Grants:Project/Rapid/Gikü/Assisting the UAIC Translation project/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2017-18 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/Gikü/Assisting the UAIC Translation project.
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

Project logo, a game of words literally meaning "Take it and translate it", with "Ia·și" (Iași) being the name of the city where the university is

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

Goals were met; and in what regards articles written, goals were over-met. We are very happy with how the project went, and this is a success story for the incipient Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova User Group.

First workshop was dedicated to explaining basic principles of Wikipedia, and how to create a simple article using Visual Editor. After this workshop, students translated sections of two very large English articles and submitted them in Word documents to the coordinator, who copy-edited the works and put them together in two very large Romanian articles. This was Phase I.

During the second workshop the Content Translation tool was demonstrated. Students had the job to translate assigned articles using this tool and publish the results on-wiki. The coordinator and the Wikipedians then got involved to iron out the articles. This was Phase II.

A third meeting was planned, to draw conclusions after the project and maybe celebrate, but it never happened.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
3 events conducted	2	both workshops took place as planned. The celebration event was not organized, so there was no need to go to Iași the third time
~45 participant students	46
retention of 2 contributors	1	only one user wrote only one article additional to assigned ones
20 articles of at least C-class quality	54 (2+52) total articles	not all articles were assessed, but there are no stubs
all students participating in both Phase I and Phase II	achieved

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?
- Mrs. Postolea, coordinator of the project from university, was *heavily* involved and *very* receptive. She copy-edited each and every article, thus accomplishing two things at the same time: on one hand, she explained her students the peculiarities of advanced translation, on another hand, she made sure the articles meet Wikipedia's Manual of Style. Mrs. Postolea was an ideal partner for this project.
- I had experience with previous workshops I had had with students, so the workshops themselves went quite good.
- The students, the coordinator, and the assisting Wikimedian were all in a Facebook group, in order to ease online collaboration. The group, however, was mainly being used for announcements.
- This became a good success story in the portfolio of Wikimedians of Romania and Moldova User Group.
What did not work so well?
- There was no user retention. Only one article has been created by a student outside the project: ro:Psalmul 1
- Mrs. Postolea did all the verifying by herself; ideally there should be a way for the local Wikipedia community to help with that.
What would you do differently next time?
- Perhaps shake up the workshops a little bit by adding short gamification sessions. A workshop by itself is boring.

Finances

Grant funds spent

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

December 13, Chișinău-Iași: 35 RON by blablacar
December 13, return: actually I went to Bucharest to meet with fellow Romanian Wikimedians, and I covered the trip myself, but for the sake of current grant, I would've spent 150 MDL on bus to Chișinău, so that's what I'll report
March 26, Chișinău-Iași: 32 RON by blablacar
March 26, Iași-Chișinău: 150 MDL by bus

Detailed breakdown form

Date	Time	City	Vendor	Vendor ID	Amount	Currency	Purchase	Purpose of purchase	Receipt status
13 December 2017	07:00 EET	Chișinău, Moldova	individual blablacar member	Andrei (48 y/o)	35	RON	Car-sharing ride from Chișinău to Iași	Arriving to the University for the first workshop	Receipts not provided by blablacar; online booking confirmation sent to Rapid Grants team by email
13 December 2017	evening EET	Iași, Romania	CFR (Romanian Railway)		150 (estimation)	MDL	As described above, I changed my plans with little time to inform WMF on this page in advance, and used the opportunity to visit Wikimedians in Bucharest. I covered the expenses of the two trips (Iași–Bucharest; Bucharest–Chișinău) by myself, and I would have payed the bus fare should I have decided to return to Chișinău directly from Iași.
26 March 2018	07:00 EET	Chișinău, Moldova	individual blablacar member	Svetlana S	32	RON	Car-sharing ride from Chișinău to Iași	Arriving to the University for the second workshop	Receipts not provided by blablacar; online booking confirmation sent to Rapid Grants team by email
26 March 2018	approx. 17:00 EET	Iași, Romania	GAL Spedition	N/A	150	MDL	Bus ticket Iași–Chișinău	Returning from the University, where the second workshop had taken place	Paper ticket provided, but lost.

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

YES – since I traveled to Iași two times instead of planned three times, the funding for third trip was not used.

I have to return 300 MDL

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.