Grants:PEG/Shared Knowledge/Annual plan 2014-15/Report/Interim

Interim report accepted

This interim report for a Project and Event Grant has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:PEG/Shared Knowledge/Annual plan 2014-15.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page.
Please visit Grants:PEG/Shared Knowledge/Annual plan 2014-15/Report to comment on or read the final report.
You are welcome to Email grants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Logo of Shared Knowledge

This is an interim report for the activities and expenditures of Shared Knowledge (Споделено знаење) for the six-month period from September 2014 to the end of January 2015, as requested per agreement in our Annual plan of 2014-15.

General public activities and engagements

Wikipedia Birthday

On January 15 2015, Shared Knowledge organised an event to celebrate Wikipedia's 14th birthday in the Old Town in Skopje, publicised on the social media and on mk.wiki. There was an excellent attendance and we had great fun celebrating the movement. Promo badges and stickers were given to interested guests and a talk was held to encourage participation.

Wikipeda birthday celebration in Skopje
People at the birthday posing with their Wikipedia badges
The Wikipedia cake

You can see the full gallery here.

Attendance of CEE Meeting

Two Wikimedians from Shared Knowledge attended the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2014 in Kiev, Ukraine. They both took an active part in the meeting by holding talks with presentations on the GLAM, photo contests and other topics of importance to the community.

TV and radio appearance

Shared Knowledge has gained some much needed publicity in the national media

President Kiril Simeonovski and Board Chair Snezhana Shtrkovska were interviewed on a radio talk show on the national Macedonian Radio 1 (Radio Skopje), whose topic was Wikipedia and the movement.

President Kiril Simeonovski and Gen. Project and Admin. Manager Bojan Jankuloski appared on "Jadi Burek" on Sitel 3 TV, probably the most popular host and talk show on Macedonian television. The show lasted for over hour and a half and covered various topics on Wikipedia, Wikimedia, the movement, editing and participation, as well as the activities of Shared Knowledge. The show was received very well in the general public. It can be seen here on Youtube.

Wikimedian-in-Residence

To be explained

Project status

Are you complying with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?: Answer YES or NO.; YES

Do you expect this project to be completed by the date specified in the approved grant submission?: There are a number of project. See below for each.

Did you use any of the grant funds?: YES

This report will feature full explanations about 4 projects

Wiki Loves Monuments 2014
Holocaust Memorial
Edit-a-thons
Educational programme

Activities and lessons learned

Activities

Wiki Loves Monuments 2014

Appointing Bojan Jankuloski as the organizer (coordinator) responsible for the project, as per discussion in Annual grant request.
Meetings of the organising team. Several meetings between the organising team and the people hired to work on the project were held during October. The organizer of the project was Bojan Jankuloski (as assigned by WMF), Igor Sazdovski (video tutorial), Daniel Kraljevski (web hosting, web design and maintenance), and Dana Uzhevska (advertisement and publicity). All of these people were compensated for their efforts with the amounts projected in the budget.
Selection of jury members. The jury was constituted by the organisers on suggestions from the community. Its members included: Ognen Teofilovski (professional photographer), Dimitar Tanevski (tourist guide), Zoran Ivanovski (amateur photographer) and Igor Kuzmanovski (amateur photographer). They were introduced with the project at a meeting held in October 2014. They signed contracts for their participation as members of the jury on another meeting. All of them were compensated for their efforts as projected in the project's budget.
Taping a video tutorial. A video tutorial explaining the essentials of the project along with some basic introduction to the uploading process on Wikimedia Commons was made in September. The video file is available on Wikimedia Commons uploaded under the free licence CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Creating official website. The domain for the official website named "www.wikilovesmonuments.mk" was registered July 2014. The web hosting services along with the web design of the page were provided in July and its content was maintained during the competition.
Promotional activities. The project's promotional period started in mid-September, completing the design of the official website and providing all necessary information about it. A fun page with the name "Вики ги сака спомениците" (trans. Wiki Loves Monuments) was created on Facebook, which was later updated with all the news and important information concerning the project, while the project was also promoted through the page "Википедија на македонски јазик" (trans. Macedonian Wikipedia) which counts about 40,000 followers. Besides Facebook, articles announcing the competition were posted on some of the country's most popular media and Internet portals.
Operating period of Wiki Loves Monumets 2014. The competition officially started on 1 October 2014 and lasted until 31 October 2014. This departure from the general start and finish date is due to the fact that Shared Knowledge recieved its funds not long before that and needed time to undergo the necessary procedure in order to enable their use. The main activities during its operating period were monitoring the process of uploading photographs, fixing the problems reported by some of the participants or other people who have observed them and responding on the multiple questions regarding the project. It's worth noting that many of the participants came up with questions about the project and most of the time during the competition was actually spent on replying to them.
Categorisation and sorting The days after the end of the competition were spent in categorisation and sorting of the photographs uploaded by the participants. Categorisation of all uncategorised photographs was necessary to conclude the final number of photographs that had to be later reviewed by the jury, while their sorting helped rate the most prolific contributors in the competition.
Review of the photographs by the jury. The process of reviewing the photographs uploaded during the competition was made on 12 November 2014 and it took around 4 hours until the five best photographs were selected. The time necessary to sort the photographs by their uploaders and rate the most prolific contributors took about two days.
Award ceremony. The Award ceremony for the competition was held on 15 November 2014 in Skopje. It was attended by app. 50 people including the organisers, prize winners, Wikimedians and participants.

Notes: All the images uploaded in the competition can be found in this category. For general navigation, please visit the Main project page on Wikimedia Commons or project's Official website.

Holocaust Memorial

ВикиПроект
„Евреи и јудаизам“

Appointing Snezhana Shtrkovska as the organizer (coordinator) responsible for the project.
Discussed and agreed the nature of the project, planned the content and activity roles.
Researched and acquired written material on several occasions with the help of the Holocaust Memorial and the Jewish Community Library.
Created the Project page.
Assigning topics to participants and helping them with the material gathered.
Writing articles and listing them on the project page.
the Board of Shared Knowledge had a meeting and decided that the project should be prolonged to last for the entire grant year, until September 2014, to achieve quality and quantity.

Participants so far

Articles created so far: 30 (24 + 6 in review process)

Edit-a-thons

Appointed Toni Ristovski as the organizer (coordinator) of the edit-a-thons.
Held meetings to decide on the scope of the edit-a-thons, the nature of the topics, organizational particulars such as place, tim and refreshments, ways of advertising the events etc.
As written in the annual plan, promotional material (stickers and badges) have been acquired that are to be given at the events.
Created lists of articles needed to be covered on the edit-a-thons, out of which the participants picked the ones they wish to write.
A project page has been made, where participants write their names and the articles they have written during the edit-a-thon.

Edit-a-thons held so far

So far, there have been two edit-a-thons, both advertised on wiki and one of them, in a TV show dedicated to Wikipedia. These were:

Земјите на Олимписките игри (Countries at the Olympics)
Светско првенство во ракомет за мажи 2015 (2015 World Men's Handball Championship)

Educational programme

Cvetko Nedelkovski has been appointed as project organiser (coordinator).
Meetings and discussions were held on various occasions to decide on the educational institutions to be approached and the methods of educating and engaging young people.
Meetings held with professors and teachers in 3 educational institutions. It was agreed that they will supervise and instruct their students in their participations in the topical editing sessions, each in his/her own field.
Three institutions visited, where participants in the project have lectured on Wikipedia in general and the university/school projects where students will participate in their institution. Instructions and training were given, where our volunteers explained the meaning of Wikipedia/Wikimedia, free knowledge, the nature of participation and the technical know-how to actual editing.

Two of the three institutions have already started implementing the programme, and students have begun creating and/or editing content.

The three educational institutions involved so far are:

Faculty of Economics at the Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje;
Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje.
Josip Broz - Tito Grammar School in Skopje;

Lessons learned

Wiki Loves Monuments 2014

What worked well?

Most of the activities relating the competition went well without any serious problems. Also, we are very happy that Macedonia ended very high place among other, much more populous countries, with more than 10,828 uploaded pictures.

What didn't work?

Had to postpone WLM to wait for the finance to arrive and to enable its use. We had troubles obtaining a list of the cultural monuments, but this was eventually solved with the help of the Ministry of Culture. Also, some participants did not provide adequate descriptions and did not perform proper categorisation. It is probable that this may be partly due to the fact that the participants were not clear themselves about what exactly they were photographing.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

Wider outreach and promotion of aspects of the competition that did not go well. One would be the explanation of the importance of proper desciptions and taking care to do as much as possible to find out more about what is actually photographed. We have since had access to popular media (TV, radio) and we will use them in future to promote the competition.

Holocaust Memorial

What lessons were learned that may help others succeed in similar projects, or that may change the way you are doing this project?

What went well, or is going well?

The The Holocaust Memorial Center and the Jewish Community in Macedonia were very helpful and co-operative, providing us with the necessary literature on ongoing basis. We have keen participants who are eager to use the material to write articles on Jews and Judaism in Macedonia. We will soon start receiving photos related to the Jews and Judaism in Macedonia.

What did not go well, or is not going well?

We consider the project quite successful so far, and for that reason, we have decided that it is best to prolong it until the end of our grant year (September 2015), since there are a lot of topics that need to be covered, as well as the willingness to cover them. The original dates would have stopped it short and made it less comprehensive and successfull than it can be.

From your answers above, do you plan to change anything you are doing as your project continues?

We are asking for permission to prolong this project, as explained above.

Edit-a-thons

What lessons were learned that may help others succeed in similar projects, or that may change the way you are doing this project?

What went well, or is going well?

Topics were easy to pick and lists were comprehensive, and the articles are, for the most part, well-made and in accordance with the wiki-standards.

What did not go well, or is not going well?

The participants so far have been those that are already in close contact with each other, and we are yet to see an interest to participate in edit-a-thons by the wider editorship. We advertised on mk.wiki itself, wanting to attract only existing (and relatively experienced) editors for the edit-a-thons. This may have been due to the topics (both were on sports), or some inertness of the part of the editing community. We have not established the reasons yet. Project goals have been found to be unrealistic and need reducing to manageable ones.

From your answers above, do you plan to change anything you are doing as your project continues?

We probably have to diversify the topics, including those that are current and attractive for editors. Some other form of attracting participants seems to be wanting, although we have not had specific ideas yet. We also have to lower the project goals, as it is yet not possible to engage 25 participants per edit-a-thon or to create 50 articles on any one of them.

Educational programme

What lessons were learned that may help others succeed in similar projects, or that may change the way you are doing this project?

What went well, or is going well?

We have had very satisfactory response in the Educational programme generally. Institutions are keen to do as much as they can and invariably show interest in knowledge being transferred to the public. We aim to involve more institutions to cover more different areas of knowledge. We are particularly pleased that the Faculty of Economics has been involved in creating articles with us in an on-going co-operation with us since 2012.

What did not go well, or is not going well?

We have had no negative experiences so far. There has been however, reagarding the time needed to negotiate and arrange matters, find suitable slots to engage the students and provide training. Their schedules were taken up with activities, so in two of the three cases, we have had to wait until the new semester/term to begin activities.

From your answers above, do you plan to change anything you are doing as your project continues?

We are planning to extend the work on our Educational programme to several more institutions, and there have been talks about how to approach this.

Outcomes and impact

Outcomes

Wiki Loves Monuments 2014

Provide the original project goal here.

The implementation of Wiki Loves Monuments 2014 in Macedonia has the following goals:

to increase the number of freely licensed photographs from the cultural monuments in Macedonia;
to promote the cultural monuments of Macedonia through the photographs uploaded during the competition;
to improve quality of content on the Wikimedia projects by providing images to the articles;
to support creation of new articles about cultural monuments in Macedonia;
to encourage active participation of photographs in the competition and simulate the creation of similar projects;
to create new articles about cultural monuments in Macedonia.

Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 paragraphs.: All of the goals mentioned above were achieved on various degrees. Some of them were even outachieved. We set out with the goal of at least 3000 uploaded photographs, but achieved a total of 10,828 by the end of the competition. A total of 8,540 of these were accepted and 2,288 rejected. The increased number of freely licenced photographs and the promotion of cultural monuments can be evidenced through the uploaded photographs during the competition, the improved quality of content through the use of these photographs in different articles, the creation of new articles through the activity on the Wikimedia projects.

Holocaust Memorial

Provide the original project goal here.: We had not set out any very specific project goals in in on our Annual plan, but our general aim and intention of the project is described in section "Holocaust Memorial Center for the Jews of Macedonia" under "Project scope and activities". The project was accepted as such, as part of the larger Annual plan.

Do you expect to reach your project's goal? Why or why not?: As said above, the project is going rather well, in our opinion, and we intend to expand it significantly from now until September. This will give us a chance to cover more topics and popularise our activities as widely as possible, esepcially with the help of the Momorial Center and Jewish Community.

Edit-a-thons

Provide the original project goal here.: The goals projected in the Annual plan have subsequently be found to be unrealsitic, as there is no capacity yet to have 25 editors per edit-a-thon (100 for all 4 were planned) and 50 per edit-a-thon (200 for all 4 were planned). This has to be reduced to a more realistic goals of 20 articles and 10 participants per edit-a-thon.
Do you expect to reach your project's goal? Why or why not?: Explained in the above answer.

Educational programme

Provide the original project goal here.: Our goals, as written on the Annual plan page have been to introduce and increase the presence of the Wikimedia projects in the educational institutions, extend the cooperation with them, promote the Wikimedia projects, raise awareness and improve content on wiki by using knowledge and materials available to those institutions.
Do you expect to reach your project's goal? Why or why not?: We expect to reach the project goal and maybe do even better, considering the interest shown by the institutions that we approach.

Progress towards targets and goals

Measures of success

Project metrics

Project metrics	Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Wiki Loves Monuments 2014 3,000 uploaded images 450 images used in Wikimedia projects until end of year no original number of participats set out	10,828 uploaded images 300 images used in Wikimedia projects (so far) 40 participants	The project was supposed to begin on 1 September, but it began on 1 October. This was due to the wait for the transfer of grant funds from WMF to Shared Knowledge, as well the bank procedure necessary to enable the use of the funds.
Holocaust Memorial no goal set for number of articles no goal set for number of participants	30 articles created (24 published + 6 under review) 6 participants involved	We intend to extend this number by PR methods.
Edit-a-thons originally 50 (unrealistic, see above) articles per edit-a-thon originally 25 (unrealistic, see above) participants per edit-a-thon	15 articles created on the first edit-a-thon (Земјите на олимписките игри) and 14 on the second one (Светско првенство во ракомет за мажи 2015) 5 participants on each edit-a-thon	Reasons and proposed solution explained above
Educational programme cooperation with at least 4 educational institutions (for full year) give 10 lectures/workshops (for full year) 500 students reached (for full year) 100 editors involved (for full year) 100 articles (for full year)	3 institutions (so far) 5 given (so far) about 470 students in total reached (so far) about 100 (so far) about 17 so far, but see Explanation #2.	Explanation #1: Lists of participants in Josip Broz - Tito Grammar School are to be updated with participants, as they still have to choose particular topics and be listed on those basis on the project page. The Economics Faculty list need Explanation #2: We expect to reach the goal of 100 or even more in the following period, as activities so far have been largely preparatory and organisational. The large volume of edits is expected to begin in the first half of February.

Provide an overall assessment of how your project is going according to these measures.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2014

As is already the norm with our competitions, we are very satisfied about the project and we seem to have outperformed our goal at least threefold.

Holocaust Memorial

We are satisfied with the project so far and wish to extend it until the end of the annual grant year. This will give us the opportunity to create more articles and make the project even richer and more successful.

Edit-a-thons

The project is not going badly, but realistically. The original goals set-out have subsequently be found to be unrealistic given our capacities.

Educational programme

Project has been very satisfactory so far in the preparatory stages and partly in the writing of articles. The large participation and work starts soon. As it can be seen from above, so far the interest in students has been great and we expect many articles to be created during the following months.

While doing this project, have you decided to track any other measures of success not listed in your grant submission? If so, please list them here.

Seeing our success, our aims are generally higher than the basic goal. We are also aiming to gain more media coverage of the event.

Holocaust Memorial

As a general rule, we try to make the articles as comprehensive as possible, both using materials on the Jews in Macedonia and adding to that, writing on general topics on Judaism and Jewish culture by translating articles at other wikis.

Edit-a-thons

As explained above, we have decided to halve our expectations, in accordance with current capacities.

Educational programme

These measures seem sufficient, but we are working on extending our work with other institutions.

Remember that you will need to report on Global Metrics in your final report.

Impact

Remember that you will need to report on your project's impact on WMF's mission and strategic goals in your final report.

Reporting and documentation of expenditures

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation

Remember that you will need to send receipts or documentation of all project expenses to WMF at the time your final report is submitted.

Receipts and other documentation for our expenditure so far have been sent.

Expenses

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. Review the instructions here here.: These expenses should be listed in the same format as the budget table in your approved submission so that anyone reading this report may be able to easily compare budgeted vs. actual expenses.; Note that variances in the project budget over 10% per expense category must be approved in advance by Project and Event Grants program staff. For all other variances, please provide an explanation in the table below.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2014

Total amount spent on this project so far (with currency): €2,853.60
Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project so far (with currency): €2,853.60
Based on your spending, will you need to request any changes to your budget? If you do, please see the guidelines for requesting changes to your budget.: Answer YES or NO.; NO

Holocaust Memorial

Total amount spent on this project so far (with currency): €0 (none were planned)
Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project so far (with currency): €0
Based on your spending, will you need to request any changes to your budget? If you do, please see the guidelines for requesting changes to your budget.: Answer YES or NO.; N/A

Edit-a-thons

Total amount spent on this project so far (with currency): €360.00
Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project so far (with currency): €360.00
Based on your spending, will you need to request any changes to your budget? If you do, please see the guidelines for requesting changes to your budget.: Answer YES or NO.; NO

Educational programme

Total amount spent on this project so far (with currency): €0
Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project so far (with currency): €0
Based on your spending, will you need to request any changes to your budget? If you do, please see the guidelines for requesting changes to your budget.: Answer YES or NO.; NO

Table of expenses

These are our expenditures for the past six months of the annual grant as they actually were, compared to what was planned in the budget. All scanned evidence has beeen sent to the required e-mail address.

Note: expenses that are planned, but have not been made so far do not feature on this table.

Number	Category	Item description	Unit	Number of units	Actual cost per unit	Actual total	Budgeted total	Currency	Notes
1	Registration fee	registration, notary fees, official stamp of the organization				120.50	120.00	EUR	We came up 0.50 euros
2	Bookkeeper	annual fee for services provided by a certified bookkeeper required by the Macedonian legislature				50.00	200.00	EUR	Actual amount for bookkeeper is higher than we request. We hope that we could cover from expenses which will come in under the budget
3	Equipment					796.50	864.00	EUR	Amount is spent for: camera, tripod, unit 3 In 1 (printer, scanner and copy machine), still have to buy scanner and flip chart, as requested.
4	Monthly salary	monthly gross salary for the employee in the organisation				2,994.00	10,800.00	EUR
5	Mobile phone	The mobile phone line used by the part-time employee during the working hours.				89.4	240.00	EUR	Payment for phone (device) and connecting fee
6	Bank fees	fees charged by the bank to maintain the account and execute transactions				57.65	300.00	EUR
7	Snacks and refreshments	snacks and refreshments served during the internal meetings				120.00	360.00	EUR
8	Wiki Loves Monuments 2014					2,853.60	2,906.00	EUR	We came under the budget. Amount cover: prizes, compensation for the jury members, printed materials, awarded ceremony, organizers (for video, advertising and web design), web hosting, food&Beverages for jury, incidental supplies as paper bags
9	Edit-a-thons					360.00	560.00	EUR	Including: certificates, stickers and badges as well two organized edit-a-thons till now
10	Participation in conferences					1,000	6,130	EUR	Two members of Shared Knowledge were part of CEE Meeting in Kyiv 2014
Total						8,441.65	22,480.00	EUR