Grants:Project/Rapid/Masssly/Project X/Report

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/Masssly/Project X.
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

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

All of the Project's metric goals were exceeded by a wide margin.

Although challenges with regard to venue arrangement and delayed disbursement of funds came up, I'm happy that the project happened, especially for the sole reason that we got the opportunity to introduce new people to Wikipedia; some of whom continue to make edits even after the event. Ultimately, Project X added more than 10,700 words to Wikipedia. The pages created or improved by participants of Project X at the three (3) pilot events have so far received more than 148,000 Article Views.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Three (3) Wikipedia Edit-a-thons.	Three (3) Wikipedia Edit-a-thons sessions were held.	The edit-a-thons happened on June 2, June 30, and August 18.
Sixteen (16) unique participants.	Thirty (30) unique participants.	Forty-five (45) people were engaged in all three (3) events. Seventeen (17) people participated in the first pilot, eighteen (18) in the second, and eleven (11) in the third event.
Five (5) new editors.	Twenty-four (23) new editors.	Three (3) of the new editors made their first ever edit on Wikipedia at the event although their accounts existed prior to Project X. Twenty (20) of the remaining new editors had their accounts created at the events. Participants also included four (4) Old editors and three (3) Veteran editors. See List of Project X participants.
Create or improve Sixteen (16) Wikipedia articles.	Fifteen (15) new Wikipedia articles were created and fifty-one existing (51) articles were improved.	The existing articles improved included two (2) items on Wikidata. Ninety-one (91) Wikimedia Commons uploads were also made. See Dashboard Campaign: Project X - Wikipedia Corruption Editathons.
Five (5) repeat participants (for projects that include a series of events).	Eleven (11) repeat participants.	Seven (7) people participated twice, and four (4) people participate in all the three (3) events.

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?

The theme of the Edit-a-thon, "Corruption", attracted the attention of journalists and activists already working on the subject of anti-corruption. This enabled us the opportunity to introduce Wikipedia to them for the first time, and also as a conduit through which they can reach many more people with their writing.
The event saw a positive turnout from veteran and experienced editors who volunteered their time to assist the project in person. Their presence not only enabled as many new editors the opportunity to have Wikipedia NPOV concepts explained to them face-to-face, but also, new editors had the opportunity to connect and get adopted by the older editors.
A WhatsApp group was created for the event. Group members were participants of all the three programs, although interested persons who didn't make it to any of the events but still want to learn to edit Wikipedia and be engaged are among members of the group. Mentees frequently post questions to the platform, enabling mentors the opportunity to engage them immediately.
Although the event was not publicized outside of Wikimedia mailing list, it drew an unexpected large number of participants than had been planned for. This turned out to be a good thing in many ways.
The event venue did not provide reliable internet connection. This was already covered by our budget and so we set up our routers to to have everyone connected.
Participants received stickers, top contributors and most engaging participants received T-Shirts prizes.
The use of souvenirs was found to be very useful with regards to getting participants to continue to be engaged with Wikipedia post event. Instead of distributing souvenirs to everyone at the event like happens usually, we decide to do things differently. We created a mini-competition among participants. While everyone at the event duly received stickers, we restricted T-Shirts to top contributors only, and we did this by assessing participants edits over a period of one (1) month. To avoid skewing the competition to cater for the fact that different editors may be making different types of edits to Wikipedia, participants could claim prizes for their contributions in the following three (3) categories:
1. Edit count
2. Pages created/edited
3. Bytes Added to Wikipedia

What did not work so well?

The project depended on the generosity of Impact Hub Accra as a sponsor to provide space to be used as venue for all three pilot events. This didn't turn out as smoothly as was expected. There were instances where Project X events had to be rescheduled because the space at the Hub was booked by paying customers. It also occurred that rooms that were booked for Project X had to be relocated to a smaller space on the day of the event. This not only inconvenienced participants but also delayed the starting time of the events.
The project's budget made no provision for Extension sockets. It became a challenge to keep participant's laptops on because of the lack of outlets to plug in their devices.
It was recommended of participants to bring their own laptop, but some came to the workshop without one and were unable to participate during the practical sessions.
Some participants did not respond to confirm that they'd be attending (as was suggested by the mailing list announcement sent out) but showed up at the events anyway. As such it became difficult to cater for all who were present.

What would you do differently next time?

In the circumstance where the project is expected to depend on donated space, provision in the budget would still be made to be able us to pay for the venue to ensure guaranteed accessibility.
The project had an unusually high turnout and at some point, requests to participate was deliberately turned down, in order to avoid spending out of budget. Repeat participants (who weren't collecting awards for their contributions from their previous/earlier participation) were also disallowed to participate again. Although an unsuccessful request was made to increase the budget to accommodate the new numbers, I believe the project could still have taken advantage of the situation to engage interested prospective participants in other ways beside requiring them to be physically present at the events.

Finances

Grant funds spent

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

Item	What was budgeted	What was spent	Explanation
Venue space	0	0	This was had for free.
Projector	0	0	Projector was borrowed from the Wikimedia Ghana Usergroup.
Refreshment	900	1290.81	We managed to keep refreshment, lunch and water at the minimal, despite the fact that ~70% of the amount that was spend on the 46 total participants was originally meant for 18 people. In the end we spent Ghc1165 on lunch and refreshments.
Water	45	125
T-Shirts	100	250	Nine (9) T-sirts were bought, for 3 winners at each event.
Stickers	30	50	More Stickers were also requested. We wanted to make sure all participants received at least 1 sticker.
Transport (To-and-fro): Or fuel allowance for participants coming far from the center of Accra	1080	500	The project was unable to secure an increase in the projected budget in time, and so this item in the budget wasn't completely followed through with the participants. As a result, Ghc447.81 out of Ghc500 that was given to the different participants is not covered by the amount disbursed by WMF.
Transport (To-and-fro): To purchase refreshment, water, internet, and anything else that needs transporting including stickers and T-Shirts	180	482	Original budget didn't envision the costs of travel to collect projector and MTN router from two different locations in Accra. This expense shot the budget up by Ghc302.
Internet 10GB Data	375	485	Because Impact Hub didn't provied reliable internet, we bought data on two different router devices as a supplement.
TOTAL	2710	3157.81

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

No.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

Gallery
Event Website
Mentorship program Group Invite Link: (On WhatsApp)
Wikiproject borne out of the idea of the Project X: WikiProject Corruption
Dashboard metrics for