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Grants:Project/Rapid/Rossella Vignola (OBC)/Wiki4MediaFreedom Writing & Translation Contest/Report

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Report accepted
This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2017-18 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.


Goals

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

We are quite satisfied with these first two editions of the Wiki4MediaFreedom Writing & Translation Contest. The events run in May-June 2018 and October-November 2018. The first was launched on May 3rd that celebrates the World Press Freedom Day.

As a result of the Contests, 53 media freedom-related articles were translated into other languages moving from the existing English version, the great majority of them created from scratch in the target languages. The Contests were true transnational and multilingual events: participants worked in Italian, English, Croatian, Serbian, and Spanish languages. The Contests achieved the planned objectives since they:

  • resulted in new quality content in several languages;
  • engaged editors from different countries, including new editors;
  • different linguistic communities had the chance to reflect on media freedom-related issues.

All the articles translated and improved are available in the Contests' Meta page (first edition here; second edition here).

Outcome

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Please report on your original project targets.


Target outcome Achieved outcome Explanation
100 participants 17 (I edition: 9, II edition: 8) The number of participants was the major problem of the events. Unfortunately, despite our effort in dissemination and promotion, we could not reach out to the expected number of participants. One of the reason for this is that the contests overlapped with other already planned contests that are relevant for our linguistic communities (i.e. in Central and Eastern Europe countries), such as the the CEE Spring 2018 Contest. Another reason might be linked to the fact the articles proposed for translations were quite long, very specific in terms of topics, and a bit complicated.
100 articles created, improved and translated 53 (I edition: 20, II edition: 33) We performed better in terms of content produced. Participants that decided to contribute worked on several articles. It should also be noticed that some of the articles translated were long articles (example: Lista di giornalisti uccisi in Europa).


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?

The process of checking the articles created / translated worked well. In doing this, we relied on both a thematic expertise (in the field of media, media freedom) and on expert wikipedians that checked the quality of articles created.

We are particularly proud of the fact that, thanks to the Contests, new quality articles were created on journalists that were recently killed in Europe. For instance, participants translated into Italian the article (where it was non-existent) on the killing of investigative Slovak journalist Ján Kuciak, or into Croatian the article on journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia killed in Malta in 2018 while investigating on issues related to organised crime, money laundering schemes and corruption.

  • What did not work so well?
    • In planning the events, and deciding the dates, we should have put more attention on the Wikipedia Contests that are traditionally organised within some communities, for instance, in our case the CEE Spring, in order to not overlap with them. Also, an idea can be to choose easier articles, as with did for the second edition of the contest that included articles on journalists killed because of their work. Such articles are maybe better in arousing people’s attention and are easier to be worked on compared with articles dealing with media systems and other very specific media topics.
  • What would you do differently next time?
    • Better plan the dates of the events in order not to overlap with other similar initiatives;
    • Find better ways for reaching out to the linguistic communities involved in the contest;
    • We have also organised 2 Wiki4MediaFreedom edit-a-thons (one in Madrid and one in Berlin): an idea can be to launch the Contest after the edit-a-thon so that better involve those communities in the online events.

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.

In total, we spent EUR 320,00 in Amazon vouchers for the Winners.

1st edition

Translations

Please, note that the Prize to Mudroslav was not bought since he/she has never replied.

Improvements

The other prizes for the category "Improvements" have not been assigned since we did not have enough improved articles to award. In the second edition we thus decided not to have two categories (i.e. Translations and Improvements) and to assign "special prizes" (for instance for translation in minor languages).

2nd edition

Speciali prizes have been assigned to Jtorquy (EUR 20) and Frullatore Tostapane (EUR 30).

Remaining funds

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Do you have any remaining grant funds? Yes, we have EUR 80,00 as remaining funds (EUR 400-320).

The funds remaining from this grant in the amount of 80 EUR were deducted from another grant payment for Grants:Project/Rapid/Niccolò_Caranti_(OBC)/Wiki4MediaFreedom_edit-a-thons_-_II_and_III_editions.


Anything else

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Anything else you want to share about your project?

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