Grants:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Polska/2019-2020

Application or grant stage: grant application

Applicant or grantee: grantee

Amount requested: 80,220 PLN

Amount granted: 80,220 PLN

Funding period: July - December 2019

Application created: 30 April 2019

Recommended application date:

Midpoint report due: N/A

Final report due: 30 April 2020

Background

At the beginning of the year, Wikimedia Polska received the results of the organizational audit with the auditor's recommendations. These brought a list of improvements our organization might consider making (in terms of compliance, work organization, documentation, etc.). 2019 will therefore be a year of balancing between maintaining our programmatic activities and adjusting our organization and governance. In addition, we need to understand better what we want to achieve in the future and choose the paths for our growth. So, while we will continue the activities that proved to work and will still put efforts into maintaining community motivation and growth and bridging content gaps, there will be no major revolution in what we do in comparison to the last year (although there will be changes). We will be spending time on looking more into what we do and what is important to us and working on growing our capacity as an organization and our knowledge of how best to use the resources that we have.

Additional information

Programs

CONTENT CREATION AND IMPROVEMENT

One of our crucial areas of activity is bringing high quality content to Wikimedia projects and to support content creation and improvement in different subject areas. We try to gather very diverse content by using different tools. We fuel the creation of Wikipedia articles and Wiktionary entries through contests and online activities, gather documentation of Polish cultural heritage through photographic contests, sponsor the creation of unique audio content, work with ethnographers to enrich content in their knowledge area and build a wide system of GLAM partnerships which bring art, history, and everyday life documentation to Wikimedia Commons.

The (Un)known women of Wikipedia

The existence of the content gender gap is a well-known fact in the Wikimedia world. And it is no different for Polish Wikipedia - only 15.77% of biographies in the project are those of women. While we support the creation of articles about women in many of our other contests (we gave additional prizes or points for female biographies in CEE Spring 2017 and 2018 and in Wikiolympics contest) we want to have an event focused on that sole goal. Bring the knowledge about female scientists, artists, activists, politicians to Wikipedia and work on bridging the gender gap. So we are going to organize a month-long online writing action held in March combined with a social media campaign which would bring the attention to the problem of the lack of female stories in Wikipedia. The project will be held in synergy with Art + Feminism edit-a-thons in Poland (see: Outreach Program).

GOALS

At least 200 new or improved articles
At least 30 participants
At least 20% of all biographies created in Polish language Wikipedia in the time of the event are about women (which is 5% higher than normally)

Writing contests

Writing contests proved to be a good way to motivate users and to encourage them to work on specific gaps and topics. In 2019, we want to continue with the contests that worked well in the past and apply some changes in those that need it.

As always, Wikimedia Polska will participate in the CEE Spring contest and help in gathering more knowledge on Central and Eastern Europe. One change which will be adapted in contrast to last year will be adding some prizes supporting quality (in previous years, we were putting more resources into the quantity of the articles). In addition to organizing the contest itself, Wikimedia Polska is supporting the organization on the international level - we are helping with the statistics and with hosting the CEE Spring blog.

We will also continue the WMPL contest with the longest tradition - the Thematic Weeks. Going on since 2011 the Weeks have brought more than 36,000 articles so far and engaged user contributions in different topics - from art to computer games and from sailing to medicine. This year we decided that, as successful as it is, the contest formula needs some refreshment. Instead of having users compete every week in 2019 we want to invite them to a sort of a "loyalty program" in which the prizes will be given for regular participation. This way we will be able to award not only those who can write a lot of articles in a single week but also those who prefer to contribute less to a single week but more in the long term and by that - reduce the competitive factor and support different types of editing habits.

2019 will also introduce the first ever writing contest in Polish Wiktionary organized to celebrate the project's 15th birthday. Invented and shaped by the Wiktionary users themselves (during the Źródłosłów conference) it will encourage users to fulfil various tasks in Wiktionary - fun, not always easy, and engaging different editing skills. We hope that it will motivate our small but active Wiktionary community but also invite Wikipedians to try and get to know this sister project better.

We will continue to organize the Wikichallenge - a successful contest supporting the creation of articles which have a lot of interwikis but not existing in Polish.

To ensure the growth of high quality articles we want to bring back the Month of Featured Content during which will encourage the creation of high quality articles. Our 2018 experiences with the contest Free Poland - Free Knowledge proved that focusing on vital and demanding articles can bring good results.

GOALS

reach at least 3000 new Wikipedia articles created or improved from writing contests during the year
show at least 8 new Good or Featured Articles or Lists from writing contests
have at least 150 editors participating in writing contests held in 2019

Wiki Loves Monuments

Wikimedia Polska has been a successful organizer of Wiki Loves Monuments (held in Poland as Wiki Lubi Zabytki) for many years and the contest had a strong brand in Poland (both among users and institutions). However, in order to bring more diverse content and to combine what is best about WLM and Wiki Loves Earth (WLE), in 2016 we introduced a new photo contest - WikiVacation. The idea was to gather not only the pictures of Polish monuments but also pictures of Polish nature. The contest has been bringing good results (about 4000 pictures a year) although the vast majority of the collected content were still pictures of monuments. In addition, while pictures of nature were high-quality media, pictures of monuments presented a much higher encyclopedic value. At the same time, WMPL received quite a lot of signals from partners and users that they want WLM back. So this year, we decided to listen and get back to the Wiki Loves Monuments idea, the brand which worked well and to focus on a single type of content. This will also open more opportunities for collaboration with partners who are more willing to work with a monument-related contest than vacation-related name and brand.

GOALS

at least 4000 pictures gathered in the contest
reach at least 200 participants in WLM contest
reach at least 100 new registered users in the contest

GLAM Activities

The GLAM project strategy in 2019 will take two directions. The first direction focuses on sustaining cooperation with long-term GLAM partners - large cultural institutions. We are committed to uploading files to Wikimedia Commons. We particularly care about digital copies of works in the public domain. The second direction focuses on acquiring new partners. Actions taken with them will be directed towards the creation of new articles on Wikipedia in accordance with the areas to which the partners are experts.

Working with institutions

In 2019 we plan to continue our work with Polish GLAM institutions, including:

The National Library of Poland
The National Digital Archives
National Museum in Warsaw
the Regional Institute of Culture in Katowice
Copernicus Sciecence Center
Mazovian Digital Library
Grotowski Institute in Wrocław

GLAM conference in Katowice

Wikimedia Polska, in cooperation with the Regional Cultural Institute in Katowice, plans to organize a GLAM conference on Digital Heritage on May 8, 2019.

The planned conference aims to present the benefits of sharing digitized collections under free licenses to cultural institutions, thereby encouraging cultural institutions to join GLAM projects. The program will present several earlier projects (including the National Museum in Warsaw and the Faras gallery, the Mazovian Digital Library) and activities carried out by the Regional Cultural Institute in Katowice. Representatives of museums, archives, and libraries from the Śląskie Voivodeship will be invited to participate.

Ethnowiki Project

Wikipedia can be an important tool to represent anthropological and ethnological knowledge. In 2019 we wish to undertake activities such as Ethnowiki Tuesdays, during which we train students of ethnology in editing Wikipedia. Activation of anthropologists in the Internet space using the possibilities offered by Wikipedia seems to be one of the most important, and only partially implemented, strategies. Through Wikipedia, we can promote anthropological knowledge in public space to resist all forms of discrimination, exclusion, and hate speech on the cultural, religious, ethnic, gender or ideological backgrounds.

In addition, as a part of the EthnoWiki project in 2019, we will organize the Project Upiór, which aims to describe folk beliefs in Slavic mythology. The successes of Polish fantasy literature and video games that borrow motifs from folk beliefs testify to the huge potential of this material.

GOALS

at least 9000 files from across all GLAM partnerships to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by the end of 2019
at least 50 new Wikipedia articles to be written as the result of GLAM projects
at least 25 new users registered as the result of GLAM projects

Audiobooks for Wikimedia

The classic children's tale - *King Matt the First* will be coming to Commons as an audiobook in 2019.

Continuing our work in providing Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource with valuable audio recordings of important literary works. In 2019 we want to record King Matt the First by Janusz Korczak, one of the absolute classics of Polish children's literature. Read in all Polish schools and loved by all the generations it is a popular book which, when recorded, could be used both in education and for private use. It is the longest book we have recorded so far (approximately 15 hours of recording) but the whole will be divided into small 10-15 minute sections which can be easily used on Wikisource pages and in the media. The recordings will be made by a group of actors from the Profesional Literature Recordings Studio with whom we have successfully collaborated in the past.

GOALS

recording King Matt the First and uploading the files to Wikimedia Commons

Silesian folk song recordings

Celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Juliusz Roger, German folklorist, Wikimedia Polska wants to record the collection of Silesian folk songs gathered by Roger in the 1863 book Pieśni ludu polskiego w Górnym Szląsku. The songs will be performed by traditional silesian singers with the singing manner and dialect of the region. The music will be recorded with the use of traditional instruments of the time. By releasing the songs in the traditional way, we will bring back the knowledge of how they used to be performed (lost because of popular and modern adaptations). Apart from the songs themselves, we will also release the instrumental versions of the works which could be used in schools or at home, as a background to singing.

GOALS

at least 10 traditional songs recorded and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons
all songs used in Polish Wikisource pages

COMMUNITY

It is trivial to say that the community is one of the most (if not the most!) important resources in the Wikimedia world. We rely on editing community to curate content in the projects, we rely on volunteers to help us in our chapter activities. In 2018, more than 40 individual volunteers helped us in our projects in various ways - as trainers, event organizers, technically skilled experts. This kind of engagement is priceless. We want to support this community by creating opportunities for communication and networking, by supporting knowledge exchange, by helping Wikimedians in fulfilling their editing goals and supporting them with tools to do so. We also want to support the kind atmosphere and safety of our events. And we want to work not only with the communities of the largest projects (like Wikipedia) but to continue our support for Wiktionary and Wikisource, helping their communities to grow strong.

While we will be there for our community (in terms of financial, organizational, and logistic support) we also want to appreciate the times when the volunteers helped us - this is why we will be widening our program of acts of appreciation.

Conferences and meet-ups

Meetings are an important way to build networks of users, provide opportunities to learn and connect. And for our organization it is a good way to stay in touch with the needs of our volunteer community. Our postconference surveys show that those meetings bring valuable motivation, make people feel more connected to the community and gain new knowledge which they can use in their wiki-work.

In 2019 we will continue to keep organizing the three large meetings that have been a part of our calendar so far:

Winter Retreat - a practical conference focused on practical learning and discussing projects
Wikimedia Polska Conference - an annual meeting of our members with the General Assembly combined with a community meeting with workshops, discussions and presentations
Źródłosłów - third edition of our Wikisource-Wiktionary meetup.

GOALS

organize 3 major meetups in 2019 - Winter Retreat 2019, Wikimedia Polska Conference 2019, and Źródłosłów 2019
reach at least 150 participants of our meetings and conferences
have at least 20 volunteers engaged in organizing and shaping the meetings
in the post-conference surveys for the participants of our major meetings:
- at least 60% will state that those meetings helped them feel stronger connection with the community
- at least 60% will state that those meetings helped them gain more knowledge about Wikimedia projects
- at least 50% will state that they will use the knowledge gained in their work in the projects
- at least 50% will state that the meeting made them feel more motivated to contribute

Microgrants

Microgrants have been a longtime successful program of Wikimedia Polska. They are aimed at providing our volunteers with resources that will help them enrich Wikimedia projects. We fund sources, travel costs on mini wiki-expeditions, tickets to events, and equipement rental (although we don't buy equipment for users). Applying is straightforward and easy - filling the form takes about 10 minutes and the volunteer committee makes the decision in no more than 72 hours (mostly in 24h). The program connects well with our other activities (for example photo contests). It helps engaged Wikimedians fulfil their editing goals and plans and create meaningful content. It is also a good way to connect with our organization and learn to reach out to us for support. In 2019 we want to maintain the level of microgrant applications we received the year before and the amount of content created thanks to the microgrants.

GOALS

at least 40 microgrant applications in 2019
at least 2000 new pages in Wikimedia projects created with the help of the grants
at least 20 participants involved

Safety

Note: Budgetwise this item belongs to the APG proposal and the bloc Organizational Growth

Our events gather a large group of people. Some of them have worked with each other before, most are connected by wiki-values and wiki-kindness. But wherever there are a lot of people, there is always a risk of potential difficult situations. We want our meetings to be a space of safety. Although as for now we have no knowledge of any situations of abuse, harassment or conflict during our conferences, we want to make sure that we have a team ready to respond to any difficult situations that may arise. And knowledge which will help us to shape our events better.

This is why we want to organize a safety training for staff and volunteers involved in event organization. The training - provided by a professional in psychology and conflict resolution - will give them knowledge about preventing conflicts during events and building a safe and welcoming space and will give them tools for dealing with potential difficult situations. After the training the attendees will have knowledge about facilitating difficult situations, reacting to events of conflict, abuse or crisis. Those tools will help us shape the events in a way that the physical space, scheduling, communication would support creating a healthy and welcoming atmosphere in which everyone feels well and safe.

GOALS

organize a safety training for at least 8 people (staff, volunteers, board members)
80% of participants agree that the training provided useful knowledge
80% of participants agree that they feel that the training made them more ready to handle safety issues during the conferences
publication of a safety guide on our wiki

Appreciation

Last year we started a tradition of thanking our volunteers for their support by giving out personalized thank-you letters which mentioned precisely what we value about their work and what their help exactly gave us. In 2019 we want to keep this tradition alive while also building other ways of appreciation:

A penny for your ship - a project of sending coins from the 2013 Polish ships collectors series to all authors of Featured and Good articles about Polish ships. The idea proposed by a volunteer from Polish Navy Wikiproject aims to appreciate the work and motivate editors to contribute more;
Longtime Wikipedia Medals - we want to honor our long-time contributors and celebrate Wikipedia turning 18 (see: Outreach section) by opening a project inspired by German Wikiläum. Wikipedians will receive special medals for their long-time engagement in Wikipedia.

GOALS

at least 30 volunteers engaged in organizing WMPL projects
at least 50 volunteers receiving some kind of appreciation from WMPL in any of above programs

Scholarship program

Attending international events brings knowledge to our communities and opens opportunities to network and inspire. Volunteers attending international events can see their work in a wider context of the whole movement and gather ideas which can influence their work. And by reporting their attendance they can share what they learned with the rest of the volunteers. This is why in 2019 we want to continue our scholarship program which helps our volunteers reach important international events (including the Wikimedia Hackathon, Wikimania, and the CEE Meeting).

GOALS

open a scholarship program for Wikimania 2019
give at least 2 volunteer scholarships for Wikimania 2019
open a scholarship program for CEE Meeting 2019
give at least 1 volunteer scholarship for CEE Meeting 2019
at least one scholarship given to a volunteer who has never received a WMPL scholarship before

OUTREACH

Happy birthday, Wikipedia!

In 2019 Wikipedia (including its Polish version) turns 18. As in many other countries in Poland 18th birthday is an important date which marks becoming an adult and gaining new rights (Wikipedia will be now old enough to legally vote and drive in Poland!). We want to use this opportunity to talk about Wikipedia, how it changed, how it is a grown-up now (do any adult responsibilities come with that?) and how its role is different. We will hold an event for the community and the media with guests and partners to inspire the conversation and promote the project.

GOALS

organize Wikipedia 18th birthday event in Warsaw
have at least 50 people attend the event

Workshops and edit-a-thons

Every year WMPL receives invitations to organize edit-a-thons and workshops to different institutions (educational, cultural, etc.). Last year we organized events with very diverse entities such as a Faculty of Biology and Poland's Public Diplomacy. The workshops proved to be a great way to inform the public about Wikipedia, bringing new editors and articles. Although we are well aware of that, we have decided that this year due to our limited capacity and engagement in organizational growth we will be mostly concentrating on workshops and edit-a-thons related to our other projects (such as Art+Feminism, #1Lib1Ref or GLAM). We are still open to interesting invitations and initiatives but in a way that is more limited than our standard number of about 15 wiki-trainings a year.

GOALS

organize at least 5 workshops or edit-a-thons in 2019 (not counting those inculded in our other programs)
at least 40 new users registered during the said events
at least 5 volunteers involved in training

1Lib1ref

Working with librarians means working with a group of people who are for many people guides in the world of knowledge and information gathering. Our participation in the #1Lib1Ref campaign and our partnership with the Association of Polish Librarians aims not only to enrich Wikipedia content related to information science and add missing sources to the encyclopedia but also (or mostly) to familiarize librarians and future librarians with Wikipedia. We want them to understand the project, its potential and the things one needs to know when using it. By gaining practical knowledge about Wikipedia the librarians will be able to teach their readers about Wikipedia and maybe even encourage them to contribute. We want to address both librarians and students who train to become ones in the future.

Our #1Lib1Ref campaign will include workshops and edit-a-thons at universities and in libraries.

GOALS

organize at least 3 1Lib1Ref events in Poland
at least 30 people attend 1Lib1Ref events in Poland
at least 30 articles created or improved during 1Lib1Ref events in Poland

Art+Feminism

Wikimedia Polska is involved in the international Art + Feminism campaign. Planned meetings, edit-a-thons, and workshops will be open to everyone who wants to learn how to edit articles in Wikipedia. Activities aimed at supplementing the missing Wikipedia articles about women and women in art have come to Poland for good. Therefore, in 2019, a meeting in Łódź, an edit-a-thon in Wrocław, and a workshop in Krakow will take place as part of the Art + Feminism campaign. All meetings will be organized in cooperation with local groups of social activists.

The edit-a-thon in Wrocław will be organized in cooperation with the Collective of Caryatid - a group of artists and an art historian. The participants will receive artistic zines. Its creation aims at supporting a greater participation of women in the process of creating content on Wikipedia. In Łódź, the meeting will be held under the slogan 'Gender + Non-Binary' at the Museum of Art. The last workshop will be organized on the occasion of the Women's Year meeting with the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, which is associated with the fact of the 100th anniversary of women's admission to the school as students. Its participants will be employees and students of the Academy.

We believe in the idea of taking responsibility for Wikipedia and building it in small steps, stubbornly, constantly training, and also to raise issues that have been neglected.

GOALS

organize at least 3 A+F events in Poland
at least 25 people attending A+F events in Poland
at least 25 articles created or improved during A+F events in Poland

ORGANIZATIONAL GROWTH

Strategic process

The organizational audit from last year brought us important knowledge about who we are. Also, the associated SWOT/TOWS analysis prepared us for the next step - finding out where we want to be in the future and how we want to get there. In 2019 our board will meet for a four-day long strategy workshop during which they will be working (with the same expert who conducted the audit) on creating a strategy for Wikimedia Polska. Apart from the workshop, the process will also use information gathered during the audit (interviews, SWOT/TOWS analysis) and during Wikimedia Polska Conference 2019.

Timeline

June - gathering additional feedback from the community during Wikimedia Polska Conference 2019
11-14th July - strategic workshop
August - strategy publication

Facilitated board/staff meetings

We are a territorially dispersed organization with a lot of important work ahead of us - implementing both the strategy and audit recommendations. In order to do that we need to have a well planned and scheduled workflow and be able to disseminate tasks accordingly with our skills. This is why we decided to have a series of monthly meetings with a professional facilitator who will help us define problems and challenges, plan solutions, and schedule work. They will also help us become a better team with a good understanding of our strengths and the best ways to use them in problem-solving. The series of six monthly meetings will not only bring practical implementation of strategy and audit recommendation and overcoming real challenges but will also help us in increasing the quality of cooperation among the Board and staff. During the meetings, the facilitator will support us, however the team will learn this kind of behavior and will be able to effectively cooperate using what they have learned. The process will help us in dealing with the diversity of the Board and see it more as a potential than as an obstacle and support efficient decision-making process by determining and harmonizing values and goals of all Board members.

The meetings will start in September and take place each month until early January. Precise meeting goals and topics will be determined after the strategy process is over.

The general structure is:

August - defining and contracting the goals of the entire process (therefore the goals for the WMPL Board for the following 6 months), developing detailed solutions and making specific decisions regarding goals;
September-December/early January - 5 meetings, each consisting of implementation overview, developing solutions, and decisions regarding following goals, defining next tasks. During the last meetings - an evaluation of the whole process.

Budget and resource plan

2019 WMPL budget plan