Grants:PEG/SMarks/Pollard Memorial Library and UMass Lowell Wikipedia Edit-A-Thons/Report
- Report accepted
- To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:PEG/SMarks/Pollard Memorial Library and UMass Lowell Wikipedia Edit-A-Thons.
- You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
- You are welcome to Email grants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.
Project status
[edit]- Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?
Yes
- Is your project completed?
Yes
Activities and lessons learned
[edit]Activities
[edit]- December 7, 2014: Session 1 - Downtown Lowell themed edit-a-thon at Pollard Memorial Library
- January 25, 2015: Session 2 - The Acre neighborhood themed edit-a-thon at Pollard Memorial Library
- February 21 2015: Session 3 - The Highlands neighborhood themed edit-a-thon at UMass Lowell Library
- March 28, 2015: Session 4 - Pawtucketville neighborhood themed edit-a-thon at UMass Lowell Library
Lessons learned
[edit]- What worked well?
- Personal invites and building relationships with people who were interested. Aside from the final session, most of the people who created new account returned for a second session.
- Using Lowell Project page (LibGuide) as a central organizing tool was effective. With 4 events over 4 months, it served as a central organizing point to help train and organize. We could have used it more, but the Wiki event pages got lost and weren’t very helpful for new users.
- Having food gave natural breaks for conversation and learning more about Wikipedia in general.
- Using computer labs, especially at UML, took the pressure off participants to come with their own computers. It provided an enclosed space that made it easy to identify who was participating and who could help.
- Promoting specifically to the Honors College on campus generated more campus participants than our general promotion on campus.
- What didn't work?
- Open invitation to the public didn’t generate much interest. Two curious onlookers came to the first event, but left without editing.
- Promoting to the Boston group only brought people to the first session.
- What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?
- Go to a number of Pollard library events (such as book clubs) and give invitation to edit-a-thon at beginning of event. And then give them an opportunity to ask me questions at end of the event.
- Go to local community groups with a lot of immigrants and bi-lingual members. Recruit them to work on the non-English Wikipedia
- Work with specific professors on campus to develop assignments around the edit-a-thon theme.
- Just before our first session we discovered a social media conference through the local television station. We promoted briefly, but next time we should present at the conference and run an edit-a-thon as part of that event.
- We would do them less frequently. Running one every month was a lot of work. Once we were more comfortable doing them, it may make sense, but it was more work than we realized.
- The length of time was something we should have adjusted. The events felt just a bit too long at 6 hours. We would have been better at about 5 hours.
- Promote as an Open House style event to make clear expectations that people need to spend the entire day at the event.
Learning patterns
[edit]Outcomes and impact
[edit]Outcomes
[edit]- Provide the original project goal here.
- To train 20 people to be Wikipedia editors thereby increasing local participation in Wikipedia and the WikiProject Massachusetts - Lowell.
- Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 short paragraphs.
- We reached almost 75% of our goal to train 20 editors.
- We increased participation in WikiProject Massachusetts - Lowell by getting 14 editors, 10 active editors and 4 new editors, to edit entries in the project.
- All of our new editors were women who were local editors.
- The majority of our participants were women: 9 women and 5 men.
- Most of our local editors returned for a second or third event, continuing the work they started at previous events.
- Three of our participants were students at UMass Lowell.
Progress towards targets and goals
[edit]Project metrics
| Project metrics | Target outcome | Achieved outcome | Explanation |
| Attendance records indicating the number of people who attend the edit-a-thons and come for multiple events: ideally 5-10 people per event. | Yes | We had between 6-8 people at each event. | |
| Statistics on accounts created by those participating in edit-a-thons: ideally 5 new accounts per event. | no | We had a total of 4 new editors attend and 3 created accounts. | |
| Statistics on entries edited or added by participants during edit-a-thons to identify which Lowell, MA project pages were edited or created. | yes | See statistics elsewhere |
Global Metrics
[edit]We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees. In addition to the measures of success for your specific program (in above section), please use the table below to let us know how your project contributed to the Global Metrics. We know that not all projects will have results for each type of metric, so feel free to put "0" where necessary.
- Next to each required metric, list the actual outcome achieved through this project.
- Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome. For example, if you were funded for an edit-a-thon which resulted in 0 new images, your explanation might be "This project focused solely on participation and articles written/improved, the goal was not to collect images."
For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics.
| Metric | Achieved outcome | Explanation |
| 1. # of active editors involved | 10 | |
| 2. # of new editors | 4 | |
| 3. # of individuals involved | 14 | |
| 4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages | 0 | The goal was not to add new media. |
| 5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects | 20 | |
| 6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects | 53866 | Breakdown: 72860 added and -18994 removed |
- Learning question
- Did your work increase the motivation of contributors, and how do you know?
- Discussions during the event indicated that some editors felt "ownership" of articles and would continue editing them after the edit-a-thons. Three of the four new editors created accounts and we can see their contributions. Since the last event one is working on a new article in her sandbox. Our one anonymous user was not interested in creating an account, but attended three of the four sessions.
Impact
[edit]What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic priorities? Option C: How did you increase the reach (readership) of one or more Wikimedia projects?
- We increased participation in the WikiProject: Lowell, WikiProject: Biographies, and one of our participant contributed to the Armenian Wikipedia. For WikiProject: Lowell many entries had improved citations, grammar, demographic data, and expanded content.
Reporting and documentation of expenditures
[edit]This section describes the grant's use of funds
Documentation
[edit]- Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grants at wikimedia dot org, according to the guidelines here? Answer "Yes" or "No".
Yes
Expenses
[edit]- Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. Review the instructions here.
| Number | Category | Item description | Unit | Number of units | Actual cost per unit | Actual total | Budgeted total | Currency | Notes |
| 1 | Food & Beverages | Dunkin Donuts Box O'Joe | 1 | 5 | $15.99 | $79.95 | $103.92 | USD | After first session, only got 1 box |
| 2 | Food & Beverages | Dunkin Donuts Dozen Donuts | 1 box | 5 boxes | $7.49 | $30.47 | $27.96 | USD | First session, got 2 as a result of special deal- came with $6.98 discount. |
| 3 | Food & Beverages | Dunkin Donuts Box 50 munchkins | 1 box | 0 boxes | 0 | 0 | $27.96 | USD | We decided this would give us too much food. |
| 4 | Food & Beverages | Dunkin Donuts bagles and cream cheese | Half dozen | 4 | $13.99 | $54.00 | $48.00 | USD | First session, got discount to $12.03. |
| 5 | Food & Beverages | Large Pizza | 1 | 5 | $6.95 - $14.50 | $59.49 | $180.00 | USD | Took advantage of specials. Includes $2 delivery fee |
| 6 | Food & Beverages | Small Pizza | 1 | 3 | $4.99 - $9.20 | $22.30 | 0 | USD | |
| 7 | Food & Beverages | 1 Medium Tea | 1 | 2 | $1.95 | $3.90 | 0 | USD | allowed person to request specific beverage |
| 8 | Food & Beverages | Breakfast sandwich | 1 | 3 | $3.39 | $10.17 | 0e | USD | allowed person to request specific food |
| 9 | Food & Beverages | Large Fries | 1 | 1 | $4.25 | $4.25 | 0 | USD | allowed person to order specific item |
| 10 | Food & Beverages | Water- 1 per event | 1 case | 5 | $1.50 - $3.35 | $10.53 | $16.00 | USD | your notes here |
| 11 | Food & Beverages | Soda- 2 per event | 1 | 4 | $3.69 - $4.40 | $20.09 | $24.00 | USD | includes bottle deposits- $8 total |
| 12 | Food & Beverages | additional soda | 1 can | 3 | $1.00 | $3.00 | 0 | USD | allowed people to request specific soda |
| 13 | Food & Beverages | Veggie Platters for 8-10 people | 1 platter | 4 | $5.99 | $23.24 | $76.00 | USD | |
| 14 | Food & Beverages | Fruit Platters for 8-10 people | 1 platter | 4 | $2.99 - $17.99 | $39.75 | $18.99 | USD | We incorrectly estimated cost of fruit platters |
| 15 | Food & Beverages | Cookies | 1 box | 3 | $9.50 | $21.99 | $80.00 | USD | Third box cost $2.99 |
| 16 | Supplies | Name Tags | 1 pack | 0 | 0 | 0 | $9.00 | USD | We found a pack in library supplies |
| 17 | Supplies | Cutlery | 1 pack | 2 | $1.69 - $3.99 | $5.52 | $8.00 | USD | 1 box came with 4% discount |
| 18 | Supplies | Plates | 1 pack | 2 | $3.49 | $6.70 | $25.00 | USD | came with 4% discount |
| 19 | Supplies | Napkins | 1 | 1 | $1.59 | $1.53 | $5.00 | USD | came with 4% discount |
- Total project budget (from your approved grant submission)
$649.83
- Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission, this total will be the same as the total project budget if PEG is your only funding source)
$649.83
- Total amount spent on this project
$396.88
- Total amount of Project and Event grant funds spent on this project
- $396.88
- Are there additional sources that funded any part of this project? List them here.
- no
Remaining funds
[edit]- Are there any grant funds remaining?
- Yes
- Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.)
- $253.00
- If funds are remaining they must be returned to WMF, reallocated to mission-aligned activities, or applied to another approved grant.
- Please state here if you intend to return unused funds to WMF, submit a request for reallocation, or submit a new grant request, and then follow the instructions on your approved grant submission.
- return unused funds to WMF