Grants talk:PEG/WM RS/Annual plan 2012-2013/Report/Q2

Report accepted

Thank you for this very clear and detailed report; we continue to be pleased that you are using this multilingual two-column format. We enjoyed learning more about your activities and we have a few questions about some of the information in this report.

1. What were the changes to the hiring policy, enacted at the general assembly?
2. Were any grant funds used to _produce_ the physical plates or signs with the QR codes? We expect no movement funds to be used for the physical aspects of QR projects, as we perceive the main beneficiary to be the hosting city, institution, etc.
3. Would you tell us a little more about the activity in parliament?
4. The lusophone partnership sound very interesting! Would you describe it a little more? Who did the translating? How was the community introduced to this?
5. In the Academy Board report for this quarter you mention that students created European capital articles. We may not have understood this statement clearly: did articles on these European capitals not exist already on Serbian Wikipedia?
6. Do you intend to keep track of the number of students involved in the academic programs who go on to become active Wikipedians once their assignments are concluded? This might be interesting to track as you continue your activities.

Thanks once again for the report and for taking the time to address our questions. Best, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 22:04, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Hello Winifred. Sorry for the delay in the answers (there was confusion over who was going to post them).

1. We expanded the principle 4 to allow both definite and indefinite periods of employment, in addition to full-time and part-time basis. We changed the "Termination of agreement" section in accordance with this change, and made a minor change in the terms of extending the agreement (diff).
2. No. As per our Annual plan request, we didn't intend on spending any of the movement funds in that direction. The state authorities are the ones that will finance the plates.
3. As a part of the project "Casting a Wider Web" that some Wikimedia Serbia members are taking part of, one of the tasks was surveying MPs regarding their use of Internet tools in their work in the Parliament, and more precisely, in their communication with citizens. Since this project is carried out by the Internet Society of Serbia in cooperation with Wikimedia Serbia, WMRS members were the ones that contacted and surveyed the MPs, but they also acquainted them with the Wikimedia movement (e.g. more than 80% of MPs didn't know the difference between Wikipedia and Wikimedia, which has changed since).
4. The representatives of the Association of friends of Lusophony were invited to our event marking the 10th anniversary of Serbian Wikipedia. They formed a four piece team interested in translating featured articles from Portuguese Wikipedia to Serbian language. Two team members are Portuguese language teachers, and the other two are senior year Lusophony students, and they are all females, which is good because it helps with the gender gap. The team used to convene in the office, where they got technical help regarding editing and advice on writing in an encyclopedic style. The articles were started in user namespace and will be moved to the article namespace, as soon as they are completed.
5. It was the project with high school second-graders (~16 year olds). It was assumed that most of them are not mature enough to write articles that meet quality standards of Wikipedia (especially about more obscure subjects that don't yet exist on Serbian Wikipedia). So the idea was to have students write about known subjects in order to learn how to use and edit Wikipedia. Those that have an inclination and are mature enough to edit Wikipedia might start doing so, and the idea of not including those articles in the main namespace is to avoid Serbian Wikipedia community backlash for bombarding them with poorly written articles. College student articles were/are intended to be included in the article namespace (either directly or after a "triage").
6. We do. Editor recruitment is one of the most important, and unfortunately most difficult results to accomplish through the academic programs (all chapters that do this kind of outreach are aware of this problem). We are continually trying to refine our approach and to fine tune it to get better results. One thing we have noticed is that some students might be motivated by obtaining certificates of volunteer work (which they could refer to in their CVs). Issuing such certificates is questionable for work on Wikipedia, but it can be done for work in Wikimedia, so those students could be recruited to work on WMRS projects.

You're welcome! --FiliP ██ 10:03, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for these clear responses. Good work! Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 17:37, 8 July 2013 (UTC)