Grants:Project/Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos International Team/2021 coordination/Midpoint

This project is funded by a Project Grant

Report accepted

This midpoint report for a Project Grant approved in FY 2020-21 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/Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos International Team/2021 coordination.
You may still review or add to the discussion about this report on its talk page.
You are welcome to email projectgrantswikimedia.org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Welcome to this project's midpoint report! This report shares progress and learning from the first half of the grant period.

Summary

In a few short sentences or bullet points, give the main highlights of what happened with your project so far.

Global implementation : We have onboarded a total of 58 Wikimedia affiliates communities in 52 countries in the world. 66.67% of the participating communities are newcomers and needed more support to effectively implement the campaign. The campaign is being implemented successfully in many of the new communities.
Global participation: Last year, the campaign recorded a total of 600 global participants across 270 languages Wikipedia. This year, the campaign has recorded more than 600 global participants within three (3) weeks. We surpassed the 2020's total participants in less than three weeks.
Total pages and Wikipedia languages impacted: The campaign has added photos to more than 60,000 Wikipedia articles in 267 Wikipedia language in less than three weeks of the campaign
Social media engagement: The campaign followers on social media has grown by at least 50% in less than three weeks of the campaign.
Branding and outreach: We have concluded the production of the outreach materials (souvenirs) and are ready for shipping to participating communities.
Low implementation barrier: We have effectively reduced the burden of implementing the campaign locally by designing some documentations such as organizer's guide and Best practices in organizing WPWP Campaign in your community to support local organizers. Local organisers can now easily manage the campaign and monitor participation from their community.
Meeting with local organizers: We met with some local organizers of the campaign to understand whether the framework under which the maiden edition of the campaign was organized is suitable and impactful for their community. Many of the communities believed that the current framework is good. Their challenges were highlighted and many of them were addressed before the campaign began on the 1st of July 2021.
Collect and share best practices with local organizing communities: In the first edition, some local organizers were unable to successfully implement the campaign largely because there were no enough resources, materials or documentation to support the implementation being a new campaign. This year, we designed and shared the organizer's guide and Best practices in organizing WPWP Campaign in your community with all local local organizers at least one month before the campaign. Some community signed up late but we did shared this resources with them within 24 hours.
Maintenance work: We mandated local organizers to help with maintenance work in their various local languages and closely monitor the campaign in their community. At least one participants were disqualified from the campaign for disruptive editing resulting from close monitoring of the campaign.
Language or regional ambassador: One of the priority goals of the WPWP Campaign is to grow communities that are underrepresented on Wikimedia projects and we learnt from the 2020's edition that central coordination may not be sufficient to achieving this goal. This year, we appointed to the international team one regional ambassador for West Africa, one ambassador for the Arabic communities and one community liaisons for the underrepresented communities.

Methods and activities

How have you setup your project, and what work has been completed so far?

Describe how you've setup your experiment or pilot, sharing your key focuses so far and including links to any background research or past learning that has guided your decisions. List and describe the activities you've undertaken as part of your project to this point.

The organization of the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos 2021 primarily focus on setting up, supporting and empowering local organizers in implementing the campaign locally in their various communities. Below is how the campaign was set up:

Planning: Planning for the campaign started in late March to allow enough time for communication with organizers, onboarding of new and old local organizers, prizes design, documentation development, and adequate support for local organizers especially communities joining the campaign for the first time.
Setting up of campaign page: The campaign page setup began on the 1st of April 2021 and was finalized on the 10th of June 2021. Although there were a few revisions thereafter. The campaign page includes a section where Wikimedia and non-Wikimedia affiliates interested in organizing the campaign would sign up, a section for members of the international team to allow communication with any member of the team during the campaign. We also added sections for documenting resources to support local organizers, and detailed information on how to participate and were the results would be published at the end of the campaign.
Appointment of international organizing team new members: Six new members were appointed to the campaign international team. They include, a community liaison for underrepresented communities, regional ambassador for West Africa and a regional ambassador for the Arabic community, and Jury coordinators.
Onboarding new and old local organizers: In the maiden edition, a total of 36 affiliate's communities joined the campaign. This year, we invited all the Wikimedia affiliates to joined the campaign and a total of 57 affiliates communities in 51 countries joined the campaign. It comprises 16 old campaign organizers and 41 new campaign organizers. We shared the timeline with these organizers and helped them understand the expectations and vital information and resources needed to successfully organize the campaign in their communities.
Translation: #WPWPCampaign is a multilingual campaign and translation plays an integral role in its implementation. We invited translators to help with translating the campaign page, the central banner texts and all the vital resources needed to successfully implement the campaign. Translations were finalized on the 22nd June 2021.
Central-Notice Banner finalization: We submitted a request for central banner display on the 2nd of June 2021, to allow more time for discussions, comments, endorsement and translation of the central banner notice. The banner was activated on the 1st of July 2021 (on the day the campaign started)
Social media promotion: The campaign hashtag and User ID on all social media were shared with all local organizers at least 2 weeks before the campaign and a week before the campaign the campaign generic banner was shared with the organizers for social media promotion. We contacted the WMF social to helped with promotion using their various social handles. We often share at least two promotion materials on social media per week to promote the campaign and this has resulted in at least 50% increase in the campaign followers on Twitter where the campaign handle is most active.
Communication: We actively handles various queries and questions via email and campaign talk page. While this may sound like a trivial task, a non-negligible amount of time went into communications with local organizers, members of the international team and individual participants.
Outreach and branding: We have produced souvenirs; Custom mugs, T-shirts, keyholders, and visor caps for outreach. These materials are now ready for shipping to participating communities. We plan to begin the shipping of these materials to participating countries on the 29th of July 2021.
Campaign progress report: The campaign was launched on the 1st of July 2021 based on the campaign timeline. As at the time of this report (July 26th 2021), a total of 695 participants have added photos to 105,862 articles in 275 Wikipedia languages. The campaign will close on the 31st of August 2021.

Midpoint outcomes

What are the results of your project or any experiments you’ve worked on so far?

Please discuss anything you have created or changed (organized, built, grown, etc) as a result of your project to date. The #WPWPCampaign is successfully being implemented and very much larger than the maiden edition. Below is our midpoint outcomes:

We have successfully on-boarded a total of 58 campaign organisers, comprising of 16 old and 42 new campaign organizers in 51 countries around the world.
695 people are participating in the campaign as at the time of this report (26th July 2021).
Photos have been added to 105,862 articles in 275 languages Wikipedia
275 languages Wikipedia have been impacted

Finances

Please take some time to update the table in your project finances page. Check that you’ve listed all approved and actual expenditures as instructed. If there are differences between the planned and actual use of funds, please use the column provided there to explain them.

Then, answer the following question here: Have you spent your funds according to plan so far? Please briefly describe any major changes to budget or expenditures that you anticipate for the second half of your project.

Yes, we have spent the funds according to plan.

Expense	Approved amount	Actual funds spent	Difference
Project Management	USD 7,200	USD 3,600	USD 3, 600
Outreach and branding	USD 4,900	USD 4,900	-
Awards, certificate and swags shipping	USD 3,500	-	USD 3,500
International prizes and certificates	USD 1,500	-	USD 1,500
Admin and overhead (Phone calls, Internet, Zoom hosting, bank charges, local transport)	USD 1,000	USD 550	USD 450
Total	USD 18,100	USD 9,050	USD 9,050

Learning

The best thing about trying something new is that you learn from it. We want to follow in your footsteps and learn along with you, and we want to know that you are taking enough risks to learn something really interesting! Please use the below sections to describe what is working and what you plan to change for the second half of your project.

What are the challenges

What challenges or obstacles have you encountered? What will you do differently going forward? Please list these as short bullet points.

There are still challenges with the hashtag tool. We need to find an alternative tool that would not involve adding hashtag to edit-summary. This is a long-term issue that would not be resolved this year but we will continue to engage the WMF growth team and developer to find a lasting solution to this problem.
Many users need tools that will enable them to easily find articles without photos. Once we identify these users, we will introduce them to PetScan - http://petscan.wmflabs.org. This is still a challenge as many users don't know how to use Petscan.

What is working well

What have you found works best so far? To help spread successful strategies so that they can be of use to others in the movement, rather than writing lots of text here, we'd like you to share your finding in the form of a link to a learning pattern.

Learning patterns/How to organize a multilingual campaign

Next steps and opportunities

What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your project? Please list these as short bullet points.

For second half of this project, we will intensify on the promotion of the campaign on social media and continue to engage participants and community members who are interested in learning about the ongoing campaign. We will also be focusing on active monitoring of the campaign across multiple language Wikipedia.

Grantee reflection

We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being an grantee has been so far. What is one thing that surprised you, or that you particularly enjoyed from the past 3 months?

So far, it's been a good experience being a grantee. As a grantee you must understand your project, actively monitor its progress, respond to questions relating to the project (both the design and implementation). One particularly thing I enjoyed as a grantee is the support the project received from the global community