Grants talk:PEG/Wikimedians of Republic of Srpska/Projects of Wikimedians of Republic of Srpska for period of July 11st to August 14st 2016/Report

Comments from WMF

Hi Ljubiša Malenica. Thanks so much for this great report and all your efforts on the project. We are happy to approve this report. We also have a few follow-up questions and look forward to your responses:

1. It is great to see that 8 of the 25 people who participated in the writing contest were new editors. Have you looked to see if they have continued to edit or get involved with the community after the contest ended?
2. The report says that contest contributors were motivated because there was a lot of interest from the media and public, and because the topic was important to them. This is wonderful! Do you think people would be motivated to participate in more thematic writing weeks to fill other content gaps?
3. How did you use Facebook during the contest?
4. Did some of the new editors who came to the editathon continue to edit afterwards? Did any of them participate in the contest?
5. It is great to hear that the contest and activities helped your team learn to work together on a project, and that you were happy with the partnership with the library. Do you have plans to work with the library in the future? Do you think they would organize future editing events?
6. What would you like to do with the remaining 68.77 EUR. You can either propose to reallocate the funds to another activity, a new grant, or return them to WMF.

Thanks so much for all your great work! Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 04:15, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Responses to comments from WMF

Greetings Alex! Thank you for the questions and suggestions. Responses to your questions are in the following text:

1. A lot of participants was interested in this competition. On several occasions we received calls from people from other state, Serbia, from people, older professors, journalists and academics who wanted to participate and write on Republic of Srpska. Some of them had no experience with work on Wikipedia, so our team in some cases provided technical assistance which took form of a short online lecture to these users. In this moment, after performed analysis, only one user continued to write articles on Wikipedia. Another two users joined the community.
2. We believe that certain target groups would be far more motivated for work on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects if they were included into projects that are thematically organized and close to them. Although, so far, in majority of cases we tried to give our organized workshops a thematic background, we didn’t receive the same interest this project has drawn. Community plans, in the near future, to deal more with projects related to concrete area – religion for example, or culture and cultural heritage, tourism, history and the like. In this way, thematic areas in Wikipedia will be covered in more detail and thoroughly while the community will receive larger number of interested users.
3. Besides media announcements which were sent on regular basis in every stage of the project, activities were promoted on social networks. Concerning Facebook, on page and group Wikimedians of the Republic of Srpska updates concerning all activities were placed during the project duration. On the following links you can find announcements related to this competition placed on our Facebook pages-Updates to the FB page hashtag #UpoznajSrpsku,Facebook page
4. After workshop, one of the new users took part in the competition and keeps on editing articles to this day. Thanks to our cooperation with the library from East Sarajevo, we received one more editor which started editing from January 2016, but has became more actively involved in work of the community at the conclusion of this project.
5. This was one great experience and test for our very young community, especially when you take into consideration that another larger project was implemented at the same time period-Trace of Soul 2016. It helped us in improvement of our communication within community and abilities of organized work, each according to his competences and interests. Also, another good thing achieved during this time was establishment of communication with several important institutions such as libraries in East Sarajevo and Bijeljina with whose cooperation we are quite pleased. New project was started with library in Bijeljina - VikiSemberija So far we have completed three workshops in Bijeljina. On the basis of these positive experiences, plans were drawn for new GLAM projects focusing solely on librarians. We believe that it would be prudent to continue and expand our cooperation with libraries due to their high attractiveness as a target group, very interested for article writing and, overall, work on Wikimedia projects.
6. Regarding the money, we would like to allocate them towards new projects. Project suggestions were created and already sent. We are now waiting advice on the choice of the appropriate type of the grant program.

With respect, Ljubiša Malenica (talk) 21:56, 4 January 2017 (UTC)