Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wiki in Africa Multi-Year General Support 2023-25/Yearly Report (2023)

Final Report Review ; Reflections & Recommendations

Hello, Isla, Florence and the Wiki in Africa team, Thank you for preparing the final report on the work done and funded in 2023. We have reviewed your report and would like to share here  some comments, questions and recommendations;

• I enjoyed reading the report. Thank you for the detailed and comprehensive report.
• It is incredible to learn about the progress you have made in the organization development of Wiki in Africa. We see the intentional efforts in supporting the people you work with, including their growth, even as you continue to improve the systems. The achievement in supporting and advancing the board to reflect the people and communities you serve is a highlight and we hope this effort of inclusion advances your mission.
• In line with this, we see an opportunity to share your journey - since it has been a long journey coming - with others in the region and beyond on how you go about developing staff and governance structures that meet the needs of a community and organzation.
• A few questions we have and thinking about;
  • We see a significant portion of your work working closely with emerging communities in the region. We are curious to learn more about the efforts you are taking to improve their contribution through assessment of the quality of work contributed. This is important to learn as we continue to learn including from your data on the value campaigns hold for newcomers. How are you working to ensure that those who participate in the campaigns have the skills needed to meaningfully contribute to the target Wikimedia projects?
  • In the same spirit, and this time looking at initiatives such as Wiki Loves Women, what does follow-up look like and especially in building technical capabilities, which, in the region, many volunteers recognize is still a challenge to be addressed?
  • The Wiki Africa Hour continues to be a valuable platform for the region and we see this in the level of participant engagement . We are curious to learn about whether you have any set cognitive or action- based outcomes that those who engage are hoped to have.
  • Thank you for sharing the data on how you assess reach, engagement including validating existing efforts while identifying areas for improvement. It was interesting to learn about the low engagement in regions such as Central Africa, North Africa and Southern Africa and are curious on what’s the current thinking on how to grow engagement. Of course, we are comparing this to regions such as West Africa with active participation and recognize the context may be different to work with.
  • We learned about the challenges local campaigns participants are experiencing, including internet issues and in some cases, safety concerns and would like to learn more about your approach for addressing these in this implementation year. We wondered if there is an opportunity to leverage local affiliate presence in addressing some of these challenges.
  • Recommendations: it may be helpful to have disaggregated data at the in-country level to help support a better understanding of the data shared. Often, we wondered - is this a case of 1 country or multiple countries, especially when the data is regional? Let us know how if this is of interest and if you need any support from us.
  • Participating on mobile continues to be an opportunity for your work;
    • What is the current biggest challenge with the ISA tool as an attempt to address this challenge? Even after the hackathon implementation. Anything we can do to support?
    • What other mobile-related opportunities do you see in relation to the campaign?
  • Lastly, thank you for sharing the update on the resource development role. Is this a role you will prioritise closing on for this year, and can we help in any way?

That’s it for the reflections and comments; we enjoyed reading the report and taking in the insights shared, and we continue to see value in the work you do in the movement towards achieving knowledge equity, especially on the African continent.

Thank you so much! VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 09:27, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Response: Final Report Review ; Reflections & Recommendations

VThamaini (WMF), Thank you for your very interesting questions and thoughtful feedback. It is always a pleasure to hear from you - and below we hope to answer your questions thoroughly. We have duplicated your questions below and placed our response to each one. I hope this is easier to read! Let us know if you have any further comments or wish to expand on any of the answers we have given! Always a pleasure, Islahaddow (talk) 17:15, 23 April 2024 (UTC) and Anthere and the Wiki In Africa team.

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I enjoyed reading the report. Thank you for the detailed and comprehensive report.

Thank you, Veronica! It is always exciting to get feedback, and know that someone has read and appreciated our report; that our work is not lost in some echo chamber!

It is incredible to learn about the progress you have made in the organization development of Wiki in Africa. We see the intentional efforts in supporting the people you work with, including their growth, even as you continue to improve the systems. The achievement in supporting and advancing the board to reflect the people and communities you serve is a highlight and we hope this effort of inclusion advances your mission.

Thank you for noticing our progress in this area. It is an ongoing process! We are making progress, and we are still looking for additional Board Members. Compromises are always a factor because of the national registration / global application requirements, however, we feel that we are getting closer to an active and engaged board with the right balance of people from inside and outside the Wikimedia movement. There is an intentional plan this year to review policies, guides, and processes, and we hope to share this progress in the next report.

In line with this, we see an opportunity to share your journey - since it has been a long journey coming - with others in the region and beyond on how you go about developing staff and governance structures that meet the needs of a community and organzation.

As mentioned above, more happening in this regard this year. We are very keen (as always) to share our lessons and experiences. We plan to submit “Journeys in Governance” panels at both WikiIndaba and the Wiki Convention Francophone this year, where a number of our colleagues share our challenges and solutions. This would be the first step in a larger program we are tentatively planning. We have been thinking of ways to make our (and others’) experiences more visible so that the existing models and successes on the continent can guide and inform future community growth. We know this is a sensitive area and wonder if you have any thoughts on how we could (collectively or as an organisation) approach this much needed space?

• A few questions we have and thinking about;

• We see a significant portion of your work working closely with emerging communities in the region. We are curious to learn more about the efforts you are taking to improve their contribution through assessment of the quality of work contributed. This is important to learn as we continue to learn including from your data on the value campaigns hold for newcomers. How are you working to ensure that those who participate in the campaigns have the skills needed to meaningfully contribute to the target Wikimedia projects?

This is a difficult question as the response varies from project to project. As you know, various tiers of experience exist in a Wikimedian’s lifecycle (Florence and Alex Stinson submitted a panel on this topic for Wikimania).

Let’s take Wiki Loves Africa as an unusual example. The project attracts a high number of newbies – an average of 77.4% over 9 years. These ‘newbies’ return year after year, reducing the ratio of newbies, with last year being the lowest number of ‘new’ Wikimedians at 57%. All other years have been in the 80%s. We provide as much support as possible (e.g. upload wizard tutorials, guidelines, top tips, Creative Commons licencing introduction videos, etc.) for random photographers who wish to contribute to the competition and are new to Wikimedia. The numbers do not allow for more than that at the moment (although there is a long-term plan to upgrade the “how to” offering on Wikimedia Commons with a MasterClass series).

The success of Wiki Loves Africa lies in ensuring that the local event organisers are supported and have enough knowledge to assist the newbies in their community. We host a rigorous training program during the contest to support new organisers as the trainers of newcomers know about IP rights so that they can, in turn, explain why, for example, a newcomer's photo was deleted because of a lack of FOP. See the training sessions for this year. It presents a comprehensive list of training that varies from required in-Wikimedia knowledge to camera skills and format preparation. We have had issues in the past where quantity has been a focus (by some organisers) instead of quality, and we are hoping that the training and support of the organisers will prevent this from happening in the future. Our Wiki Loves Women Focus Group sessions support the needs of female leaders in the movement as they transition to the next level, beyond event organising, towards governance, community cohesion and communications skills.

All our programs have training components and we have collated some of them in this Resource area so that organisers can easily find what they need to help them.

That having been said, Wiki Loves Africa is an anomaly. Very few projects or campaigns can be geared towards “newbies” and micro-contributions in this way. Even an ISA drive or the SheSaid campaign aimed at contributions to Wikiquote requires a certain amount of Wikimedia knowledge before just anyone can successfully contribute. Training that moves the curious into being valuable contributors is critical, as Asaf and Dumisane’s excellent research and subsequent first-level course showed. In the Francophone community, a MOOC did achieve this aim, but it is outdated and is no longer available, with WM FR pushing the Wikidata MOOC as an alternative. Something does indeed need to be done by the global community to ensure that the transition between phases or levels is smoother so that the quality of the content on the Wikimedia projects is not compromised.

We know that people are attracted to contribute and get more involved through our programs, so we concentrate on supporting 3rd or 4th generation organisers to know more so they can better support their communities. We do this through office hours, introductory programs, webinars, best practices, etc. See the support program for SheSaid 2023 here. We have long-term plans to consolidate our existing and future material into more guided training modules. However, we are a small team on a minimal budget with very ambitious goals, doing a lot of work to achieve them. There is only so much we can achieve, given the funding, time and manpower that we currently have.

• In the same spirit, and this time looking at initiatives such as Wiki Loves Women, what does follow-up look like and especially in building technical capabilities, which, in the region, many volunteers recognize is still a challenge to be addressed?

As mentioned above, the Wiki Loves Women Focus Group is aimed at supporting existing female Wikimedians as they transition into leadership roles, giving them the opportunity to discuss and workshop effective solutions to their future goals and workarounds to the challenges they encounter. The space is curated by the group, with group support and networking being foregrounded.

Wiki Loves Women Focus Group 2024 Dreaming needs assessment workshop

At the beginning of each year, we do a needs assessment workshop to ensure that we bring in people who can support, share, and advance the knowledge in answer to the group's requirements. To the right is one of the slides from the 2024 Dreaming session in February 2024.

Priority topics for Wiki Loves Women Focus Group over 2024

At the end of the year, we conduct a survey to assess the program's success for that year and its needs for the future. To the right is a wish list for future sessions:

The key takeaways from the 2023 survey can be found here.

We’d like to point specifically to the Specific Impact section where relating to skills application, the following findings were summarised:

4. Specific Knowledge Gains: Topics such as "Governance issues," "Central Topic Banner," translation of wiki pages, and the use of various tools were highlighted as valuable learnings.

8. Professional Application: The skills acquired, including planning, project writing, grant application, and personal development, have found practical applications in their professional work.

As this is a program where it is up to the agency of the member to apply the new skills and lessons there is little scope for us to assess or measure the quality or application of the skills learnt.

We also sensitively note that while we are supporting women's leadership growth within the movement, some of the dynamics within the usergroups do not always support the transition of these women into leadership roles within the existing structures. This is a broader concern.

(Not sure if this answers your question, but it is our interpretation of it!)

• The Wiki Africa Hour continues to be a valuable platform for the region and we see this in the level of participant engagement. We are curious to learn about whether you have any set cognitive or action- based outcomes that those who engage are hoped to have.

Note: we are not entirely sure what you mean by participant in this context … guests? Or viewers?

In December last year, we shared a survey with the 101 guests on the WikiAfrica Hour show to better understand the impact the show has had on them as guests. Their responses have been fascinating.

As you know, compiling audience feedback from a live show such as this is far more complicated. We are very interested in doing this but have not yet had the opportunity to put it into practice. We are currently looking into tools that allow us to capture experiences during the shows.

As you know, Ceslause left us at the end of 2023 to move on to exciting new things. We are currently onboarding a new producer (Donia) for this exciting platform. This enables us to reconfigure and review what has worked well and what hasn’t worked. It also gives us a timely opportunity to clarify the program's true purpose and ensure that we measure those goals from the onset (beyond episode numbers, audience engagement and viewership).

We will get back to you about this once we have finalised our future goals and metrics.

• Thank you for sharing the data on how you assess reach, engagement including validating existing efforts while identifying areas for improvement. It was interesting to learn about the low engagement in regions such as Central Africa, North Africa and Southern Africa and are curious on what’s the current thinking on how to grow engagement. Of course, we are comparing this to regions such as West Africa with active participation and recognize the context may be different to work with.

This is a rather big question that, to be appropriately answered, would require longitudinal PHD research ;-)

However, if we were to speculate beyond the various cultural, social, political, educational, access and economic differences and nuances, we would suggest that the following areas need better attention:

1. We see it more as a language region issue than a geographic region issue. French-speaking Africa does feel much less supported by the WMF (and the larger movement) than English-speaking countries. Whether this perception is true or not, this is what the Francophone community feel is a fact and is an aspect that French-speaking African Wikimedians resent. And yes, French-speaking Africa can rely in a certain way on the WikiFranca hub, but it has very limited capacity, resources and scope, compared to what is possible for its English-speaking counterparts (although there is no ‘hub’ defined there yet).
2. Wiki In Africa and its projects are proudly bilingual (English and French). It is not easy. Some projects are more Francophone-based, some are better at balance, and others are more Anglophone lending. We also make every effort to embrace and support Arabic and Lusophone speakers. But again, this is not easy at all, and given our tiny team, and limited resources, we often fail. Recently we have been able to get our webinars and events interpreted due to the WMF (thank you!!) but this is only a new and infrequent service. One example of our attempts to support different language areas is the Wiki Loves Africa language ambassador program that we activated in 2023 for the 2024 contest. We put out a call for ambassadors in 4 languages, but no one responded for Portuguese. Nobody. As a result, that community was not supported for this contest. We managed to get 2 ambassadors per language for 3 languages. However, volunteer time is not a priority. Being the language ambassador for WLA is way down on the list of priorities beyond their local community Wikimedia responsibilities, which is below the priority to make money. Due to financial constraints, we can only rely on what the community will offer of their time, skills and energy.
3. Wikimedians in Africa (the experienced ones - tier 3 and 4) are few, and far between, and in great demand. They are over stretched and have often been pouched by the WMF and other WM organisations that leave an experience gap in the structures of unstable new communities. The African community is not yet supported with high enough numbers of experienced Wikimedins to bring on the next generations. These tier 2 (newer) are not experienced enough yet to support the newbies. It’s a bit of a vicious cycle.

• We learned about the challenges local campaigns participants are experiencing, including internet issues and in some cases, safety concerns and would like to learn more about your approach for addressing these in this implementation year. We wondered if there is an opportunity to leverage local affiliate presence in addressing some of these challenges.

We were excited to have the opportunity to acquire this knowledge for the first time in 2023 through the Wikfocus African Environment project. It was a chance to answer some of the more worrying questions that Wikimedians have about editor retention beyond training projects, and what outside forces were at play to impact their ability to continue editing. We had an idea that some of these challenges were at work but had no tangible evidence to back up our assumptions.

To be quite honest, given the way our projects work and the required autonomy of each organizing group, we don’t think we could ever solve this for the community, given the range of contexts, cultures, etc. that are either universal or specific.

Our work with Wiki Loves Women from 2016 activated continent-wide relationships between Wikimedia Communities and the Goethe-Institut in their cities. To this day, Wikimedia ZA and Wikimedia CIV continue to have very healthy, mutually beneficial partnerships brokered through our Wiki Loves Women project. We feel there is more scope to support in this kind of area, say working with resourced universities or tech hubs. As always, we have plans (that are funding and resource-dependent).

Knowledge is power, and beyond sharing this information with Wikimedia groups at Wikimedia events like WikiIndaba, it could be a good idea to suggest that organisers (perhaps as a requirement of the Rapid Grant process) use a similar framework or approach to assess the ability of their target trainees or venues, etc. prior to training, to isolate unexpected challenges up front, and to ensure that time is not wasted on training people who have unsolvable barriers to continued contribution. This would allow them to make smarter, more strategic choices in their partners and event planning. For example, as mentioned above, working in collaboration with tech hubs or universities so that those who are being trained have free access to the internet or technology in order to continue their contributions, etc.

• Recommendations: it may be helpful to have disaggregated data at the in-country level to help support a better understanding of the data shared. Often, we wondered - is this a case of 1 country or multiple countries, especially when the data is regional? Let us know how if this is of interest and if you need any support from us.

It is unclear what specific data you are keen to know more about; however, we would be more than happy to support this kind of deep dive into our statistics and community knowledge. We have the data and can access more. We also believe that we should test our working assumptions with empirical data. Sadly, due to limited time and staff, we cannot parse the data to this in-country level.

If the WMF is interested in supporting or funding a research project that will surface more comprehensive knowledge based on the data we can supply, then we would be more than happy to craft a project that would analyse the situation (current status, coverage, understanding of Wikipedia, active members, constraints and challenges, etc.) in say 3 countries (for example, Togo, Benin, and Cameroon, or Algeria, Cameroon and Zambia). Let us know if this is what you were looking for and how we can proceed.

Additionally, Yael shared with us that there are plans by the WMF to hire a Fundraising training consultant to support organisations that are interested in engaging with external funders. We are interested. How do we sign up?!

• Participating on mobile continues to be an opportunity for your work;

• What is the current biggest challenge with the ISA tool as an attempt to address this challenge? Even after the hackathon implementation. Anything we can do to support?

Thank you for noticing and for your offer of further support. The main challenge is that the hackathon (although very helpful) only provided the opportunity to fix the most obvious and critical bugs. Additionally, there are requests for features that are still pending and if implemented, could be awesome.

Two years ago, we were involved in a research project (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:ISA_Tool/Image_to_Concept) that looked into Computer Aided Tagging. The tech team worked on features and wrote some code to enhance ISA operations using Google Cloud Vision. And then … everything stopped. The project ran out of money, and the code was abandoned and left “in progress” or “in review” mode. As far as we can see, very few of the improvements actually worked on during this project were made live in the end (and definitely not any of the expected “computer-aided tagging” elements). The Phabricator table says it all; you can find it here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/3981/

What can WMF help to support? Can it help us make all those improvements live? Our team lacks tech skills. Months of asking allowed us to fix the tool’s most critical tech question during the hackathon. Now, we need to continue begging for support so that all the other elements can be fixed as well. This is tiring, but we are happy to move forward if there is the tech support to make this happen!

• What other mobile-related opportunities do you see in relation to the campaign?

At the moment, we are focused on getting the fixes and new features resolved and live on the ISA Tool. Once those are tested and implemented, we can move forward with other mobile-facing features and technology.

• Lastly, thank you for sharing the update on the resource development role. Is this a role you will prioritise closing on for this year, and can we help in any way?

'Yes! Resource development is a priority because resources have always been an important part of our work. We have always created resources to support the Wikimedians involved in the projects. When it became apparent that we were repeating ourselves year after year, we became more intentional about displaying them and making them accessible. They are now available here on Meta and our YouTube channel has been curated into two supporting playlists for Wiki In Africa Training Videos and Wiki Loves Africa Tutorials.

The Wiki In Africa Resources page will evolve over the next year to make it more useful and navigable. As we continue to add to the Resources page and see what is available (and what still needs to be added), we will transfer some of the resources to craft smaller, guided training on platforms like Wiki Learn to further support ours and the Wikimedia projects. We also recognise that most learners learn best through human support and will try to continue to provide this.