Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wiki Loves Monuments 2023-24 International Coordination and Prizes

Feedback from the Northern and Western Europe (NWE) Regional Funding Committee on your proposal

Hello Ciell, Erinamukuta, KCVelaga, Ndahiro derrick, Romaine, Rodelar, Iwuala Lucy, Slaporte,

We express our gratitude for submitting your General Support Fund proposal in the Northern and Western Europe region, and we are pleased to have reviewed your application. We have the following comments and questions:

Firstly, we commend the initiative being evaluated for its solid effort in maintaining, improving, and expanding one of the largest contests in Wikimedia in terms of participant numbers. The organizing team has an impressive track record of successful past events and has shown a commitment to increasing support for local teams and accommodating a diversity of organizing groups. Additionally, the project's intention to provide technical support for monument data migration to Wikidata and maintenance of some of the existing tools is commendable and speaks to its broader aims.

Participation and engagement - While the proposal highlights the significant contributions made by volunteers towards the campaign's success, it also acknowledges current weaknesses such as the decline in participation of various countries in Wiki Loves Monuments compared to previous years. We know that you have been working on a proactive approach to address the issue but we are interested to hear more about it. How exactly will you be targeting countries that have previously collaborated with the initiative, as well as countries that have expressed interest and entities outside the movement that share the initiative's objectives? Do you have any available data to support and inform those actions? What will be your strategy to increase participation and active engagement?

Diversity and knowledge gaps - We are interested to know - how you will ensure the participation and sustainability of underrepresented communities, minority nationalities and address knowledge gaps and diversity more specifically? Have you thought about a strategy that involves a wider range of collectives such as other Wikiprojects, GLAM organizations, and other relevant stakeholders? Or to explore the potential for incorporating the campaign into educational programs such as EduWiki high school or the third education sector?

We believe that some strategies and action plans are important to ensure that the campaign promotes inclusivity and equity in a comprehensive manner.

Learning - While the proposal does not directly address the learning potential in the movement, it highlights the need for a variety of resources, such as guides on organizing, participating, and a monuments database, at both national and international levels (if you have any international learning practices or resources). Do you already have an idea on the types of formats in which these kinds of resources will be shared and the types of learning activities that will be organized?

Evaluation - We see that the learning goals formalized in the proposal are evaluation metrics exclusively quantitative and are expressed in numerical and percentage terms. In order to gain a more nuanced understanding of the effectiveness and impact of the project, it might be good to also consider incorporating qualitative indicators that consider factors such as the quality and originality of the content produced, the identification of previously unexplored subject, and other aspects that may be difficult to capture through purely numerical metrics. We are also interested in knowing if you have an intention to measure the progress of the contests on a more local scale.

Capacity - We are a bit worried about potential burnout in organizing communities, especially the small ones, during what usually is the most demanding phase of the contest, the jury constitution and the winner selection. Do you have any ideas for a scalable and sustainable solution? We were thinking about potentially having an international pool of experienced, interchangeable jurors who could help local communities speed up and improve quality considerations, as well as better documentation for Montage. But this was just a first thought. We are very happy to hear from your experience if these ideas are viable, and if you have other ideas to mitigate the limited capacity concern.

Budget - While the budget proposal makes no explicit mention of equity issues, a budget of 9,000€ is allocated to translation services, which could potentially contribute towards addressing this aspect. Can you please elaborate on the decision to translate campaign materials into five particular languages? Was the decision based on specific target audiences that you identified? We would also appreciate a more detailed clarification of the budget regarding the support of volunteers, especially considering that the chapters are responsible for running the contests and therefore the local affiliates allocate resources and in-house capacities. So we are not completely sure what kind of additional support requires funding.

Overall, this project demonstrates a solid organizational structure, a plan for improvement, and a commitment to diversity and inclusivity. These qualities bode well for the future success of the contest and the ongoing growth of Wikimedia.

We thank you and appreciate the time and work spent on this proposal, and for taking on this effort to allow another wonderful platform for engagement and content enrichment for our community.

Thank you, we look forward to hearing from you.

On behalf of the NWE Regional Committee,

--- Nferranf 19:00, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Nferranf,

Thank you for these questions: I see where they are coming from and for some we have processes already setup and incorporated in the workflow, or we plan to talk about them in our upcoming in-person gathering in May. At this meeting, the topic of long-term strategy is also on the agenda.

Let me bring back the questions to my WLM-collegues for a response: is there a set deadline for this? We were just planning to have a few days off after this very intense competition period.

By the way, allow me to flag that your ping did not work. Might have something to do with the format of your signature, or maybe the ping-system is buggy at the moment, but just so you know.

Best regards, Ciell (talk) 20:36, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Ciell, on the page Grants:Regions/Northern and Western Europe you will find under "Upcoming round 2 (2022-23) the calendar of the feedback. According to this, applicants can review and respond to committee feedback, please complete your review and responses to by May 5th. After this time, the Regional Committee will begin a final review of the proposal to make a final decision. Hope this helps,

@Nferranf 08:36, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Nferranf and the rest of the committee,

Thank you for your review and your questions. I'll share our answers below, and please let me know if there are any followup questions from your side.

Participation and engagement

I think it is important to see the decline in uploads (here are the complete WLM stats) in the light of three years of pandemic which made (fun and local!) in-person events very difficult, and added to this a war on the European continent that had a significant impact on the communities. Because I would not expect that WLM will be able to break our own world record in number of uploads as established in 2012, I would rather focus on the number of countries that want to participate. We see a healthy ceiling at 30-40 countries per year.

Active outreach will happen in the form of written emails, but we also plan to speak to people at events, have presentations there and organize Q&A sessions on- and offline. We want to highlight that having your monument list ‘completed’ with one image for every monument is not the only challenge there is in WLM, and the international team tries to lead by example by awarding special prizes, like the extra thematic awards we had in WLM 2022 for the Sub-Saharan region, and the prizes for previously unphotographed monuments.

On the international level, we're currently revisiting our strategy for the upcoming years.

Diversity and knowledge gaps

We are aiming for more collaboration in, but also outside of the Wikimedia Movement again. We are present at international Wikimedia events to speak to people, to hear their local struggles with the organizing aspects of photo competitions (ranging from copyrights, to availability of monument lists, to access of sites, to internet access) and to see if we can lend a hand towards finding a solution. While the WLM DEI research surfaced the high level roadblocks that affect a lot of the WLM teams, this personal connection to also understand the local challenges is very important to remove those last blockers and help team get started. With this in-person presence we also expand again the WLM-international network with new friends outside the movement, with the intent to build connections between our team, the national organizing teams and the partners we meet.

Also for this aspect, as for all in the movement, the limitations during the pandemic complicated these sorts of interactions but we are now in the process of rebuilding the relationships.

Learning

The international team had an online newcomer guide for new participants developed, which is nearing completion. We intend this guide to become available in multiple languages. We intend to update and also make available in more languages our documentation pages for organizers. Both are available through Commons.
We are also working on an update of our website, and to share stories, blogs, and hints and tips again more frequently in the months leading up to the next edition. At the moment these are all paused because of availability of team members and staff (see also the mid-point report 2022-2023), but we have good hopes to be back at full capacity at the start of the new fiscal year.

Evaluation

Qualitative indicators are great, but unfortunately also take a lot of effort. We had a big qualitative exercise with the DEI efforts recently, and rather focus on diving deeper when we have a specific question. We typically do collect some level of qualitative data on an ongoing basis in our surveys, but we feel hesitant to commit to reporting specific conclusions on an ongoing basis because of both relevance and workload.

Capacity

We share the concerns on volunteer burnout, and centralizing certain aspects (not only for WLM but for all WL photo competitions) would definitely make sense. To be honest, we don't consider the juror pool the biggest challenge, because it's a fairly well defined and organized job. The international team has an internal list of former and backup jurors because we want our jury to be a balanced mix of Wikimedians, photography professionals and heritage experts who can also serve the national teams if needed. The big challenge is usually in finding committed and qualified volunteers for the less well-defined jobs. On the international level, we're currently revisiting our strategy which should help with this task.

Budget

The national teams that join in Wiki Loves Monuments are always a mixture of teams that are with experienced chapters, and teams that organize on their own merit, sometimes for the first time, without any additional support. The former do indeed not need a lot of active support from us, the latter do. Our support ranges from understanding the preparation steps for a WLM competition, connecting to partners in- and outside the movement, setting up the CentralNotice banners and upload campaigns, help with landing pages, help with categories, help with juries and rules of the competition, help and support for the jury tool (Montage), help and support for the Monument location tool (Monumental) and overall troubleshooting before and during the competition.
The budget we request in this grant is for the international WLM team coordination and prizes: while we, the volunteers on the international team, help the national teams with the points mentioned above, the international team is supported by staff that handles the finances, supports project management, and assists in communications for our team. I would also like to emphasize that this grant request and therefore the proposed budget spans 1,5 years (not 1 year, as in previous requests) because of the desire of our budget to be included in WMAT's next multiyear grant and and consequently the need to sync our request round.

For the language aspect in your question, please allow me to elaborate. The interim report and final report of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion research we had done in the 2021-2022 year highlights language accessibility as one of the bigger problems our national organizers experience. We decided to have translations done for the research report in 12 languages, by way of trial: the chosen languages were a weighted outcome of the languages indicated directly in the interviews with the researcher, against languages of upcoming communities with the WMF (we consulted the WMF communications team for this aspect), and additional large languages spoken in countries that have current active WLM organizing teams.
We worked through our own networks to find the translators, also because the Wikimedia Movement, and Wiki Loves Monuments in particular in this case, has very specific terminology that will not come across correct when using just any interpreter service. Our translators mainly come from the movement and themselves are former WLM organizers, active admins and/or well known editors within their own communities, and can help us bridge these language barriers.

While the DEI research translation was a highly specific report to translate and not all WLM materials need this kind of paid and extensive translations, we would for instance like to finalize and make translatable the before mentioned interactive WLM newcomer guide. At the same time we would like to have certain documentation pages for organizers translated. The volunteer capacity with our national organizers for these kinds of tasks is limited - and we’d actually prefer them to be able to focus on the organizing work and the fun of the competition!
In 2022 we set up the translation interface as a pilot, for the main WLM yearly landing page and the quite static WLM FAQ page: both are now translated in 4-5 languages by volunteers. We will use both these experiences to decide on the type of pages we prioritize, and the languages we would like to have paid translations for in the upcoming year.

I hope our answers are satisfactory and take away your concerns. Thank you all for taking the time to read and consider our request, and the answers here.

Best, Ciell (talk) 21:57, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

To complete my story about the translations: I have now published a Learning Pattern of the approach we took for translating the DEI report last year. Ciell (talk) 11:44, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

General Support Fund proposal approved in the amount of 76,254 EUR

(pinging Ciell, Erinamukuta, KCVelaga, Ndahiro derrick, Romaine, Rodelar, Iwuala Lucy, Slaporte)

Congratulations! The Northern and Western Europe Regional Funds Committee has recommended your proposal for funding!

The Wikimedia Foundation has approved the committee's recommendation to fund your proposal in full for 76,254 EUR, as proposed.

Comments regarding this decision:

• The Regional Committee broadly supports the campaign for this year and recognizes that Wiki Loves Monuments is an important annual event in the movement with consistent impact. The international team commands important experience and skills in running movement campaigns at this scale.
• The committee had several remarks regarding qualitative analysis for the campaign.
  • In your response on the talk page, it was helpful to understand that you are already collecting some qualitative data through surveys. Depending on what feedback you are requesting, you may have a lot of valuable information already.
  • The committee emphasizes the need for better qualitative analysis for the campaign moving forward, beyond improving the campaign in broad, unclear terms. WLM represents one the largest and longest-running campaigns in the Wikimedia movement, and its impact extends beyond participation, satisfaction from local organizers, and survey participation rates.
  • On the talk page, you also noted that you are hesitant to commit to reporting on specific conclusions from these surveys, but it is not clear why, and we would like to understand what concerns underlie this hesitation. Importantly, qualitative analysis does not necessarily mean that you must anticipate or know what outcome will happen when conducting a survey (for example), but that you are willing to assess and draw some conclusions from your survey or other observations. For example, we believe your team is well-placed to share best practices in supporting local organizers or broadly running campaigns at this scale, and survey data you collect could inform conclusions about this parts of your work. An outcome from this analysis could be a brief on best practices for a specific process or dynamic in WLM that could benefit the broader Wikimedia movement.
• The committee is broadly supportive of the international team’s interest in supporting better accessibility to the campaign through better language support for campaign documentation and materials, as well as sharing approaches for local communities to direct attention to monuments and structures in marginalised communities that are not well-represented in submissions. The committee encourages the international team to use the 2022 DEI Report conclusions to incorporate these and other DEI criteria into its evaluation plan in future proposals.
• Finally, the committee would like to see a better defined strategy for improving Wiki Loves Monuments international team moving forward. We understand that the campaign is planned to be incorporated into Wikimedia Austria’s annual planning for next year, and we would like to meet early in your current funding period to discuss the committee’s feedback and the transition. I (Chris) will be in contact with you to schedule and facilitate this discussion with some members of the Regional Committee.

Next steps:

• You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement.
• If you have questions about the funding decision, please contact Chen Almog (calmogwikimedia.org) and Chris Schilling (cschillingwikimedia.org)
• If you have questions during the funding period, you can contact the Regional Program Officer for the Northern and Western Europe Region.

On behalf of the Regional Committee, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 05:42, 29 May 2023 (UTC)