Grants talk:Project/Rapid/WMROMD/rowp15/Report

Report accepted

Hi, Strainu, thank you for submitting this report. I have reviewed and accepted it, but please note that I have not yet accepted your expense documentation, as some receipts are missing. Please see my email to Iulian.

I'm sorry you didn't have the turnout at the event that you would have liked. Do you have any ideas about why editors based in Romania are reluctant to participate in person? Do you have thoughts about what strategies you could try to encourage more offline interaction?

Thank you also for sharing your learning around how to best handle scholarships. I agree; it is best to pay people after the event, in case they can't make it and are unresponsive to your attempts to get the funds back. I'm sorry you had to deal with that frustration, but it sounds like you learned a lot from it.

Thank you for sharing the outcomes from this grant with WMF and the community. We appreciate all the effort you put into it, and would welcome any other updates you wish to provide.

Best regards, LSmith (WMF) (talk) 01:29, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for approving the report LSmith (WMF). We will try to resolve the receipt situation as soon as possible.

We believe the lack of interest comes from several sources, the most important being the geographic dispersion of editors (~50% are in countries other than Romania and Moldova) and on-wiki conflicts that reflect in real life. Secondary reasons are (based on feedback we received): too long of a commute (ground transportation is slow in Romania and air transport is not available everywhere), financial reasons (costs larger than the scholarship), lack of time/bad timing (just before the beginning of the university year).

We are trying to involve participants to our previous events in such meetings. Bringing new people in might encourage them to continue participating in Wikipedia and hopefully entice older editors as well. One of the outcomes of the meeting was that some of the first-time participants realized the value of such a meeting while people who already participated in events elsewhere where surprised to see the low turnout and decided to act, so in February there will be a meeting in Iași, and in Chișinău there have been some monthly meetings. The number of participants is still low, but having them is already a progress.--Strainu (talk) 08:20, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi, Strainu! The receipt situation is now resolved and this grant is officially closed :-) Congratulations!

Thank you for sharing those interesting insights into the challenges that discouraged participation. It's very exciting to hear that the event encouraged some more active participants to hold meetings in other locations. I agree that it's encouraging to see more engagement, even if the number of participants is still low.

Best regards, LSmith (WMF) (talk) 01:54, 26 January 2019 (UTC)