Grants:PEG/WM HU/Wikipedia Tutorial Videos/Report
Project Goal:
The creation of Wikipedia promotional videos.
Description of actual activities: The goal of the grant was to create Wikipedia tutorial videos, and the amount would have covered equipment cost (e.g. professional mic) on an if-needed bases. (It was recognized early on that hiring an external video company would have cost more, and we had not the necessary industry contacts for such a project.)
While there was interest for some community involvement in creating such videos, initial calls to action and requests for voice actors were not succesful. Therefore, only four videos were created as a proof of concept in August 2010.
The theme of the videos were: how to create a new article, how to create a difflink, how to rename (move) pages, and how to use the book creator tool.
The videos were included in the relevant tutorial and help pages on Wikipedia and advertised in Wikimedia Hungary's blog and social media channels.
Repeated calls to create further videos and offers to teach people the technique of doing them were not successful over the rest of the grant period, thus no further videos were created and no expenses were incurred.
What lessons were learned that could help others succeed in similar projects?
The project was done before the WMF had their Screencasting workshop where they had assembled some know-how: if anyone wants to do such videos, they should check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Screencast
In our experience, CamStudio and Windows Movie Maker, both free (as in beer, the former maybe as in speech) software were adequate for the purpose of creating and editing the videos and Miro Video Converter for converting them to ogv.
What impact did the project have on WMF mission goals of Increased Reach, Increased Quality, Increased Credibility, Increased and Diversified Participation?
It is impossible to tally the number of times the videos were watched as MediaWiki does not provide any guidance on that. The YouTube versions were watched 380 times,
Detail of expenditures: This is the main template for a series of subtemplates:
- Template:Documentation of expenditures/Due
- Template:Documentation of expenditures/Incomplete
- Template:Documentation of expenditures/Not verified
- Template:Documentation of expenditures/Received
- Template:Documentation of expenditures/Not requested
No expenses were incurred.
Amount underspent in US Dollars: $500
Will you be requesting re-allocation of remaining grant funding? No