Grants talk:Project/UG BG/Wikimedia CEE Spring 2017/Final

Comments by Andreykor

Здравствуйте! Хотелось бы поделиться своими соображениями по поводу проекта CEE Spring. Пишу по-русски, но думаю здесь многие смогут меня понять.

1. Для достижения лучших результатов следует поощрять конкурентную борьбу, как в каждом отдельном языковом разделе, так и между языковыми разделами. Для примера могу привести CEE Spring 2017 в русской Википедии, где 2 участника в конкурентной борьбе написали по 362 статьи каждый (см. ru:Проект:Вики-весна — 2017). Для многих участников сильным дополнительным стимулом будет если их Википедия обгонит другую по какому-нибудь показателю.
2. Следует уделять больше внимания составлению списков статей. Я считаю, что в списках не должно быть статей, которые есть почти на всех языках CEE. Такие статьи, скорее всего, будут плохо писаться. Даже если локальные организаторы поощряют не только создание, но и доработку статей, участникам почти всегда интереснее писать статьи с нуля. Также нежелательно добавлять в списки статьи, которые есть только на родном языке, особенно если он малораспространённый. Желательно, чтобы помимо родного языка, существовали также статьи на 1-2 относительно распространённых языках (английский, русский, немецкий, французский, испанский). Также статьи на родном языке должны быть как минимум среднего размера (не стабами), ведь многие локальные организаторы определяют минимальный размер статьи. Желательно наличие в статьях списка ссылок/литературы, чтобы участникам было проще искать дополнительную информацию. Желательно чтобы во время конкурса списки статей не менялись. Особенно нежелательно удаление статей в разгар конкурса, когда они уже были кем-то написаны. Такие изменения сбивают планы участников и снижают их мотивацию. Ещё при добавлении статей в списки желательно удостовериться, что они удовлетворяют критериям значимости большинства языковых разделов. Ещё просьба добавлять в списки следующего года побольше статей без версии на русском языке, ведь в этом году в русской Википедии были написаны почти все недостающие статьи (на начало к конкурса было больше 800 отсутствующих статей, а к конце стало меньше 100). Иначе в 2018 году участникам русской Википедии будет не о чем писать.

--Andreykor (talk) 12:56, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Comments by Fraxinus, Croatia

Hello! I'm really enjoying participating in this great project! I hope it will be long-term. We have already achieved many amazing results and I'm sure this project has future and it's truly brilliant idea! I would like to suggest some ideas. I've noticed that the more articles on the list, the more articles are written. Countries with more than 100 suggestions on the list get more written articles. For some countries 100 articles aren't enough so I suggest that we give opportunity to put more than 100 articles, for example 150 or 200 or more for those countries who wish that. Countries that doesn't want to put more than 100 articles on the list can continue to have such number.

I suggest that every year we have some special topic despite usual general list. This topic can be related to women biographies, sport, art, nature, folk tradition or whatever. There are wikis like Russian who have written almost all suggested articles on the list so we should prepare new lists with articles that don't exist on Russian, Polish and such boh wikis. I suggest that we have general press material that could be easily translated and used to promote this great project outside Wikipedia. Thanks!--Fraxinus (talk) 11:26, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

@Fraxinus: Very good ideas, especially the one for the generic press materials. If you do not mind, I will incorporate this as one of the "What we can do better next time" part of the report! :) →Spiritia 17:17, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

@Spiritia: Thanks! Great! You are free to incorporate this is part of that. It will be my pleasure. --Fraxinus (talk) 21:15, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Comments from WMF

Hi Spiritia, Annemarie Buchmann (WMAT), and everyone else that contributed to this report. Congrats on another successful CEE Spring! We are so impressed with the amount and quality of content produced, the level of participation, and your excellent organizing skills. We are happy to approve the report once all the expenses have been finalized. We also have a few comments/questions below.

1. We especially appreciate the high level of on-wiki organization and documentation. Keeping track of all the participants, content and metrics for so many countries/languages is no easy task and all of the links provided in the report provide so much information. The documentation is very helpful in getting a clear understanding of the scope of the project.
2. I personally really enjoyed keeping up with the CEE Spring blog. Are the weekly focus areas something you think you'll continue in the future?
3. The contest had about the same number of participants and articles created as last year. Is this an area that you want to work on increasing in the future or are you focused on other goals -- such as diversification and making it more interesting for new editors, as you mentioned elsewhere in the report.
4. Thank you for including the direct feedback from individual countries. Reading the different experiences only further emphasizes the diversity of participants, their level of participation and challenges/successes.
5. It is really exciting to see the inclusion of the challenge focused on articles about notable women in the CEE region. We agree that it was definitely a success even if you didn't reach the metrics you had set for yourselves. Developing fruitful cooperations with other communities working on addressing the gender gap has farther reaching impact than just new articles! Special thanks to Spiritia for leading this effort!
6. Supporting more focused writing about Turkish topics after the ban shows a real sense of solidarity for your fellow Wikimedians.
7. We want to thank Wikimedia Austria (and Wikimedia Polska before them) for serving as a fiscal sponsor. It is not an easy role for a complicated project like this one. Given the administrative burden of a project like this, we are open to supporting more admin resources in future years.
8. There are so many other great insights in this report and ideas about how to make improvements for next year that we can't comment on all of them. How much continuity is there on the international and local organizing teams from year to year? If not much, how do share lessons learned and other organizational knowledge between folks that have organized the content in the past and newer people?

Thank you again, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 22:50, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Piling on the appreciation & love, here! Spiritia, Annemarie Buchmann (WMAT), wow! What a treat to read this report. Thank you and all who organized this! It's great to read and see about your accomplishments, as well as what you have been learning. Well done, team! KLove (WMF) (talk) 05:31, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the very nice words, User:KLove (WMF) and Alex Wang (WMF)! :-) Please excuse the late reply, we really appreciate your feedback but have been busy with end-of-the-year business in other projects.

I'll try and answer some of your questions:

1. Weekly focus: Yes, we're planning on keeping this feature, but we are probably changing up the way we present certain topics or countries, since there is so much to cover :-) We haven't decided yet on the new format, but we do see the need to change it a bit.
2. Newcomers: Yes, diversifying and gaining new editors is definitely a central aspect for many participating communities. Making it as easy as possible to contribute to the contest seems like the most straightforward way, so we will be focusing on this in the preparation for next year's contest.
3. Continuity in local teams and the international team: I think we've built some very good relations with local organisers in recent years and with the barrier of entry to this contest being really low in terms of time and effort, we expect this to carry on next year too. The mailing list for local organisers and the CEE Facebook Group are and will be great tools in order to communicate with the local organisers. Concerning the international team: for next year there core group will stay the same, with probably 1 or 2 new additions. I think the documentation we've done in this report and in the Lessons Learned session at the CEE meeting will offer enough material for the core group to plan and organise next year's contest. We also run a messenger group on Facebook for the international team to coordinate the efforts, which worked great this year, especially when focusing everyone's attention on a certain issue.

I hope this answers your questions at least a bit, we'll probably be discussing some of these topics in next year's proposal as well :-) Best, Philip Kopetzky (talk) 17:13, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi Philip Kopetzky. Thanks for all your useful comments. It's great to here there will be so much continuity on the international team next year! Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:18, 14 December 2017 (UTC)