Grants talk:PEG/WM AM/2014/Report

Hello Lilitik22 and David Saroyan. Thank you so much for this detailed and thoughtful report. We apologize for reviewing the report so late and appreciate your patience. We are continuously impressed with WMAM's project organizers, program design, program leaders, and your ability to build on your successes and learn from your challenges. Your reports are a real joy to read. They not only help us understand your activities and community better, but they also provide a lot of information we can share with other communities around the world.

The report is approved. We do have a number of comments and questions below and would appreciate your response.

It’s great to hear that you were finally able to get your scanner and put it to good use right away -- scanning books needed by many of your programs and requested by your volunteers.
It would be helpful for us to better understand your process for establishing wikiclubs in new cities/villages. This is a model that has been successful for WMAM and we wonder if it is something that can be adapted in other places. Can you briefly explain how you go about selecting where to organize new wikiclubs, how you do outreach, and how the clubs are managed?
Your education program has continued to grow! We’re especially excited about the new training element in 2015. How did WMAM support the 12 teachers and journalists after they returned home to Lebanon? We can imagine that even after a week of training, they still needed a lot of support in order to be able to teach others in their communities.
In your interim report, you wrote that developing GLAM partnerships had been difficult so it’s great to read that there has been some progress in this area. In terms of the work with the Armenian Medical Museum, is this a partnership you pursued because editors expressed a specific interest in the content or did you establish the partnership first and then reach out to find editors that would want to work on related articles?
It’s nice to see that you are maximizing resources by planning several important events in parallel -- the national wikiconference, teacher training seminar, and office opening. In regards to the seminar in Aghveran for teachers, have you been able to follow-up with their activity?
You had a lot of impressive government officials attend the office opening, which is a testament to WMAM’s successes! You listed several important issues that were discussed during the meetings, including the idea of integrating Wikipedia editing into the national school curriculum, possible changes to copyright laws, and wider cooperation with GLAM partnerships. Have these discussions developed over the last six months?

Thank you again for all your work and I am sorry it has taken so long to review. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 04:43, 12 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

Dear Alex Wang (WMF) thanks for your comments and nice words.

Yes, the scanner is finally working and thanks to it our Wikisource project seems to grow as well. We scan and proofread free licensed books in Armenian Wikisource.
To establish a WikiClub first we need to have several local active editors, one of whom would later become the coordinator of the WikiClub and manage its activity. The next step is the negotiation with the Village Council in order to have free room space for the club activity. If these two conditions are met we find a founder sponsor who provides laptops, Internet connection, and other required stuff. The order of these procedures might slightly differ, they could also be done in parallel (e.g. to find a sponsor and negotiate with the Village Council). However, the essential requirement is to have active Wikipedia Education program participants in that residence and a coordinator who would manage the club. The WikiClub is also managed by WM AM itself, we track their activity, have regular visits in order to understand the WikiClub needs and support its activity. We also do monthly activity metrics to assess the WikiClub. We have shot a promotional video about WikiClubs recently. The short version is available with English subtitles.
It was a big challenge for us to support these teachers after the training. We did several online meetings when Western Armenian project coordinator spoke to them and answered their questions regarding wiki editing. We also helped them how they can present Wikipedia Education program in their schools and how to organize workshops for school students. I’d also like to mention that Western Armenian teachers assisted us a lot both in organizing the Lebanon WikiCamp and during the camp.
The hardest part is the partnership, so first we find institutions ready to collaborate then find editors who might be interested in related articles. After finding an institution we take the books, scan them and upload to Wikimedia Commons after which we make lists of articles to be created from the books in Wikipedia and invite interested editors to write articles.
Yes, we always follow-up the teachers' activity. As they were very active in and out of wiki we decided to organize teacher trainings twice a year. In this way we encourage the participation of the young professionals in Wikiprojects. We have also included this program in our Annual Plan Grant.
Yes, several important issues were discussed during the office opening ceremony but unfortunately most of them didn’t have further development. We had an agreement to strengthen our cooperation with cultural institutions thus enlarging the GLAM program. In addition, the office opening ceremony gave us the possibility to enlarge our office space; in February 2016 the Government gave us another 66.3 square meters space. On how we are going to manage WM AM’s office space you can find here.

Thanks! --David Saroyan (talk) 18:12, 14 April 2016 (UTC)Reply