Grants talk:PEG/Wikimedistas de Colombia/Wikivacaciones Colombia

A decision has been made on this grant. Comments are still welcome on this page.

GAC members who support this request

1. --DerekvG (talk) 17:16, 2 December 2015 (UTC) , for my columbian freinds, please indicate some form of follow-up of the particiapnts to motivate them to continue to contribute or contribute more in other wiki projects

   Thanks for the support, DerekvG! As a partial answer to your question: in preparation for the contest, we have recently reactivated our mailing list in an effort to have an extra working way to communicate with people interested in Wikimedia activities in the country (the first being our Facebook page). That, plus a planned meeting for next year (which will be the first meeting we plan to invite people not currently in the group), will be our first ways to stay in touch with those people. --Racso ^¿¿¿??? 20:40, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

2. --Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 10:33, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

GAC comments

Thanks for your submission. While the project is very interesting and can certainly benefit Wikivoyage, I strongly endorse Kacie's suggestion to include a measure of success on the number of images used on Wikivoyage and the number of towns photographed. Additionally, I have the following questions:

1. Do you have information on how well Colombia-related topics are represented on Wikivoyage?
2. How do you plan to encourage the community to create articles on places from which photographs were taken?
3. Have you considered the possibility to promote the idea to the global community and make the contest international?
4. Do you have any instructions to participants on the differences between the scope of Wikivacaciones Colombia and Wiki Loves Monuments? Photographs uploaded during Wiki Loves Monuments are very good material to illustrate pages on Wikivoyage but its scope is restricted to country's lists of monuments. My suggestion is to let interested participants know this difference in order to prevent taking images from the same objects that would barely benefit Wikimedia Commons and Wikivoyage as final beneficiary.

Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 10:58, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Kiril:

1. We don't have stats or reports, but it's easy to see that we need Colombian Wikivoyage material, as there are a lot of places without page, most of the few existing Colombian pages are very incomplete and there are not Colombian Itineraries at all.
2. The contest has 2 main categories: photography and writing. The writing component awards participants for creating written content for Wikivoyage: reviews (of food, hotels, places, activities, etc.) and Itineraries. Both categories (photo, writing) are independent, so there may be content for a place in one of them an not the other one, but we hope people will try to participate in both categories. Also, we'll try the "live web tutorials" I mentioned to KHarold. Will work? Will it be enough? We don't know, as it's the first time we make a writing contest, and it's also the first writing contest we know it's done in a non-Wikipedia project. Let's hope it works.
3. If it goes well, we would probably have the enthusiasm to do it :P
4. Yes. The contest website barely mentions WLM, so new participants won't have any bias towards monuments. As for old participants, in our participation instructions we are pretty clear about the wider focus of this new contest by mentioning examples of what can be photographed or reviewed (e.g. food, restaurants, activities, transportation, etc.).

Thanks. --Racso ^¿¿¿??? 20:13, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your answers and the efforts put on improving the application.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 10:33, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

WMF comments

Hi Remux and Racso. This project sounds like a fun way to engage your community and improve Wikivoyage during the summer holidays.

1. The cost for prizes is higher than WLM, with lower expected number of images and participants. What is the reason for having more expensive prizes?
2. Please set a measure of success for the number of contest images used on Wikivoyage, or number of towns with new pages on Wikivoyage.
3. This could be a good opportunity to engage new users in your community. Please create a plan to follow up with contest participants after the contest has ended.
4. Have you planned any activities such as editathons or thematic writing weeks to encourage people to use contest photos on Wikivoyage?
5. Have you created a list of locations that need images? Are there priorities? Have these locations already been covered by WLM or WLE?
6. Please see the following learning patterns for instructions on how to use advance site notices to promote events, use central notice banners, and other ways to let the community know about events.
7. Please review these resources strategies to promote photo contests, use social media for promotion for tips on how to promote your contest.

We hope that these questions and resources are helpful, and look forward to working with your community on this project. Best, --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 20:51, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello, KHarold! Here are a couple of initial answers to some of your questions and comments:

• Prizes aren't more expensive, but we have more prizes this year, as we have a whole new competition category (Wikivoyage reviews) plus a "public choice" award (which we intend to use as a way to "viralize" the user group and our activities). In fact, thanks to the current dollar change rate, we more than doubled the amount of prizes for a 35% increase of the costs compared to last year.
• About the follow up plan, please see my comment to DerekvG.
• About the editathons: not exactly. We are planning to make a couple of "live web tutorials" in order to motivate people to participate with reviews for Wikivoyage, in which we would stream step-by-step tutorials. Indeed, we can use the opportunity to promote the use of contest images in the project.
• As for the use of sitenotice: we managed to set it up, and it's already helping us to promote the project :)

That's it for now! --Racso ^¿¿¿??? 21:43, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

About the list of locations: no, we didn't create a list nor defined place priorities. We believe that because of the focus of this competition (Wikivoyage, where aspects like local food, hotels, restaurants, transportation, entertainment, etc. should be pictured), even places which were already popular in WLM may beneficiate a lot from extra material. There will probably exist some overlap with WLM, but we are trying to motivate participants to focus on certain aspects (i.e. "not monuments") of the places they visit so more new and useful material is created. --Racso ^¿¿¿??? 03:54, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

@Kiril Simeonovski:, @KHarold (WMF):: I've made some changes to the measures of success, by adding one related to the amount of WMCO followers in Facebook (you didn't ask for it, but I think it's a useful indicator), one related to the amount of pictures used in Wikivoyage and one related to the amount of written material produced. I'd like to clarify in advance that the numbers of the last two measures are based on the current status of es:Wikivoyage (29 total itineraries, most of them from Spain, so 10 new itineraries would mean a 34.4% increase overall; 87 existing pages from Colombia, so 40 photos would potentially illustrate 46% existing pages). --Racso ^¿¿¿??? 22:53, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi Racso, I see now that there will be a total of 7 prizes offered, and the largest prize is about $150 USD. Please add the information about how you calculated the measures of success for increase in content on Wikivoyage to the main grant page, as well as any details about the writing contest that are on the talk page, but not on the request. We should be able to make a decision on the proposal by the end of this week. Thank you to DerekvG and Kiril Simeonovski for asking such helpful questions, the responses have made the proposal much stronger. Best, --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 02:53, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello KHarold (WMF), we rely on the results of previous competitions to estimate the measures of success. About the writing contest: The participants will create itineraries or reviews about places, traditional food, fairs, hotels, restaurants, etc, in Wikivoyage. The participants will earn points according with the usefulness and length of their reviews and itineraries. Of course an itinerary earn much more points than a small review. At the end, the user with the most points is the winner. -- Remux - Nunca Olvidaré, que me enamoré de la más hermosa flor. Ĉu mi povas helpi vin iel? 00:30, 5 November 2015 (UTC) 12:19, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

@KHarold (WMF): Done!. --Racso ^¿¿¿??? 15:23, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Question for the GAC

Hello everybody.

I'd like to ask the GAC if it would be OK if we gave cash prizes to the winners. My question comes from the fact that dollar change rates are currently pretty high in Colombia right now (1 USD = 3300 COP, while last year 1 USD = 1880 COP), so the grant will provide us more money after converting it (yay!), but we would loose that advantage if we buy the prizes in Amazon like last year, and buying prizes here in Colombia is more expensive (and can become even more expensive because of the change rate behavior).

Please note that I'm not saying that we will give cash prizes (we have never done so in our previous contests, and I think that it's more elegant to give prizes rather than money), but I'd only want to know if that would be a viable option in case we need it. Thanks. --Racso ^¿¿¿??? 20:57, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello Racso. I see no problem in awarding cash prizes considering your concerns regarding the exchange rate uncertainty, although it is, of course, more elegant to award non-monetary prizes to the best participants. Other grantees did use the practice of awarding cash prizes for their contests in the past and we cannot impose specific requirements for you without any previous discussion about the case in general. Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 10:39, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Funding decision

Hi Racso, we are pleased to support this request for $819 USD to pay for prizes to 7 contest participants, and to cover minor organizing expenses. The 48,527 COP remaining from your WLM 2014 grant will be deducted from this amount. Although the total number of images and articles are a bit low relative to the funding requested, you have demonstrated that this contest will lead to a significant increase in coverage of Colombian towns on Wikivoyage. We look forward to learning from your experience using live web tutorials to teach participants how to add content to Wikimedia projects. Have you thought of using Hangouts on Air so that you can record the tutorials? Both Wikimedia Spain and the Amical user group have experience planning photo contests with prizes for writing, you might ask Vriullop and Millars for advice. You can find tips for promotion, judging, tracking contributions and following up with new users on this page of the Photo Contest and Events Toolkit. Cheers, --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 20:27, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi, KHarold (WMF). Thank you and the rest of the team for the confidence and for all the tips. Indeed, it's my plan to record the live tutorial for further using it during the contest (and maybe after it!); I haven't though about the specifics, but I'll surely take a look at Hangouts on Air :).

About the 48,527 COP, I have to disagree with the decision. I don't really understand why will that amount be deducted from this grant if we were told by Alex Wang that we could absorb that amount and use it freely. As I'm not sure if you missed that detail when making the decision, I'll not make a longer argument for now, but I need to ask you to reconsider the deduction.

Thanks again. --Racso ^¿¿¿??? 05:17, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi Racso, thank you for adding a link to that approval. I will update our records and change the amount that will be sent to you. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 20:13, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Request about funds (re)assignation

Hello there.

We'd like to ask the Committee permission for (re)assigning a destination for some of the grant resources.

The request arises from the fact that our calculations show that some money will be left after we have payed everything we planned in the grant budget. This is thanks to two facts: costs didn't change too much since the moment we made the grant request (so the "extra margin" probably won't be used), and dollar rates increased since then (so we received more money in pesos after the exchange rate was applied).

With that in mind, we would like to use the projected remaining resources in the following expenditures, which are currently planed to be requested in future grants:

1. About 10 USD: (partial) reimbursement of the last domain renewal for our wikilovesmonuments.co domain.
2. About 20 USD: renewal of wikimediacolombia.org for an extra year (i.e. 2 years instead of 1).
3. About 30 USD: renewal of wikilovesmonuments.co for another year.

Please note that, if approved, those expenditures would be made only after all the original budget has been completed.

That's it. Thanks! --Racso ^¿¿¿??? 01:40, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Rasco, thank you for checking in - using the remaining funds to cover the renewals of the domain names you listed sounds like a good idea and is approved. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 00:22, 4 February 2016 (UTC)