Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Shared Knowledge/General report 2015

This is an annual overview of the activities and achievements set out by Shared Knowledge in the extension of the annual plan for 2014-2015, spanning from 1 October 2015 to 31 December 2015. The report uniformly concludes the activities conducted in the extended period of 2015.

Financial overview

You can also see our General financial report for 2015.

Aims set for the 2014-2015 grant in general

Area	Measures of success
General	to increase the quantity and improve the quality of free content; to raise awareness of the Wikimedia movement; to extend cooperation with the Wikimedia Foundation and other affiliated organisations; to extend cooperation with external institutions; to raise awareness about knowledge in general; to release a substantial amount of knowledge held by the Macedonian GLAM institutions; to promote free knowledge in the country's educational system; to increase the presence of the Wikimedia projects in the country's educational system; to encourage participation on Wikimedia projects.
Administration	to implement the assumption of going concern; to promote the work done within the organisation; to establish efficient and effective organisational governance; to establish efficient and effective volunteer management; to establish efficient and effective process of reporting; to reduce the gender gap in the organisation; to extend cooperation with institutions and organisations.
Education	to introduce and increase the presence of the Wikimedia projects in the educational institutions; to extend cooperation with educational institutions; to promote the Wikimedia projects as useful educational tool; to raise awareness about the benefits that the editing offers to the students; to increase and improve the content on different topics; to get access to materials that can be used for referencing.
GLAM	to introduce and increase the presence of the Wikimedia projects in the GLAM institutions; to extend cooperation with GLAM institutions; to document country's natural and cultural heritage; to document the treasure within museums; to get access to valuable units in the museums; to release and digitise materials from the libraries; to introduce QR-pedia in the GLAM sector.
Community	to increase activity on the Wikimedia projects; to improve the quality of content; to reach out to new potential editors.

2015 activities

See: Extension of the annual plan 2014-2015

• Archaeoexpeditions
• Wikiexpeditions
• Editing contests
• Edit-a-thons
• European Science Photo Competition 2015
• Wikiexperiments
• Wikimedian in residence at MANU

2015 achievements

Project metrics

Project metrics	Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Archaeoexpedition 40 images made and uploaded 10 articles created and improved	39 images made and uploaded 3 articles created	Many more articles were created because of the interest in what we found on the expedition.
Wikiexpeditions 400 images made and uploaded 30 articles created and improved	2 expeditions held 218 images made and uploaded 36 articles created and improved	These expeditions are conducted in one day per expeditions, because of weather conditions (cold weather and foggy days) and small size of municipalities. Because of these reasons we had a fewer number of photographs, but with better quality and with data about locations. Also, we continue with great percentage of usage of the photographs, over 70%.
Editing contests at least 8 participants; at least 200 articles created or improved.	7 participants 397 created + 1 improved	There was a great response and effectiveness for this competition due to the interest in how various countries fare at the Olympics.
European Science Photo Competition 2015 at least 10 participants uploading at least one photograph; at least 200 photographs uploaded; at least 70% of total images used in articles in three months.	31 participants 494 images uploaded 2,4% used (see Explanation)	Number of uploaded images exceeded our expectations, therefore target couldn't possibly be met.
Wikiexperiments at least 15 experiments recorded; at least 50 articles in multiple languages enriched with the recorded videos.	25 experiments recorded 30 articles enriched with the recorded videos.	The measure of 50 articles was somewhat high due to the fact that it isn't easy to write descriptions of the experiment in the thumbnails on various language editions on Wikipedia, and requires more time and coordination with local editors.
Wikimedian in residence at MANU 60 images scanned and uploaded per month 60 images used in articles per month 1 educational/editing event organised at MANU	230 in total (avg 76/month) 183 in total (avg. ~60/month) 1 event organised	The event organised was a presentation of the Wikimedia Movement and the role of the Academy in it to the assembled members.

Overall assessment

Archaeoexpedition

The project aims to visit different archaeological sites with professionals, photographing them, writing more and new information in existing articles or writing whole new articles about these locations. This expedition was to covered locations in Čaška Municipality, that took place on 11 October 2015. Three localities were covered: Hereon, a Roman underground tomb, Kale (Stari Grad), Bronze age and Roman era fortification, and Vrčvi - early Christian tombs.

Wikiexpeditions

Two Wikiexpeditions were held: one to the Rankovce region on 7 November 2015 and one to the Gradsko region on 8 December 2015. The expeditions documented villages, geographical areas/regions, churches, monasteries, buildings, schools and etc. throughout the territory of Macedonia and created and improved articles on them.

Editing contests

Olympic Games (Олимписки игри) editing competition was held on 1-30 November 2015, covering countries and sports at the Olympics, individual games, sportspeople etc. We are quite satisfied with the results of this competition and the number of articles created. Awards were given to the best three participants.

Edit-a-thons (no funds requested)

The planned edit-a-thon was not held due to absence of key people that were meant to participate.

European Science Photo Competition 2015

The European Science Photo Competition 2015 was a pan-European science photo competition organized to bring more science to Wikipedia. An international competition makes it possible to reach out to the wider scientific community and make them aware of the possibility to share their findings and passion with wider audiences using visual communication and free environment of Wikimedia.

In Macedonia, as well as in other countries, it took place during November and December 2015. We had significantly more images than we expected, some of which were quite unique. These included anything from science students taking pictures in labs, to nature loves submitting images from their forays. We awarded the four best participants.

Wikiexperiments

This is a project aimed at recording high-quality videos of systematically selected physics experiments for the purposes of illustrating important scientific concepts and phenomena in various sciences. We made 25 high-quality (HD) images with additional sound and light equipment, where Prof. Zajkov at the Institute of Physics demonstrates various laws and phenomena in physics.

Wikimedian in residence at MANU

The library fund of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts includes more than 160,000 units of which 56,310 books and 110,000 volumes of journals from different fields of sciences and arts. Having this in mind, the work of Wikimedian-at-residence is of great importance for making valuable contributions to Wikipedia with accurate, reliable and scientifically sound referenced information and data on various topics. Hence, the work of the Wikimedian-in-Residence at MANU is primarily focused on providing files and materials for creating, editing and improving articles with files uploaded on different scope of scientific topics and themes such as geography, physics, archaeology, ethnology, history, economy, agriculture, medicine, linguistics, biology, chemistry, arts etc.

Our Wikimedian-in Residence at MANU, Mario Šarevski (user Македонец) started working on 1 October 2015 and continues to do so in 2016 with significant success.

Lessons learned

Wikiexpeditions

Wikiexpeditions went smoothly, and except for weather conditions (especially in Gradsko, where we had problems with a fog), we don`t have any problems. These two expeditions were conducted one day per expedition, unlike others in 2015, because these municipalities were small and we had a chance to visit most of the villages in one day. We had a fewer number of photographs per expedition because of our decision to conduct these expeditions only one day per expeditions, but quality is among the best in whole year, and also now we had a photographs with coordinates, that is very important for us.

Editing contests

The competition went smoothly and we covered a great deal of countries. We had a good number of participants, but this can improve by posting about it on the global sitenotice (but still shown only to readers from the locale).

European Science Photo Competition 2015

The project lasted throughout November and December, prolonged from the original dates in order to gather more participation. We are quite satisfied as the organiser informed us that the average user from Macedonia added 15.9 images (three times more than in most of the countries). We could not meet the image use criteria, since we got many more images than expected when setting the goal.

Wikiexperiments

The experiments have become popular and we even featured due to their systematic nature and good quality. One consideration is the proper systematic description of what is going on in each video (rather than merely what phenomenon it illustrates), which needs to be done.

Wikimedian in residence at MANU

Since we've first had a WiR, we concluded that he or she needs to focus on researching and uploading valuable material (and using it in articles), rather than writing content related to it.

Global metrics table

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	25	Various editors on various projects, with some overlap.
2. # of new editors	35	Mainly due to editing competition and science competition
3. # of individuals involved	45	includes project participants and co-ordinators
4a. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	585	includes expeditions, science competition, actors project and WiR
4b. # of images uploaded on Wikimedia Commons	1032	expeditions, science competition and WiR
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	638	all projects; most of the newly created articles are from the editing competition
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	unknown	very hard to estimate