Grants talk:IEG/Editing Maithili Wikipedia/Midpoint

Report accepted

Dear बिप्लब आनन्द,

Thank you for submitting this midpoint report. I'm approving it now, with the following comments:

• It sounds like your project is coming along well. It's great that you've been able to run programs in 10 different schools.
• 200 new user accounts, 20 Active Users and 800 new articles created or modified sounds like very good impact for this project! Congratulations on your work to date! Thanks for including the stats charts to help contextualize your impact.
• In your proposal, you set targets for yourself of "a minimum of 5,000 article created or modified over the entire project duration." I'm wondering what you are thinking about that goal. Do you think you set the target too high? If so, that's definitely okay. 5,000 is a very high target, frankly, and it concerns me that aiming that high might mean sacrificing the quality of content produced. I'd much rather see fewer, high quality contributions than the production of many stubs. However, I would like you to say something about this target in your midpoint report, and if needed, set a new target based on what you've learned so far.
• You also aimed to create at least 100 new articles on Mithila Culture, History, Rituals etc. How is that going?
• You planned to solicit feedback through a form to gather input on each event and glean insights about what went wrong and how to best improve the next event. I'm especially interested to hear more about this. Ideally, I'd like you to link to your survey in your report and provide analysis of what you're learning from participant feedback. If you need help with your survey, we have resources at WMF to help you shape your questions to get meaningful feedback.
• In your Final Report, I'd like to ask you to provide links to some examples of the best work coming out of this project. If there are some new articles or improvements to existing articles that especially show off high quality work, please share them!

I'll be in touch by email to request a video call to discuss your project further and hear how things are going.

Thanks for your contributions to Maithili Wikipedia!

Best regards,

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 13:08, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Notes from 14 July 2016 Hangout with Biplab:

• At the beginning of the project, only 1 active editor, but now there are 10 to 12
• Have reached 4,500 students through this project
• Actively trying to reach goal of 5,000 articles -- it's a stretch, but hoping to meet it
• 10-15 volunteers who have been supporting this education program
• Currently at 25% of the target to create 100 articles on Mithila Culture, History, Rituals -- below target because of some of the challenges the project has faced
• Planned a survey, but didn't end up doing it because (1) only 20% of students have access to internet, so not easy to implement outside school hours, and (2) the school limited their time with the students enough that they decided to focus on the curriculum of the program rather than the survey
• Biplab is patrolling the articles made by new contributors - he says the quality is good. Translating many articles from Nepali and Hindi articles, so able to produce them quickly.
• Hopes to have a follow-up offline workshop with the more enthusiastic students along with the online component editathon.
  • Biplab asked me to participate in the final workshop via Hangout. Super fun!
• An additional component of this project not included in the report was an editathon for women. More than 100 participants attended.
• The project faced challenges because of the blockade, but they were able to overcome.
• Biplab would like to find a room with internet connectivity that could be a gathering spot for Wikipedians to edit together.
  • Brainstormed ideas about how to do this:
    • Talk with schools about using a room in their facilities. This would work, but their internet connection isn't that good. Possibly look into a grantmaking organization that might help fund improvements?