This project is funded by an Individual Engagement Grant

Welcome to this project's final report! This report shares the outcomes, impact and learnings from the Individual Engagement Grantee's 6-month project.

Part 1: The Project

Summary

In a few short sentences, give the main highlights of what happened with your project. Please include a few key outcomes or learnings from your project in bullet points, for readers who may not make it all the way through your report.

We wanted to collect the places where volunteers with a camera have to go to take pictures that Wikipedia needs. So we build this tool: Wiki needs pictures.
- We made a lot of interviews with our local community to understand how to craft the tool.
- We studied many wikis in order to grab data from the higher number we could; we have also studied Wikidata for writing the SPARQL queries that we need.
- We worked on technical issues for putting in a map lot of data.

Methods and activities

What did you do in project?

Please list and describe the activities you've undertaken during this grant. Since you already told us about the setup and first 3 months of activities in your midpoint report, feel free to link back to those sections to give your readers the background, rather than repeating yourself here, and mostly focus on what's happened since your midpoint report in this section.

We've studied Wikidata SPARQL endpoint, as main source for getting the data needed to feed the tool. It was quite funny because of the good documentation and the presence of many examples. A little more tricky was to make the endpoint reply every time, many errors (especially runtime exceptions) occurred.
We've asked to many people about the implementation of our idea. Here a constantly updated list of it-N users contacted for feeedback and for the presentation of tools for image management.
We've fought against having many data and a fast application. We haven't found a final solution considering the dimension of the effort for the tool but a good compromise.
We've written and published the code as free software on Github.
We've used tool labs services for making the tool running.

Outcomes and impact

Outcomes

What are the results of your project?

Please discuss the outcomes of your experiments or pilot, telling us what you created or changed (organized, built, grew, etc) as a result of your project.

We create a tool that was missing. We feel it before the grant, we are even more convinced now after some similar feedbacks. Try it!
The change we made is giving the possibility to everyone to know where to go for taking the photos that Wikipedia wants most.

Progress towards stated goals

Planned measure of success (include numeric target, if applicable)	Actual result	Explanation
Number of users	It can't be estimated yet	This statistic will be significant after a while, maybe an year. However we got more beta tester than we expected.
Number of alert removed from the map	It can't be estimated yet	This statistic will be significant after a while, maybe an year.
A databases of missing image requested for each community that haven't one	Reached!	Almost every country in the world has at least some point in the map, so every wiki community now has it's "own" local system of alerting.

Think back to your overall project goals. Do you feel you achieved your goals? Why or why not?

Yes. We know that the first two statistics would have been significant only after a while. We were quite surprised for the feedback from other users. Finally we have reached our most important goal that was to give a new tool to the community.

Global Metrics

Being a grant for the developing of a tool is difficult to apply these metrics now. Would be better to see what will occurs in the next months. However let's have some considerations.

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. Number of active editors involved	At least 30	So far users have been informed on by one, but we plan to contact some user groups and show the final tool at village pumps and meeting de visu. In any case we collected feedback from at least 30-35 users. When the map of the tool disappeared during the month of July 2016, three users we never contacted asked for information; that's a proof that the tool was widely used already in its draft form.
2. Number of new editors	0 directly	The tool is for users with a background of Wikimedia project. Its main goal is to increase their efficiency not their number. But in the tests it helped to introduce itwikipedia users to wikidata. Many of local-oriented users on itwikipedia edit on data "indirectly", but a tool that uses wikidata force them to know more about this platform, thus creating "new users" there.
3. Number of individuals involved	50-200	We have spread the beta tool among many channels during the grant. Not everyone gives a feedback but many had a look to the tool individually.
4. Number of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	Expected high	This is the main focus of the tool.
5. Number of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	Expected very few new pages but many little improvements	The focus of the tool is not create new textual contents but media. A side improvement could be the fix of wrong coordinates.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	3MB for each media uploaded	This number is strict correlated to the number of future new media.

Learning question: Did your work increase the motivation of contributors, and how do you know?

We have seen that this tool is a way to connect online and "offline" contributors because both categories find a scope for it. This leads to new actions: more pictures and more "gardening" work to have better coordinates. Our interviews confirm this pattern.

Indicators of impact

Do you see any indication that your project has had impact towards Wikimedia's strategic priorities? We've provided 3 options below for the strategic priorities that IEG projects are mostly likely to impact. Select one or more that you think are relevant and share any measures of success you have that point to this impact. You might also consider any other kinds of impact you had not anticipated when you planned this project.

Option A: How did you increase participation in one or more Wikimedia projects?

Option B: How did you improve quality on one or more Wikimedia projects?

Option C: How did you increase the reach (readership) of one or more Wikimedia projects?

The interest is very clear. With it-N users the campaign about image tools was a success. The density of missing images in Italy (if you produce a query on wikidata) is low. As an example, consider the last WMI meeting in Cascina (Tuscany) on the 12th of August w:it:Wikipedia:Raduni/WikiGita_all'abbazia_di_San_Savino where we took pictures of a lot of missing parish churches (we can't upload all the details because of the Urbani law, but it's an example of extensive use). The tool will be presented to every future gatherings.

Even if the tool is not complete yet, I left a message on svWiki discussing the P18/image search issue in August and at least 2-3 users started a very intense clean up of their area. This produced a sharp reduction of missing P18 in Sweden. I can't make a retroactive analysis, but just take a look at this user and this one from svwiki. And also their upload in their area, see here. It should give you an idea of the possible impact of the message (and the tool)

Now as soon as the tool is more complete we will make the same test on cswiki and elwiki, this time I will measure the impact of the village pump discussion (including the presentation of the tool) in a more objective way. With Sweden-svWiki I was just attempting a first general presentation outside the it-N communities. With the other two selected "local" communities I have robust local contacts, it should be even more focused. In the meantime, wikishootme was updated to a new version so now we have to rethink the introductory strategy for newbies.

In general people like to discuss the topic, they like the idea. They like what they can't do even when the tool was not fully operational, because there is a lot to do and they start to work immediately.

Project resources

The tool :-)
GitHub repository with all the code of the tool.
commons:File:Tool_for_images_management_wikidata_Italy.jpg A study of the reaction of local-oriented itWikipedia, itWikivoyage and commons users to image tools such as Wikishootme, WDFIST and Wiki needs pictures.
Readme page of the tool, with all the instruction to install and run it.
Issues page of the tool, where others ask for enhancements or let us know there is a bug.
Tweet about the number of buildings present on Wikidata with coordinates but without images or commons category.
Tweet about a too big dataset (all places without images) that can't be extracted from Wikidata via SPARQL by now.
All community notifications

Learning

The best thing about trying something new is that you learn from it. We want to follow in your footsteps and learn along with you, and we want to know that you took enough risks in your project to have learned something really interesting! Think about what recommendations you have for others who may follow in your footsteps, and use the below sections to describe what worked and what didn’t.

What worked well

What did you try that was successful and you'd recommend others do? To help spread successful strategies so that they can be of use to others in the movement, rather than writing lots of text here, we'd like you to share your finding in the form of a link to a learning pattern.

Grants:Learning patterns/Features requests for a software

What didn’t work

What did you try that you learned didn't work? What would you think about doing differently in the future? Please list these as short bullet points.

Showing lots of data in a map, with no necessary start point and with the needs of filters is still critical. So if it's not possible to have all these feature present at the same time a compromise is needed. An approach is to show details only with high zoom level, so the data flow is lower.
Wikimedians understand the need of images, and the tool helped, but some of them stuck at the last point: "I have the photo and now?". The last step, that comes outside the tool is tricky for all the non expert users because needs some skills: loading image to commons, well categorize the image in commons, use it in the right place, remove the alerts and/or add the property on Wikidata. There are some guides, there are many tools that can helps you in some of those steps but the whole picture often is missing.

Other recommendations

If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please list them here.

During this 6 months we had the possibility to explore what to do and to make it in practice. But the tool doesn't ends when the grant ends but on the contrary more feature requests and more issues start to come after this period. Moreover a tool needs maintenance: both basic (updates) both critical (API changes, labs migrations, etc.). So the format of the grant is great to boost the development but a little missing in the long term where comes up the weakness of voluntary projects. A grant renewal could be a solution in the mid term, mainly for new features and bug fixing, but probably is not a complete solution for the maintenance.

Next steps and opportunities

Are there opportunities for future growth of this project, or new areas you have uncovered in the course of this grant that could be fruitful for more exploration (either by yourself, or others)? What ideas or suggestions do you have for future projects based on the work you’ve completed? Please list these as short bullet points.

Think your project needs renewed funding for another 6 months?

We list here some opportunities we find during the grant, mainly interacting with the community:

adding new wanted features, asked on github and on tool's talk page;
the tool can be used for specific challanges;
discussing with local communities the introduction of specific pinpoint types. For example svwiki users would like to have "lake" as a specific marker.

Part 2: The Grant

Finances

Actual spending

Expense	Approved amount	Actual funds spent	Difference
Analyze how each community face the problem and survey of all other existing image tools to better interface with them. Also interact with users explaining available tools.	45 hours @ 450€	45 hours @ 450€
Software development costs (including architectural part, coding and documentation)	200 hours @ 2000€	200 hours @ 2000€
Write the menu guide and translate it in Italian, German, French, Spanish, Esperanto, Swedish, Dutch	5 hours @ 50€	5 hours @ 50€	English, Dutch, German, French, Modern Greek, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese and Thai are available.
Total	2500€	2500€

Remaining funds

Do you have any unspent funds from the grant?

Please answer yes or no. If yes, list the amount you did not use and explain why.

No.

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grantsadminwikimedia.org, according to the guidelines here?

Yes, as we planned all expenses regard man work hours.

Confirmation of project status

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?

Please answer yes or no.

Yes.

Is your project completed?

Please answer yes or no.

Yes.

Grantee reflection

We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on what this project has meant to you, or how the experience of being an IEGrantee has gone overall. Is there something that surprised you, or that you particularly enjoyed, or that you’ll do differently going forward as a result of the IEG experience? Please share it here!

What surprise me more is the quantity of interactions that this project made. Before starting I thought that the most change would have been the appearance of a new tool. Instead this was "only" an aggregation point for many people that want to contribute more and better to Wikipedia and this have generated lots of idea, lots of actions. --AlessioMela (talk) 13:45, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
I think some people don't get very well that lack of pictures is not a matter of a simple "tool" but of users cooperation. The good think is that w build the tool with the users, their needs. So even if it can be improved, it is their tool as well. The tool was a catalysts for discussion and diffusion of competences, and that was its main value. A value that is difficult to quantify, but it is there. I do hope this is on the main lesson the reader could get form this report. --Alexmar983 (talk) 00:06, 13 September 2016 (UTC)