Wikipedia Asian Month/Organise
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 Welcome to the meta portal for Wikipedia Asian Month! Wikipedia Asian Month (WAM) is an annual online event that aims to promote Asian content in Wikipedia. Since 2015, each participating local community runs an online Edit-a-thon every November, which promotes the creation or improvement of the Wikipedia content about Asia except their own country. The participating community is not limited to Asia. The project is run across various language-specific Wikipedias and other project websites of the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikimedia movement), however, some specific actions are held in some countries and Wikimedia communities with local organisers. Wikipedia Asian Month has achieved much over 5 years: over 37,500 high-quality articles have been added in more than 63 language-specific Wikipedias by more than 2,900 Wikipedia editors. | |||||||||
This page explains what local organizers should do to organize Wikipedia Asian Month in their communities / country / area.
Introduction
What is Wikipedia Asian Month ?
Wikipedia Asian Month (WAM) is an annual Wikipedia contest focused on the promotion of Asian content on various language-specific Wikipedias and other Wikimedia communities (Wikimedia movement). The international contest takes place around the world. It is a federative contest which consists of numerous local contests held in different language Wikipedia. A local contest takes place throughout November; it typically lasts for one month but can last for longer. (Example: In consideration of a week-long internet block in Iran, Wikipedia Asian Month 2019 contest has been extended for a week past November.)
As part of the friendship and cultural exchange of the Wikipedia Asian Community, participants who create at least four articles will receive a special Wikipedia Asian Month Postcard from another participating community. Based on local desires, special subcontest can be introduced - for example to give special attention to a theme. Some subcontests might have their own rules, nominations, deadlines etc. If you have any questions after reading this guide, email them to info@asianmonth.wiki (To reduce misunderstanding, please contact us in English).
How to join
The contest is open for anyone interested and willing to help! Regardless of whether you are Asian or not, you are welcome to join! Here are some examples of the things you may do for a start:
- Let other people know about the contest. Your local community can include local Wikipedians / Wikimedians and aligned Open Movement members (enthusiasts from Creative Commons, OpenStreetMap, open data, open educational resources, etc.). Relevant links to provide include this page, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
- Fix pages on Meta-Wiki (improve the text, fix typos, translate...).
- Help us to translate the Site Notice into those languages (as well as other relevant texts).
- Participate in writing press releases: Help on crafting a press release template, adapt it, and send it out to your media contacts. Write blogs.
- Be the local organizer!
Timeline
In 2020, we're dealing with a COVID-19 pandemic that is ravaging countries. Due to the coronavirus crisis, it has been advised that all offline public events funded by Rapid Grants, Project Grants or Annual Plan Grants had to be cancelled or postponed until further notice. It would be quite unfortunate to replace ceremonies with simple sending of certificates and gifts by postal mail to thank winners. Naturally, it impacts the operations of the Wikipedia Asian Month contest, and makes it particularly hard to organize Wikipedia Asian Month.
- November: Local organizers organize their contest.
- November 30: last day of submission permitted.
Make sure that contest dates do not conflict with the fundraising timeline.
Requirements for local teams
Requirements for organizing a local Wikipedia Asian Month in your community are:
- You will to devote enough time throughout a few months to organize the contest.
- You have created a event page (landing page) with the required information.
- You have added your home Wikipedia and a link to Wikipedia "event page".
- Translations have been provided for the CentralNotice banner on "Wikipedia Asian Month/CentralNotice".
- You have called a few Wikipedians to join you as local organizers (up to five).
Event page
When people click on the banner that invites them to participate, they will be sent to a "event page". For this purpose, you have to create a event page on a local level within your language Wikipedia community. Requirements for a event page:
- It contains contest rules, see: "Wikipedia Asian Month 2020/Rules#Contest Rules".
- It contains a link to the Fountain tool website: https://fountain.toolforge.org/.
- To be eligible to win a prize, participants in the contest must submit their contributions through the Fountain tool.
- The event page must also contain information about the prizes (postcards).
You also can use this well-designed sample page, localized this template is required. Good examples of Wikipedia Asian Month event pages: English Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia. For more information about what constitutes a good event page: Wikipedia Asian Month/Documentation/Event page.
CentralNotice banner
To get attention for the contest Wikipedia Asian Month in your community, the international team will create a banner that will be shown to visitors from your community on top of page on Wikipedia during the month. This banner will link to your Wikipedia event page. The banner will be activated only if you meet the requirements for local team, and have provided a link to the event page and translation(s) of the banner text in your local language(s) "here".
We can activate the banner in time if you have provided us with all the translations and information in time. If provided in time, the banner will be activated in your community after the start of the contest in your Wikipedia community. It is the most effective way for the contest to be noticed on-wiki, and that's why we strongly recommend using it. But using CentralNotice banner is not mandatory, your community can object to the banner if they disagree with it being displayed.
Fountain tool
All articles in all languages have to added to the Fountain tool by language sections.
Social media guidelines
It is exciting to support Wikipedia Asian Month and show people what is happening with the competition in your communities! There is an international team for the duration of the contest, but we would love your support wherever possible! Here are some ways you can do just that:
Share our posts
Keep an eye on our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds and share our posts. The more organic reach we get the more we will be rewarded with so every share counts.
Comment on our posts
Comment and tag on the comments of a post. Any words of encouragement or tagging a friend or organization on the comments feed will also help Wikipedia Asian Month to be seen by more people, more often.
Make Your Own Posts
We realise you may want to personalize your call to enter or mention your own events happening locally, but please make sure you note the following:
- Include the hashtag #WikipediaAsianMonth on all your posts on Twitter and Instagram.
- Make sure that the photos you use are big enough, and do not distort or pixelate
- When writing a post about a local event, please include the location or country in your post (this can be done straight away or as a hashtag) – this will cause less confusion when people repost or share your post with their individual accounts
- Be sure to include these bits of info – not necessarily all at once but over a few posts.
- The competition is open to anyone, anywhere but the subject matter Asia must represent something that took place in Asia or relates to Asian culture.
- You can enter as many times as you like
- The competition runs from 1th - 30st November
We advise that the social media presence (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) be reinforced until the end of the contest. Most countries are currently being quite active on social media, but their announcements are often focusing on offline events and announcements of outcome of such meetings. We advise that communication focus on
- display of excellent images, disrupting images, funny images etc or
- communication of figures of participation so far
- or promotion of wikipedia articles reusing contest images (those are examples, be creative)
Funding
Although it is possible to organize a local contest without financial means, having some funding for promotion and prizes would help draw attention to the contest. There are four ways to acquire funding for the contest:
- You can develop partnerships and work with sponsors to receive financial and in-kind donations that would fund your local contest.
- If the contest is organized by a Wikimedia chapter or user group which applies for an annual grant from the Wikimedia Foundation or has other sources of funding, you can include Wikipedia Asian Month in your budget.
- Funding to support Wikipedia Asian Month events is available both from some Wikimedia movement affiliates as well as the Wikimedia Foundation.
- You can apply for a rapid grant from the Wikimedia Foundation for Wikipedia Asian Month in your country specifically. The WMF disburses grants for up to 2,000 USD in this program. See a detailed guide in the section below.
Please note that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wikimedia Foundation is not currently funding any offline public events or activities before September 15, 2020 until further notice. Group travel is also not eligible for funding, and individual travel may be permitted in some circumstances at the discretion of the Program Officer. Meetings should generally be held online rather than in-person. Please take that into account while preparing your application and planning your contest activities overall.
Grants from Wikimedia movement affiliates
See Grants from Wikimedia movement affiliates on Meta-Wiki. Several Wikimedia movement affiliates offer funding for various programs and needs. Please review the page for a list of all available programs as well as the scope and eligibility policies of their grant program. The Community Resources team at the Wikimedia Foundation recommends reviewing funding options from your local affiliate when possible. These grants are usually restricted to their applicable countries.
Rapid Grants
Rapid Grants from the Wikimedia Foundation offer funding between $500-$2000 USD for individuals and organizations for activities and projects that benefits Wikimedia projects or the communities that support them.
What can I request funding for?
Please carefully review the eligibility and funding guidelines before submitting your application.
Who can apply for a rapid grant?
Any individuals or a Wikimedia organizations are welcome to apply for a Rapid Grant. If you are applying as an organization, institution or university with a person or department appointed to manage grants, please review the appropriate disbursement process with them before you apply to ensure your allocated funds will be available to you for your event. However, there are some exceptions:
- Private or for-profit organizations are not eligible for funding.
- Groups and organizations that already work on a current Annual Plan Grant or Simple Annual Plan Grant from the Wikimedia Foundation are not eligible to apply.
- Due to United States sanctions or local restrictions where the funding would be received, organizations and people from certain countries, there may be limitations on funding. Also, check if there are known restrictions for receiving foreign funds in your country. One reference is The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law's (ICNL; Civic Freedom Monitor page). Please note that ICNL's assessments on foreign funding have more of a focus on registered non-profits within that country, but this does not mean that grants to individuals might not be impacted as well.
- The basis for these limitations can be the type of recipient or the types of activities the grant would support. On "Grants:Administration/Countries", you can find a list of countries which have already been funded successfully with no or few issues.
- If your country is not on that list, and you are not sure about your country's eligibility, it is better to check with the Wikimedia Foundation beforehand by emailing grantsadmin@wikimedia.org. See instructions on "Grants:Administration/Countries".
When should I apply?
Proposals are accepted between 1st and 15th day of each month (e.g. September 1st—15th or October 1st—15th); you cannot submit one in the second part of the month. It is better to apply as soon as possible. Applications take at least two weeks to reviewed and approved, and may be longer depending on your eligibility for funding or other clarifications needed during the review process. Additional time may be needed to finalize your grant agreement and transfer funds from the Wikimedia Foundation to your specific bank account.
It is better to apply as soon as possible. Please note that applications take some time to get reviewed and approved, and then there will be some time for the money to be actually transferred to your account. So, if you start contest activities in November (such as running ads throughout the contest), it is highly preferable that you submit an application by September 15th (though submitting it earlier would be a plus, of course).
Important: don't forget to change the status of your application from "Draft" to "Proposed" before the deadline. After the application is submitted, you can still edit it, but you cannot change dates of the activities funded and the budget after the deadline.
What to include in the application
Typical expenses you can apply for include postcards, organizing a events for participants, organizing an award ceremony and/or running an online ad campaign to attract attention to the contest. An important part of your expenses might be prizes to your community's winners.
When it comes to prizes, please note that you cannot use money as a prize. If possible, you can use gift cards for online shops as a substitution, as well as come up with something more original. Examples of other good prizes which are eligible for rapid grants.
- Postcards
- Asian-related books or publications
- Travel vouchers
- Merchandise from the Wikipedia Store
- Large prints / posters of winning photographs
- Calendars of winning photographs from current or past year's competitions
- Customized trophies
It is not advised that you include a lot of T-shirts in your application (as T-shirts is generally not the best souvenir you can offer). Before you include funding certain expenses in your application, consider whether free options are available instead (for example, in some cases, you can arrange to hold an award ceremony in a local library or museum instead of renting a venue). See also "Learning patterns/Contest prizes that motivate" & "Learning patterns/Partnerships for contests".
Other considerations
- Make sure that you have completed all reports for the previous grant application from you or your organization. Problems with a previous Wikimedia Foundation grant, even if it is not connected with Wikipedia Asian Month, may prevent you from being able to receive a grant for Wikipedia Asian Month.
- You can also request free swag from the Wikimedia Foundation which can be distributed as prizes to winners. See the project page. These requests for approved Rapid Grants can include a small number of T-shirts, tote bags, and other merchandise aside from the accessories listed on the Meta-Wiki page; please note that the swag is dependent upon availability, so the Wikimedia Foundation may not be able to fulfill highly specific requests.
- You can use the number of articles, participants, and newcomers as your application's metrics. "Fountain tool" is helpful in measuring them after the contest.
Where to apply
In this section, can will find basic information on applying for rapid grants for local Wikipedia Asian Month contests. Useful guides for rapid grants applications for similar projects and programs: "QuickGuide to Funding for Art+Feminism Events" & Guide to funding Wikidata-themed events.
Use the landing page for Rapid Grants learn about the process of Rapid Grants program application generally. The application page itself is at "Grants:Project/Rapid/Apply". If you have any additional questions on funding or need advice, questions about the program or your application can be directed at rapidgrants@wikimedia.org
Publicity
The press can provide valuable coverage to boost awareness and participation in your contest. Consider talking to the press who covered Wikipedia Asian Month last year. An announcement to the press may be useful when your local contest begins (at the start) and when winners are announced (at the end)!
If you receive great press coverage, let us know in the press mentions!