenirs, office/infrastructure, and the library. It would be helpful to hear an update on the PR Manager position. We realize she was sick for two months and the statistics shared in the measures of success section look like she is quite busy. Are you seeing positive signs that the increased exposure for WMUA is resulting in greater engagement by the general public, Wikimedians, potential partners, etc.?

   The biggest difference we see is in the engagement of Wikimedians, as owing to our PR Manager we have a lot of new editors in our blog. This helps, firstly, to involve new people who contribute to the blog, and secondly, cover a wider range of topics that can be interesting to general public and potential partners — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

2. We realize it can be challenging to get volunteer event organizers to make sure participants are registered. Having all organizers require participants to sign their username before leaving the event would address this issue. Does WMUA have simple tracking and reporting guidelines for event organizers? If not, I can send you a sample.

   Personally I tried to promote Grants:Evaluation/Tracking and Reporting Toolkit I heard about at Wikimania 2014. That failed, because lists of those signed up before the event and those attending were always significantly different. We would be glad to try simple tracking and reporting tools if you have ones — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

3. It sounds like one important learning is that you always need to have a Wikimedian present (or available via video) for events (like the WikiDay events in libraries)

   We cannot say need as some libraries had successful results even without Wikimedians. In addition, we could not tell to a library that they should cancel an event as there is no active Wikipedian available in their area — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

4. Please fill out the global metrics table and learning pattern question. Be sure to use the updated grant report form in the future.

   I filled in global metrics table, however, I feel that most of metrics are completely irrelevant for an annual plan, as we mix projects with different types of impact and in most cases one project creates a heavy bias.

   For example, we have ca. 5000 individuals involved: that would be a lot for any project! However, 3500 of them were involved in Wiki Loves Earth: about 3000 uploaders, some 250 organisers, volunteers and partners and some 250 jury members who judged local contests and a global contest, all of them representing about 20 countries (some jurors and volunteers represented countries that were not participating, e.g. Julian Monge-Najera from Costa Rica). That's a great number as well, but it was somewhat expected. In parallel, we had 10 people involved in Heroes of Heavenly Hundred Concert (performers and Wikimedians altogether). We got 5 performers who learned about Wikimedia movement, which is an excellent result, but they are simply "lost" behind 3500 people involved in Wiki Loves Earth.

   In addition, reporting number of bytes added or deleted is extremely difficult, as there is no tool for it (Wikimetrics is not helpful as most participants of article contests made other edits during these weeks, thus we need to consider only edits by given participants in given articles), and for our reporting we used "sum of added and deleted bytes" for article contests (there is no use in tracking how many bytes people delete from articles they created themselves).

   Due to these reasons, our global metrics are very approximate and not really meaningful — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

   Concerning grant report form, we started preparing our report in June 2014 when there was no other form available — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

5. In terms of the remaining funds, when do you plan on submitting a new grant request?

   We expect to submit a grant request, we will submit one for the second half of the year starting September, when Grants:PEG/WM UA/Programs in Ukraine 2015-1 grant ends. We expect to submit it around early August — NickK (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks again for this report! Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 04:26, 21 July 2015 (UTC)