Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Shared Knowledge/Impact reports/Q2 2016

This is an Impact report for the second quarter (Q2, April through June) on the 2016 APG grant to Shared Knowledge, with special consideration given to the 2016 Annual plan.

For monthly reports about our activities during this quarter, see April Activity report, May Activity report and June Activity report.

You can also see our Financial report for the same period.

Projects edit

Wikimedian-in-Residence

Wikiexpeditions

Geoexpeditions

Educational programme

Lectures about Wikipedia

Edit-a-thons

Editing days

Editing competitions

Photohunts

Wikiexperiments

Achievements edit

All projects (except CEE Spring 2016) run for the duration of the year, with intermissions. The projected target outcomes per project are given for the entire year, and these reflect on the global metrics outlined in the beginning of the grant page. This table will therefore not list the annual targets for each of them, but will focus on the actual achievements for this three-month period.

Name of project Achieved outcome Explanation

Wikimedian-in-Residence

  • 562 individual files uploaded
  • 7 books uploaded
  • 100 articles improved with the provided content and 3 new articles reated and content placed
  • 97.59% of images in category used in articles
See plans for further developments below.

Wikiexpeditions

2 wikiexpeditions (Lakavica & Železnik)
  • 247 images
  • 86 new and 33 improved articles
  • 110 objects and features represented (Železnik to be uploaded)
  • 95.95% of images used Lakavica + Železnik ?

Geoexpeditions

  • 2 geoexpeditions
  • 105 uploaded images
  • 31 different features/landforms
  • 9 new and 20 improved articles.
  • 103 images are used in articles, representing 98.36% of total images made on the expedition.
The two geoexpeditions were "Mokra" and "Šar Mountains". An interesting combination of activities into two units. See below for details.

Educational programme

  • 20 new articles;
  • 16 participants;
  • 1 lecture given (below)
The educational programme work at the high school went at a much reduced pace since students had an effective time of a month and a half before finishing classes earlier to prepare for their end-of-year exams, which happened in the last third of May. However, those willing to participate have achieved much, as the articles are very large and of good quality.

Lectures about Wikipedia

  • 2 lectures given
  • 50 attendees, 4 chapter members
The first lecture was given on the day before the 8-hour long ArchiWiki edit-a-thon, to Architecture students, who were keen to improve the Macedonian Wikipedia with content on domestic and world architects, styles and concepts. Many of them came and edited with great success. The second lecture was given at the Institute of Physics in connection to their Philosophy wikiproject. There are several more lectures underway that we have been arranging during this period, but are to happen at the beginning of the new term.

Edit-a-thons

  • 1 edit-a-thon held (ArchiWiki)
  • 23 participants and 4 experienced community members
  • 41 articles created
  • 8 articles improved
See considerations below.

Editing days

  • 3 editing days held
  • 12 participants in total
  • 21 articles created and 4 improved
Editing days were "UEFA Champions League Finals", "Telescopes" and "Ss Cyril and Methodius Churches".

Editing competitions

  • 2 editing competitons held
  • 8 participants
  • 161 articles and 1 template created
The editing competitions were "Holy Roman Empire" and "CEE Spring 2016".

Photohunts

  • 8 approved and held
  • 712 images uploaded
  • 57,16% of images used in articles
  • 10 participants (6 individual members)
  • 46 articles created
  • 29 articles improved
See considerations below.

Wikiexperiments

  • 25 recorded
  • 12 used in articles
To be fully described soon.

Description of activities and learning edit

Each of the programmes have their objectives (listed on grant page). This section will describe how the activities during the 1st Quarter lead contributed towards their fulfillment.

Education edit

Educational programme

Goals met by this activity

With our educational work so far, we extended the presence of Wikimedia to 11 new high school classes and two university faculties - the Faculty of Economics and the Faculty of Philosophy. In all cases, professors were already Wikipedians in their own right and shared their enthusiasm with their students, stressing the importance of Wikipedia for general education in our language and students' role in this. Content was greatly enriched in the field of Physics and is to be enriched in various economic topics. The newest participants are the Institute of Philosophy of Skopje, and some other educational institutions are underway, in the fields of Mathematics and Medicine.

Some considerations

The programme is going well, except for the fact that the Economics class has yet to start their editing. The reason for this delay is unknown, but must be due to objective reasons. In the past, Prof. Petreski has contributed exceptional content and he will no doubt continue to do so in future. We are also constantly on the lookout for new educational institutions where we want to introduce the Educational Programme. Some of these are the Philology, Medicine and Mathematics departments of the same university, with whom we will soon negotiate.

Lectures about Wikipedia

Goals met by this activity

There were two Wikipedia lectures held during this quarter. One was at tehe taking place in the Institute of Philosophy at the SS. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje. This lecture was attended by 15 students of ancient philosophy, and they received great encouragement by Jasmina Naumoska, Professor of Ancient Philosophy. All this was facilitated with the help of our member, Maksim Nikiforovski, who is a student of Prof. Naumovska.

Some considerations

We have signed a comprehensive agreement of collaboration with the National and University Library of Macedonia, and soon expext the same with the Brothers Miladinovi City Library. These institutions are keen to promote the projects and help is organise and publicise lectures, calling on their memebrship and the general public to join in. We thus expect great improvements to follow. We also agreed on holding two further lectures for the upcoming editing projects with the Mathematical Society of Macedonia and the European Medical Students Association (EMSA).

Community edit

Edit-a-thons

Goals met by this activity

The edit-a-thons aim to increase community spirit in working towards a common goal on a certain topic that has been agreed as being of importance. Quality is improved both by covering missing topics and by extending existing articles.

Some considerations

Due to the density of various projects, this period saw 1 edit-a-thon, albeit a very sucessful one. We have signed a comprehensive agreement of collaboration with the National and University Library of Macedonia, and soon expext the same with the Brothers Miladinovi City Library. These institutions are keen to promote the projects and help is organise and publicise lectures, calling on their memebrship and the general public to join in. We thus expect great improvements to follow. We also agreed on holding two further lectures for the upcoming editing projects with the Mathematical Society of Macedonia and the European Medical Students Association (EMSA).

Editing days

Goals met by this activity

With our editing days, we encouraged Wikipedians to devote more of their free time in writing on relevant topics for the duration of a given day.

Some considerations

This quarter we held 3 editing days on the topic of "UEFA Champions League Finals", Telescopes and "Ss Cyril and Methodius Churches". The number of articles written vary widely from one day to another, depending on the amount of free time of participants during the day. The main issue with editing events is the limited number of participants (about 5 on average). This problem is being solved by opening collaborations with two public libraries that will support us in the outreach for training, lectures and events, mentioned under "Lectures about Wikipedia" above.

Editing competitions

Goals met by this activity

With the editing competitions, we are joining forces to create as many articles as possible within a certain longer time period. A jury then decides the winners, who are awarded. This quarter we organised two competitions: one on the topic of the Holy Roman Empire and the second, was the CEE Spring 2016, which is an interesting competition of a very international character.

Some considerations

We are satisfied with the first editing competition (Holy Roman Empire), but less so with the second one (CEE Spring 2016). Although we had a great response with the latter last year, this year the competition was organised in a different time peruiod, that is, it came in the time while we were running other competitions and editing projects at the same time, and thus giving the lower results.

Wikiexpeditions

Goals met by this activity

Our Wikiexpeditions regularly visit different regions of Macedonia with a daily plan, photographing villages and towns, their houses, landmarks, important places, museums, and monuments. Many images are taken, and most of them are used in articles that are created or greatly improved by the knowledge gained on the expeditions and subsequent material researched to provide substance to the articles about the places or landmarks. The expedition reports, as well as articles on various settlements and their monuments and heritage are then shared on our special Facebook group dedicated to the Wikiexpeditions as well as our mk.wiki group page.

Some considerations

Geoexpeditions

Goals met by this activity

This activity enriches the visual and written content on Wikipedia about places of natural significance that are usually hard or laborious to reach for the general public and are underrepresented online in general. We are exceptionally satisfied with the geoexpeditions so far and we have included many mountaneering and hiking community members towards this goal, using their own initiatives as opportunities to do our expeditionary work.

Some considerations

The two geoexpeditions so far were in fact a combination of various expeditions undertaken in the past 3-year period. With the introduction of this kind of expeditions, the material was united into one thematic unit and presented as such. The two Geoexpeditions were reported for April and June this year: "Mokra" and "Šar Mountains", respectively.

Photohunts

Goals met by this activity

The aim of this project encourage individuals with interest in topics to take initiative in formulating their own expedition plans, thus widening coverage of content, widening the community and promoting innovation within it.

Some considerations

So far, we have approved 8 photohunt requests, and most of them were quite satisfactory, both in concept and in content provided.

GLAM edit

Wikimedian-in-Residence

Goals met by this activity

Our Wikimedian-in-residence at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Art (MANU) has provided many invaluable images of public domain works and old documents. He also provided our community with futher volumes of important reference and scientific material that support gweneral editing, and various project activities such as expeditions by finding material that relates to places and events relevant to them.

Some considerations

Since the signing of the comprehensive collaboration agreement with the National and University Library of Macedonia, we have realised that they are keen to have a Wikimedian-in-Residence in their institution - the most important of its kind in the country, housing a vast collection of resources, being the legal deposit library. We were also officially assigned four librarians that will help the WiR with the reference and digitisation work. We therefore expect to have a second WiR very soon.

Wikiexperiments

Although the experiments were uploaded in late 2015, we have no reported them yet due to project transfers into the new year. As already talked about, it remains to fully describe these experiments and implement them in more articles. All this will be done very soon.

Some considerations

There was great interest in the experiments because of heir quality of presentation. Description of articles was slow due to lack of precise literature to describe it, especially in equivalent English, but this will soon be remedied with professional help, and the videos are to be placed on as many wikis as possible. We then intend to go on recording experiments at the Institute of Chemistry, with the same intention and impact.