Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Boosting the Korean Wikimedia Community and Diversifying Editors and Contents on Wikimedia Movement

Questions from ESEAP Funds Committee

Hello Wikimedia Korea, thank you for applying for the Wikimedia Community general support funds. We are in the process of reviewing your application and would like to hear your responses to the following questions:

COVID-19

• Resuming offline activities is one of the key strategies in improving community health in your grant application. Due to the fluid nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, offline activities may not be possible. Do you have an alternative plan? Could you say more?

Budget and Funds Management

• We observed that you have a high surplus carry forward for 2019 and 2020 (year 1 of COVID-19). Could you share more about your budgeting process?
• Would Wikimedia Korea be ready for strategic planning in consultation with key stakeholders in 2022? If yes, do you need to include an additional budget for it?

Additional Metrics

• We commend your efforts to narrow content and representation gaps by focusing on LGBT communities and young people. What other types of metrics (beyond participation numbers) would you be collecting to understand if you have made progress after one year in diversifying the community? These could be qualitative or quantitative indicators.

Programme and Strategy

• Would you be able to share a schedule of activities by month (and estimated metrics breakdown by activity) for 2022 based on your proposed plan?
• Could you share more about the Board of Directors of Wikimedia Korea Chapter and their roles and responsibilities?
• Korean​​ ​Wikipedia’s ​new​ ​editor​ ​retention is 11.3% (as at Dec 2020). In the 2021 community insights survey Newcomers’ sense of empowerment increased, especially among contributors who identify as women and those who live in East Asia. Do you think this is reflective of the trend in South Korea? What are some approaches you have tried and felt it was useful for editor retention and to increase newcomer participation? Which ones will you be adopting for 2022?

It would be really helpful to respond by 7 Jan before our next deliberation round. Thank you. JChen (WMF) (talk) 10:19, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Answers

COVID-19

• Resuming offline activities is one of the key strategies in improving community health in your grant application. Due to the fluid nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, offline activities may not be possible. Do you have an alternative plan? Could you say more?

We hope the pandemic will be contained this year. Untunately, South Korea's Covid-19 cases are less serious than other countires. We will host all of our meetup both online and offline. For example. We hold our year end party both online and offline last year, using Youtube live streaming service, where we are able to engage annonymous participants in our offline events.

Budget and Funds Management

• We observed that you have a high surplus carry forward for 2019 and 2020 (year 1 of COVID-19). Could you share more about your budgeting process?

Thank you for sharing your observations. Yes, we have a high surplus carried forward for 2019 because it includes funding from Wikimedia Foundation for 2019 and 2020.

For budgeting process, the proposed budget is put forward by the Executive Officer and then deliberated and passed by the Board. Thereafter it is shared with the Legislative members for voting/approval. This is in line with the local laws as Wikimedia Korea is registered as an association here.

• Would Wikimedia Korea be ready for strategic planning in consultation with key stakeholders in 2022? If yes, do you need to include an additional budget for it?

Yes, this is something we can consider for 2022/2023. While we may not require additional budget at this point, we would like to learn more about the experiences from other Affiliates as well as from the Wikimedia Foundation so that we can adapt the process locally.

Additional Metrics

• We commend your efforts to narrow content and representation gaps by focusing on LGBT communities and young people. What other types of metrics (beyond participation numbers) would you be collecting to understand if you have made progress after one year in diversifying the community? These could be qualitative or quantitative indicators.

We thought about this further and came up with a few suggestions:

• Narrow content gap for LGBT communities and young people: We could measure progress by reporting metrics for each activity. For example:
  • The number of Wikipedia pages created/improved; the number of Wikisource pages created/improved; the number of Wikidata entries created/improved
  • The number of images/videos uploaded; what percentage of the images/videos are used in Wikiprojects
  • Though what’s more important is the quality and demand for the content. For example, we had in discussion with our LGBT partners, identified a list of articles to be created or topics to expand on, that were of interest to the community, but currently missing. This compiled list will service as a guide for content contribution when we conduct activities throughout the year. See sample list here (in Korean)
• Narrow representation gaps: One way We had initially thought was to share the change in demographic profile of the members. However, in a conservative society like South Korea, this would not be possible or appropriate. We are proposing another indicator - the number of new partnerships formed with the LGBT community. This will be more appropriate as a close/active partnership would enable LGBT participants to be aware of and join our activities. In addition, we can also add another “qualitative measure”, where we share our learnings (say in a presentation format) from working/collaborating with the LGBT community as part of our grant report.

Motoko (WMKR) (talk) 22:10, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Programme and Strategy

• Would you be able to share a schedule of activities by month (and estimated metrics breakdown by activity) for 2022 based on your proposed plan?

• Throughout year: Supporting offline meetups, Regular meetups for innovation, Supporting online editathons, Support external olunteer groups, Building partnerships with schools, Hosting online edit-a-thons on sister projects, and Digitization of old Hangul documents
• May: Pride online editathon
• July: WikiTambang
• August: Pride photo contest
• September: Online competition for archivingLGBT-related resources
• October: WikiConference
• December: Awards for dedicated Users

• Could you share more about the Board of Directors of Wikimedia Korea Chapter and their roles and responsibilities?

Below are our board members. They are all volunteers and advisor in our group and Wikimedia users, except for Gu Eun-ae who is a paid employee.

• Directors

Jin Ju-wan (the President), Gu Eun-ae (the Excutive Officer), Ko Youngjin, Lee Beom-su, Park Jang-sik, Ryu Cheol and Seo Chang Nyung

• Auditor

Noh Hyunkuk

• Korean​​ ​Wikipedia’s ​new​ ​editor​ ​retention is 11.3% (as at Dec 2020). In the 2021 community insights survey Newcomers’ sense of empowerment increased, especially among contributors who identify as women and those who live in East Asia. Do you think this is reflective of the trend in South Korea? What are some approaches you have tried and felt it was useful for editor retention and to increase newcomer participation? Which ones will you be adopting for 2022?

We think the trend reflects high mobile phone prevalence in East Asia. We assume most new commers, especially teenage users, visit Wikimedia projects with thier mobile phones.

We use usually KokaoTalk (a Korean moblie messenger app) group chats to inform our activities and endore new comers. For example, we launched digitalization of Old Hangul documents project last year. Around 50% of the participants joined the follow-up acitivity this year, because we informed them about the acitiviy through our Kakao group chat.

Motoko (WMKR) (talk) 22:52, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of KRW 77,400,000

Congratulations! Your grant is approved in the amount of KRW 77,400,000 with a grant term starting 1 February 2022 and ending 31 January 2023.

The ESEAP Funds Committee is pleased to support the work of Wikimedia Korea and values the efforts in putting together the grant application and budget. Your application provides insights into your lived realities and a deeper appreciation of the Chapter’s plan for the year.

The Committee and Programme Officer sees a number of strengths in your application and track record. These are:

• Wide range of annual core programmes. Offerings include conference, awards (for recognition), regular user meetups, edit-a-thons (also function as holding spaces for community organiser to take the lead) and contests (i.e. Photowalks/WikiTambang).
• Concerted push to address the content gender gap (i.e. 성소수자 /sexual minorities) on Korean wikiprojects through an institutional partnership, opening doors to 성소수자  networks (i.e. interest groups and archives).
• Observed increase in new editor retention rates

We observed potential growth areas in

• Tapping into existing connections within the movement and building a core support network through learning and sharing (i.e. consider actively consulting with ESEAP regional peers to explore innovative new ideas, strengthen project management and budget utilisation). Stay curious and open to learning.
• Cultivating a more hands on deck approach to planning and implementation to reduce likelihood of staff burnout. (e.g. Board of Directors, active members of the chapter)

In your 2022/2023 learning journey, the Committee and Programme Officer envisions you may require support in the following areas during the course of your grant term:

• Budgeting (i.e. strengthening forecasting);
• Strategic planning and
• Grant reporting (i.e. strengthen clarity and transparency).

We also look forward to your participation in the peer learning network where you can share what you will learn during this grant term about working with 성소수자 communities.

Here are further observations from the Funds Committee, which the PO would like to work with you in the future:

• Grant application: Recommend to provide more clarity on linking activities/ programmes to strategy and budget breakdown in future applications; Proposed metrics should be more developed, and more specific to the variety of events proposed
• On responses to questions from review: Recommend to answer the questions more fully in future. For example questions on alternative plans for COVID-19; Board of Directors roles and responsibilities not fully addressed; background context to high budget surplus omitted.

JChen (WMF) (talk) 03:52, 17 January 2022 (UTC)