Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2012-2013 round1/Wikimedia Österreich/Progress report form/Q3

Report received

Thank you for submitting a complete report for Q3 on time. We look forward to reading more about your activities. Due to the timing of the FDC funding cycle, it will take staff a little longer than usual to offer feedback about this report and post clarifying questions. We appreciate your patience with this process, and welcome any urgent questions or concerns that you may want to address before our comments are ready. Thank you for your attention to the reporting process during this busy time and best regards, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 02:09, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Comments from FDC Staff on this report

Thank you for this report, and thank you in advance for making the effort to read and respond to our comments and questions. Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 00:40, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Financial summary

• We are reading the actual cumulative expenses in EUR as 138114.1,4 EUR, or 65% of WMAT’s budget of 213,990 EUR. Spending in Q3 decreased to 15% from 35% in Q2, although spending was greater than the 13% spent in Q1. Cumulative spending rates are generally even, while more than 100% of the expected budget has already been spent in the area of Resources and only 34% of the expected budget has been spent for Free content generation. WMAT expects spending in this area to increase greatly in Q4 due to the timing of some program activities. In terms of the greatest amounts of money spent, cumulative spending is focused in staff and community support.

Appreciation

• We appreciate WMAT’s detailed reports on the amount of content generated through its activities, and we appreciate that WMAT is reflecting on its activities through these reports and adjusting its strategies where necessary to become more effective.
• We also are glad to see WMAT including images to show the results of its work, and we encourage WMAT to continue to include images, sounds and videos in future reports.
• Congratulations to WMAT on its grant from Netidee. It is exciting to see the work WMAT is doing supported by others like the Internet Foundation of Austria.
• We appreciate the clear numbers in this report that show WMAT’s growth from quarter to quarter.
• Thanks to WMAT for sharing its results with Wiki Loves Monuments this year, which was successful in some ways. The amount of content contributed is increasing, even if the number of participants is declining. At the same time we are glad to see that WMAT believes this activity is effective at retaining editors, and we look forward to future reflections about this. We appreciate that WMAT is focusing this program as a result of what WMAT is learning.

We would like to learn more

1. Please explain how the events described in the Community Support program, including Wiki Loves Monuments, have contributed to the program objectives of “Expand and diversify the community of editors and volunteers and Community building.”

   In person meetings enable us to adress Wikimedians outside of our usual circle of volunteers who engage in in our on- and offline activities. At Wikimania as well as local meet-ups we have the chance to introduce them to our projects, activities and service portfolio. The possibilities to communicate these things online are somewhat restricted, as there is scepticism in the German-speaking community about too much "chapter propaganda" on Wikipedia, that we have to respect by carefully choosing what is to be communicated there and by finding additional channels. Face-to-face meetings are good alternatives to motivate volunteers to get engaged in our activities and to introduce them to one another in order to simulate cooperation and exchange. During our WLM award ceremony in November, we conducted qualitative interviews with the winners and the results also indicate that there's is often an information deficit, both among newbies and expirienced volunteers. They appreciated not only that they were asked for their opinion but also the information they got during the interview. --CDG (talk) 10:38, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

2. WMAT writes that it is seeing high editor retention from Wiki Loves Monuments. Please share a bit more. Is the high retention based on the results of last year’s contest, or is there already data available from this year’s contest to support that hypothesis?

   Here are some numbers: 57 users participated in two out of three years since 2011, 31 of them in each of the three contests. 53 users from 2012 participated again in the 2013 contest, additionally there are 9 users who participated in 2011 but not in 2012, leading to a total editor retention of 62 in the 2013 contest. As stated in our report, our jury system additionally enables recurring participants to get even more involved in the project: 3 of our 5 most active members of the pre-jury were only participants in 2012's WLM-contest. Overall 18 users participated as members of our pre-jury. Each of them reviewed and rated several hundred or in case of the most active users thousands of pictures. --CDG (talk) 09:47, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

3. Is WMAT measuring the quality or use of those images uploaded as part of Wiki Loves Monuments or WMAT’s other initiatives?

   The quality of the WLM pictures is reviewed during the several stages of the jury process, resulting in the disqualification or even deletion of pictures (e.g. with very bad resolution, faulty information etc.). Photographs that are created outside of competitions can't be sifted in a similar fashin, here we can only track our quality images. We are happy for suggestions on how to improve this situation. As a result of a benchmarking in this regard, we looking into ways to adopt a similar approach as COM:WMFR. We are also following with interest the collaboration of the team of the Wikipedians in European Parliament team and the Program and Evaluation Team, who are currently working on a solution to track and evaluate the pictures taken in the wake of this project. --CDG (talk) 13:26, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

4. We are interested in WMAT’s book grants program. How many volunteers participated in Q3? Does WMAT track content contributed as a result of these grants? How much does the program cost?

   During our last business /accounting year we spent 616,89 EUR on this programm. This comprised book grants for three Wikipedians and another one who receives a quarterly periodical - this makes four in total. We ask the grant holders to report articles that were based on their book grants to us or to mark them on their user page. The only costs that incurred in Q3 where for the periodical, which is still running. --CDG (talk) 09:54, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

5. How has the brochure about the partnership with the National Monuments Office been used?

   It was handed out during the Vienna Science Fair in September (see September report), it's on our website and both the Federal Monuments Office and we ourselves hand it out regularly to visitors and (potential) partners. It was also handed out at the WLM award ceremony and used for the accompanying press activities. In January we will be on an Austrian monuments fair in Salzburg together with the Monuments Office, where the brochure will also be used for press, visitors, interested partners and the like. --CDG (talk) 09:41, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Suggestions for future reports

• In general, we greatly appreciate the level of detail WMAT is providing about its activities, but we would like to see WMAT move toward a more outcomes-focused approach to reporting about the results of its activities. Beyond measuring the number of participants in an event, we would like to see more numbers indicating whether there was any change in editing activity linked to participation. WMAT could also, for instance, look at use and quality of content created.
• We are glad WMAT recognizes the challenges with goal-setting and we encourage WMAT to move toward including clear targets in future plans and reports.