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Grants:Project/Rapid/Juandev/Editaton Prachatice/Report

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Report accepted
This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2018-19 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/Juandev/Editaton Prachatice.
  • 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

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

Our goals can be divided into two areas. The first area focuses on content creation, the other on building new regional Wiki community. While the first exceeded our expectations as we have created much more content than we expected, the other area was not 100 % successful and we will need more time.

From the set goal of expected 45 improved articles, we had created and/or improved 134 articles, took 1700+ new images (from which 32 % have been used) and created 74 new Wikidata items. Concerning our second goal, building a new wiki community we have to work further. There appears to be an interest, therefore we will support it in the following weeks.

Outcome

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Please report on your original project targets.


Target outcome Achieved outcome Explanation
1 event 1 event
10 participants 10+4 participants Ten people were participating on the site of the Edit-a-thon and four online.
2 new editors 1 new editor There were no local participants, which was expected beforehand. This could be explained by the fact that the institution's employees, who were invited, did not want to lose a free weekend, or there happened to be some bad communication from our side. One editor appeared afterwards.
3 new partners 1-4 new partners The durability of the partnership will be determined after the future collaborations. With one of these institutions we start the common project at the beginning of May.
2 possible commons projects 1-3 possible commons projects One of them, the so-called Wikipedia Club, starts at the beginning of May and it targets local enthusiasts to integrate them into Wikimedia community. The other projects, including the cooperation with the local museum or town hall archive, have to be negotiated further.
45 created or improved articles 134 created or improved articles We believe that what stands behind this outcome is the fact that participants could get in touch with site themselves and that they could work in their own ways. Therefore some of them were editing at the venue, some of them during the evening in their accommodation, others during the period of three-week time, which they were given after the Editaton ended to complete their work. You can read more about this approach in This month in GLAM article Edit-a-thon Prachatice, fewer barriers better results.
(See list of newly created articles.)


Learning

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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?
    • We reached an interest among culture specialists (some of them are Wikipedia editors as well). This appears to us to be a result of a very detailed preparation of article list, standardisation of articles and Wikimedia Commons' category names, and also a result of creating an online database of core magazine Zlatá Stezka, published in hard print only.
    • Other thing that worked well is the design of the event. Instead of a narrow event, where participants come to a library, edit and then go home, we gave them a freedom to work in whatever manner they want. The positive outcome of this approach was proved by the evaluation done by hand twice during the granted project. First data were collected the day after the Editaton itself, second at the end of the granted project itself, three weeks later. We also used questionnaire to recollect anonymous feedback from our participants. It showed us, that while some participants contributed only during the event, others did mostly during a three-week time, which they had previously received to complete their tasks. Some were contributing during both periods. Statistical results show us, that those who were present created much more content, than those who were contributing online. This leads us to the conclusion that on site participation is important (there is more time, more literary resources available, get in touch with the site itself). Furthermore the comparison of on-event editing and post-event editing shows slightly higher amount of articles created during the event, while articles created later on during March tend to be longer and are getting closer to the Quality Article badge. The open approach received also a positive feedback from participants.
    • Last thing to point out is related to the way participants were given food. From previous events organized in the Czech Republic, we found out the lunch time to be troublesome, since if a whole 10 person group visits a restaurant at once, the lunch time could take much longer than previously planned. So instead of 1 hour planned the lunchtime can take around 2,5 hrs. Therefore the solution for this event was to let participants eat whenever they want, just leaving them with some recommendations where to go, which were recollected from the Google Maps user reviews. In the end, the situation was quite different as the participants were willing to eat together. Thus we have chosen a restaurant, where participants were able to choose from a menu in advance and we could place and order 30 minutes before our arrival, resulting in the meals being prepared on time. When the group arrived 30 minutes later, the meals were ready to eat. This resulted in less than one hour lunch time, including a small refreshment break after the lunch.
  • What did not work so well?
    • What did not work so well was the cooperation between both organizers. The problem stood in unfulfilled promises done by one of the organizers. Even Juandev as the main organizer and WMF's grantee, was pointing out, that some things have to be tested in advance and some task were not completed at all, its partner was opposing, telling everything is fine. Finally it wasn't. Some task were even not completed on 50 %, they were done for 20-30 %. As they were crucial to the project, the main organizer have to fix them and spent extra time with them. That's why, he finally decided to overtake the responsibility for those tasks. From the main organizer's point of view, it might be better to not have the same-level organization (horizontal) in the future.
  • What would you do differently next time?
    • Pre-selection (booking) of articles in advance did not work as expected. The data from our questionnaires show, that only 40 % of the participants enjoyed the idea of preselected articles. Those that did not entertain the idea, complained that we did not provide them with enough literary resources (not enough as was promised before) for the topics they have selected. Therefore for the next editaton, this arrangement will be "communicated" as optional.
    • Next time we would also make editatons more simple. Organising a large Editaton (with a high amount of participants) with two goals in mind (the content creation and building a new community) seems to be way too exhausting (This project took both organizers around 500 hours). Therefore for the future we plan to organize smaller repetitive editatons with only one goal. Basically we don't need a partnership before such event. All we need can provide municipal library (resources, space, quality internet connection, low-barrier entrance (meaning that anyone can enter, even without registration) and overall good relations towards the local community) without pre-negotiated cooperation. The goal is to build strong bond with the local community, by the way of providing them something first, rather than willing to have something from them before Edit-a-thon.

Finances

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Grant funds spent

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

  • Transportation: 104 USD
    Transportation of participants to/from the event. Transportation of photographers to the sites. The underspending is due to the fact some participants used their student of senior citizen discounts and some expected participants did not participate at all. Next time, we should take in account the available discounts on transportation, which would allow us to plan the budget more precisely.
  • Accommodation: 398 USD
    Accommodation of ten Editaton participants. The difference from requested resources is caused by the difference of exchange rate.
  • Alimentation: 214 USD
    This includes breakfast in the hotel and one hot meal per participant a day. The difference from what was requested is due to the fact that there were no local participants (as they were expected from before).
  • Other: 87 USD
    This includes printing services (partners logos), tape, one entrance to the local museum for a photographer and proofreading of press releases and reports (Czech and English).
  • Total: 803 USD

Remaining funds

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Do you have any remaining grant funds?


We have 233 USD retaining and we would like to keep them as we are planning to request funding for another activities in the next couple of months.

Remaining funds from this grant have been returned to WMF in the amount of US$236.96 (after conversion from EUR).

Anything else

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Anything else you want to share about your project?

It is sufficient to say here that whole grant process allowed us to have a great, refreshing experience, where we have learned a good amount of new things, which might lead to improvement of our performance in the future. It was the first time to go through Rapid Grants process.

We wrote numerous reports towards the Wikimedia community and press releases towards mass media. All this resulted in the following.

Finally we have to point out that the granted project have ended about month ago, but not our work. We continue to extend articles about the region, negotiate and prepare cooperation with local institutions.

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