Grants:Project/Rapid/AlwaysInRed/WPI Wikipedia Editing Community/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2021-22 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/AlwaysInRed/WPI Wikipedia Editing Community.
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 rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Our goals were:

To recruit new editors across all groups at WPI: students, faculty, and staff. We were able to recruit at least one new editor from each group. Some of these folks returned month to month while others only attended a few times overall.
To increase skills for existing editors by writing independent articles and translating articles to and from English. This goal is harder to track but overall, existing editors were able to further develop their skills. Although most participants focused on editing in English, some people chose to also edit and/or translate in their native language.
To add or improve content especially when it comes to biographies of people who are underrepresented on Wikipedia (women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ folks, people with disabilities, etc.). We reached this goal by always selecting themes for our edit-a-thons that centered biographies of people from underrepresented groups on Wikipedia.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets. Please be sure to review and provide metrics required for Rapid Grants.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Number of events: 8	We hosted 9 edit-a-thon meetups	We were able to host 9 events in the last 16 months (September 2021-December 2022).
Number of participants: 6-10 per event	Total of 85 attendees	We had a total of 85 attendees (including the organizers) across the 9 events. We had an average of more than 9 attendees per meeting. During the 2021/2022 academic year some of these participants joined via zoom, while others attended in person. In Fall 2022, all attendees (other than one) participated live.
Number of new editors: 8 total	28 new editors	We had a total of 28 new editors who registered to Wikipedia because of our events. Some of them because regular contributors at each of our events, while others only attended once or twice.
Number of articles created or improved: 40-50 total	102 Wikipedia articles improved	We edited existing 102 articles across our events in English, Catalan, Spanish, and Italian. We did not create new pages.
Number of repeat participants: 4-6	4-6 repeat participants	We had three participants attend all edit-a-thons. A fourth participant attended all but one, two more participants attended all edit-a-thons in the 2021/2022 academic year. Other participants joined several edit-a-thons but not more than five out of nine.

We created an Outreach Dashboard for each of our events and grouped them all under the Worcester Polytechnic Institute Campaign.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?

New editors found the training useful as a way to get started on editing right away. The use of the Outreach Dashboard made it easy to track impact and provide a curated list of pages to edit based on chosen themes.

What did not work so well?

We struggled with advertising to new groups on campus. We tried several strategies to attract a larger number of students as well as faculty but never managed to have more than 10-15 attendees per event. While we were successful at recruiting librarians to become part of our editing community, no other staff member ever attended an event.

What would you do differently next time?

We could try partnering with interest groups on campus to tailor edit-a-thons around a specific theme that is of interest to them. This could potentially attract more participants.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

Refreshments (food and drink): $585.98
Supplies and raffle prizes: $956.99 (raffle prizes include books on edit-a-thon themes and WPI swag; supplies include: name tags, pens, paper, printing, etc.)

Total: 1,542.97 US$

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

We have $57.03 remaining. We would like to retain the funds to continue supporting our Wikipedia Editing Community spring events. We plan to continue to hold events moving forward.

Remaining funds have been used or will be used for other approved mission-aligned activities. This use has been requested in writing and approved by WMF.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?