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Programs & Events Dashboard
2019 Coolest Tool Award Winner
in the category
Outreach

Programs & Events Dashboard

Manage and track Wikimedia programs from one place with ease.

The Programs & Events Dashboard is a tool which assists the management of wiki programs and events.

Suppose that there is a wiki program, for example a wiki editing drive to improve a certain sort of content, or a wiki event, for example a wiki editing meetup at a local community center. In either of those cases, the dashboard provides the following:

  • A registration button for participants to note that they are joining the program
  • Tracking functions for organizers to measure and report the outcome of a program

The Dashboard is also the home of Wikimedia Foundation training modules, such as those on dealing with online harassment and keeping events safe. Learn more about these modules.

Who should use the tool?

Find the tool at https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/.

There are three main classes of users of the tool - program organizers, program participants, and observers. Organizers may set up an event page and invite anyone with a Wikimedia account to register as a participant in the program described. Organizers invite program participants to register as part of the event. After registering, participants may have no need to ever return to the event page. Many organizers will only return to the event page one time to collect an outcome report after the end of the program. Observers are users who view outcomes for programs in which they are not participants.

If you would like to help with the overall organisation and administration of the tool you can now sign up to become an Admin!

For organizers

Organizers set up an event page with the tool. The tool prompts organizers to share a range of information about a program. Participants may later see this.

Organizers also have special user rights to do things such as to manually add or remove users from a program, open or close event page registration, and to generate outcome reports.

Organizers could be:

  • Educators that are including the use of Wikipedia as an educational tool in their syllabus, and want to monitor the progress their students are making in editing contents,
  • GLAM events organizers, wanting to monitor content uploads and editing,
  • Affiliates staff that are running an event such as an edit-a-thon, or
  • People that want to use the Dashboard to monitor progress regarding the addition of content with a group of participants.

(There are probably more user-cases, please add them).

For participants

Participants may register themselves as being part of a program. Many participants will not do more than that, although participants whom the organizer encourages may use the event page as a base for collaborating with colleagues in their program.

How to sign-up to an existing program is explained in this page.

Observers

Organizers, participants, and uninvolved-third parties may visit the dashboard to view outcome reports.

Currently there is no feature to set any report as private.

Guide

Step by step instructions

For step by step instructions on how to use the dashboard, see guideline.

Frequently asked questions

Please see FAQ.

Glossary of terms

It is helpful to use a common language to discuss programs and events. Anyone managing Wikimedia projects may find it useful to learn these technical concepts:

  • The dashboard is the name for this tool.
  • Program is the term for any wiki project which would be tracked with the dashboard.
  • Event page is the landing page in the dashboard where participants register for events. In this dashboard, sometimes the event page is called by the more general term "program page" because not all programs include an in-person event. Applications like Facebook and meetup.com use the term "event page", and this tool creates the wiki-equivalent.
  • The organizer is the person who sets up an instance of an event page. This person has technical rights to control the event page they create.
  • The facilitator is any collaborator of the organizer who also has some technical rights to control the event page. The organizer "owns" the event page, while facilitators do not.
  • The participants register on the event page to note their participation in a program.
  • A campaign is a set of individual programs which are grouped together. Each program in the dashboard is managed by an organizer, and a campaign includes a set of programs.
  • A campaign organizer is the person who manages the category system which groups a set of programs together. This person could also generate collective reports including all programs in a campaign.
  • An observer is anyone who accesses dashboard reports. Observers include all of the roles above, plus third-parties who have no involvement except a wish to see program information. For example, Wikimedia Foundation staff observe data, as do research organizations of all kinds. As is routine in the Wikimedia community, the default practice is to make most data publicly available.
  • An Admin is a user with advanced permissions on the dashboard. Admins can edit or delete any campaign or program, add or remove facilitators and organizers, in addition to other tools. They also provide general support to other users.


Please see the Glossary of the Dashboard Metrics for a comprehensive list and explanation of the Dashboard metrics.

Example use cases

Common uses in all cases are a need for program participants to register and a need to report metrics for program outcomes.

Here are some example use cases:

  • A Wiki contributor hosts an in-person meetup at a library and invites anyone to join to contribute to Wikimedia projects together. At the event, the coordinator requests that attendees register themselves by clicking a "join" button. After the event, the coordinator checks the outcome report. The report lists all users who clicked the join button along with a description of what they did, including number of Wikipedia edits, uploads of files to Commons, or whatever else on any wiki project in any language. The report also summarizes the contributions of all participants collectively. A sample report might read, "10 people joined the event. During the event the group made 60 edits to 8 English Wikipedia articles."
  • Instead of a Wikipedia meetup in a library, an analogous meetup is organized at a school with a class of students. All students register as program participants. The class engages with wiki projects over the period of the class. At the end of the class, the instructor reviews the outcome report to judge the engagement of students in the project.
  • A multi-event campaign is proposed, designating a certain month for editing a certain type of Wikipedia article. Any program organizer anywhere can host their own event, and have their event listed and celebrated along with all others in that campaign. From the perspective of individual event coordinators, they operate the dashboard like any wiki meetup. From the perspective of the campaign coordinator, all local programs in the campaign series can be grouped together to generate a collective metrics report which is a sum of all the outcomes of all events in the campaign series.
  • A staffperson at an organization is managing a partnership between their employer and Wikimedia projects, such as in a "Wikipedian in Residence" relationship or perhaps just to host events. The organization has a long-term commitment to sharing information, and so takes a long-term view of Wikipedia partnership. In this case, the organization has 1-2 experts register for a dashboard program and edit 100 Wikipedia articles in different languages, then they mostly quit contributing. After 6 months, the organization gets a report from the dashboard which describes how many people viewed the articles to which their expert contributed. The organization compares the count of wiki pageviews to the reach metrics calculated by similar dashboards for Facebook, Twitter, or any other communication platform.

Enabling automatic edits on a new wiki

As of August 2017, the Dashboard can be enabled on a wiki-by-wiki basis to make automatic edits to post program information on-wiki. This includes:

Steps to follow for community members before enabling automatic template edits in Dashboard:

1. Get community consensus

Start a community discussion to ensure community support for turning on automatic edits. Community consensus is required before editing is enabled.

Here is an example for opening the discussion:

I'm proposing to enable edits via Programs & Events Dashboard on this wiki. Once enabled, related activity for courses and other events on Programs & Events Dashboard would be reflected with wiki edits, as currently done on English Wikipedia with the Wiki Ed Dashboard. Here are the types of edits it can potentially make:
2. Create the templates

Create a local version of each of these templates:

You should localize the names of the templates, but the parameter names used by these templates should stay in English.

It would be ideal if they could be placed under a common category for future reference.

3. Open a Phabricator ticket to request edits to be enabled

Assign @Ragesoss (User:Sage (Wiki Ed)), and be sure to include:

Here is an example of a Phabricator ticket.

News and recent changes

2017-12-08
  • You can create a 'private' program, which can only be seen by that programs facilitators and by dashboard admins. Participant usernames will not appear in the user list for associated campaigns.
  • The downloadable CSV of course stats now includes retention counts, as well as per-wiki breakdowns of edit count, articles edited, and articles created.
  • For the 'ArticleScopedProgram' type, you can now track entire categories, or articles that include a specific template, instead of just tracking 'assigned' articles.
  • Outreachy intern Candela Jiménez Girón has started her project to improve the dashboard for Art+Feminism 2018
2017-12-12
  • If you are enrolled in an editathon, you can run a manual update of the statistics by just clicking in a button from the course actions. This will provide more accurate information of the last revisions that took place.
2017-12-15
  • A new message is displayed in beneath the course activity that informs the user when the last update of those statistics was performed and the average time left for the next update to happen. This will enable the user to be aware that their contributions may not appear as part of the statistics until the next update after the edition happens.
  • When browsing the revisions, only 50 of them will appear listed, together with a "See more" button that will render 50 more if they exist. This will avoid rendering of too much information for the user in the page.
2018-01-05
  • The campaign creator can include a Default Course Type to their campaigns so any course created from the campaign will have a determined type. It is possible to change the type of the specific course afterwards. E.g. All the users of a campaign will be by default "Edit-athons" if the user set it as Default Course Campaign for the campaign.
2018-01-17
  • The campaign creator can set a Default Passcode to a campaign so all the courses created from that campaign will have the same passcode. This passcode can be a specific one, a random one or can be set as no passcode required. It is possible to change the specific course passcode afterwards.
  • The course creator can set different start and end times for the activity and statistics gathering OR for the event that will take place.
2018-02-15
  • The campaign list from the courses is now ordered alphabetically
  • We've updated the OAuth login permissions, which now include permission to create new accounts. We will start testing a feature that uses this permission soon. If you run into any errors, please log out and log in again.
2018-02-16
  • The 'account requests' feature has been enabled. To use it, you must enable it in the 'Available Actions' section of a program you are the facilitator for.
    • A facilitator can generate new Wikipedia accounts from the program 'Editors' tab, so we'll avoid creating too many accounts from the same IP, so Wikipedia blocks the IP for the next accounts creation.
    • A participant can submit a request to create an account from the enroll link. A facilitator can then create it from the dashboard; the password will be emailed to the new editor, and they will automatically be added as a participant.
2018-05-1
  • You can view the "Alerts" for any campaign, including when articles are in danger of deletion. This works currently on English and Portuguese Wikipedias, and can be configured on request for other languages that use similar categories for proposed deletion, speedy deletion, and deletion discussions.
  • Short programs, such as 1-day editathons, now have their own fast update cycle; such programs will typically get stats updates every 5 minutes or so, and stats will automatically be refreshed when the Home tab for the program is open.
2018-06-04
  • On the 'Articles' tab, program organizers can now add multiple 'Available Articles' at once. You can paste in a list of article titles or URLs, and each of them will be added to the list for editors to choose from.
  • On the 'Uploads' tab, the layout has been improved to show larger images, and more at once. Outreachy intern Urvashi Verma is working on further image/media improvements, and we want to hear your ideas.
2018-06-19
  • The 'Article Finder' tool from GSoC intern Pratyush Singhal is live and ready for use. You can access it here, or from the 'Available Articles' section of the Articles tab if you want to use it to build a set of available articles for a program.
  • On the 'Students' tab, you can now see the count of uploads by each user.
  • For wikis that have edits enabled, you can now disable edits for an individual program. In 'Edit Details' mode, change 'Wiki edits enabled' to no.
2018-07-19
  • The 'Uploads' tab has a new switchable layout - Gallery View, List View and Tile View.
    • Under the 'List View', you can now view the credit for each upload.
    • You can also filter the uploads by their uploader.
  • On the 'Students' tab, if you click on the 'Total Uploads' of a user, you can view the uploads made by that user.
2018-10-15
  • For 'Uploads', you can click an image to see more details without leaving the Dashboard, including which pages it's used on and how many views those pages get.
  • The 'Find programs' page has a search feature to find programs by name or institution.
  • Training modules now feature links back to the translatable wiki source pages for easier editing and updates.
  • The 'Structural Completeness' charts that show changes in ORES-based article quality estimates now work for all the languages that have an ORES articlequality model.
  • User profile pages show which training modules a user has completed.
2019-01-10
  • As the first stage of Cressence's Outreachy project, the course creator lets you select a program type at the start of the course creation flow. When creating a program from a campaign, the default program type for that campaign is still maintained.
  • Translation support for training modules is more complete.
  • You can embed the live stats from a program onto a blog or other website.
2019-01-24
  • For wikis that have edits enabled, there are now fine-grained controls for each program to select which types of edits the dashboard makes.
  • Since full approval after a trial period, account creation via the Dashboard can happen through a bot account, removing the need for program organizers to get English Wikipedia account creator rights.
2019-03-05
  • Admins now have notifications for when there are requested accounts waiting for creation, which should cut down on missed requests that don't get handled during events.
2019-07-01
The tracked wikis for each program are now shown clearly. You can choose the wikis to track at the time you create a program, and edit them afterwards. Assigned articles are no longer used as a workaround for tracking multiple wikis.
2019-07-02
  • For wikis with an ORES article quality model, the reference counts are now tracked.
2019-08-13
  • Individual articles can now be excluded from tracking. This can be useful for editathons where you wish to exclude unrelated contributions by veteran editors who also participated in the event, and similar situations.
  • For an Article Scoped Program, you can now use a PetScan PSID as the basis for which articles are tracked.
2021-06-14
This blog post summarizes a lot of the recent work around the Dashboard's reliability and what has been done to improve it.
2021-07-23
Wiki Education's annual plan for July 2021 - June 2022 includes more focus on Programs & Events Dashboard, starting with a user survey to help prioritize development work. Feedback on the survey draft and live survey preview is welcome, before the finalized survey launches in late July or early August.
2021-07-29
The 2021 Dashboard user survey is live, and will remain open for the next few weeks at least. All users of the Dashboard, as well as interested potential users, are invited to take the survey.
2021-10-11
The results of the 2021 Dashboard user survey, and the top development priorities that will be part of the roadmap, are summarized in this blog post.
2021-10-28
The first iteration of the Programs & Events Dashboard Roadmap is up. It shows current order for the planned work Wiki Education will do to improve Programs & Events Dashboard, and will be updated to show the latest plans over time.
2022-03-10
Detailed Wikidata stats are now available. They show up on pages for individual wikidata-related events that haven't already ended, and cumulative stats for updated events show up on each Campaign page. Wikidata stats for older events are still the process of being generated.
2022-11-10
Namespace-specific tracking and statistics are now available. Via 'Edit Details', you can specify namespaces other than Mainspace that you want to count towards an event's main statistics.
2023-05-15
The "Authorship Highlighting" feature has been extended and now supports these languages: ar, de, en, es, eu, fr, hu, id, it, ja, nl, pl, pt, tr.
2023-09-06
Wikidata statistics will now be generated based on complete diffs rather than edit summaries, so the statistics will now accurately count revisions that add multiple statements and other data in a single edit. Statistics generated before today will not be affected.
Article Scoped Programs are now easier to configure, with an updated wizard to walk through the scoping process during event creation and UI improvements for adding, changing and viewing the scopes after event creation.

Get Support

Office hours

Upcoming
October 16, 16:00 UTC (9:00 am Pacific)
  • Sage Ross will answer questions and provide support for Dashboard users
  • Zoom meeting

Telegram channel

For help and discussion, you can join the Dashboard's Telegram channel.

Technical development

The Programs and Events Dashboard is a comprehensive tool for organizing Wikipedia classroom assignments and diverse learning activities. The Dashboard is a centralized hub for coordinating and monitoring groups of editors collaborating on shared projects, facilitating efficient organization and tracking of their contributions.

Background

In 2010, there was no software to organize classroom assignments and keep track of what student editors were doing so, that’s where the vision to empower users to become technologists themselves came about. This kickstarted the use of wikitext and templates to build the tools users needed. Over time courses grew and the use of wikitexts and templates couldn't keep up with the number. In 2012, to support course projects better Wikipedia assignments transitioned into a new MediaWiki Extension . Over the next few years, this extension was used for organizing education programs on English Wikipedia and several other language versions, but with no ongoing software development resources. In 2014, the Wiki Education Foundation education team transitioned into a new independent nonprofit focused on English Wikipedia and North America: Wiki Education. Wiki Education hired a software development consultancy to build and launch a replacement for the education extension: Wiki Education Dashboard (https://dashboard.wikiedu.org/), which launched in 2015. Wiki Education discontinued the use of the deprecated education extension on English Wikipedia at that point, but it was still being used by other Wikipedia education programs globally.

The Programs and Events Dashboard

In June 2016, the Programs and Events Dashboard was officially launched. This was done in line with the Wikimedia movement to make the Dashboard compatible with every language version of Wikipedia (and any Wikimedia project). Leading up to the launch, on a volunteer basis, Wiki Education’s Sage Ross worked with Wikimedia engineers Adam Wight and Andrew Russell Green to rewrite the Dashboard’s backend to work flexibly on any language version of any Wikimedia project, and to implement internationalization of the interface (with translation support from translatewiki.net).

The Programs and Events Dashboard has undergone continuous enhancements. Notable milestones include the introduction of private programs and advanced CSV course statistics in 2017. In 2018, more improvements like manual statistics updates, default course types, and passcodes were introduced into the Dashboard. The Dashboard adapted to various program durations, introduced faster updates, and refined functionality for organizers. Significant features, such as the 'Article Finder' tool, enriched articles, and upload management were implemented in June 2018. The timeline unfolds with layout options, credit visibility, and filtering for uploads. In 2019, fine-grained controls for edits and account creation were in place.

As of January 2023, the Dashboard has more than 100,000 users across more than 390 wikis. It has served as a new platform for global Wikipedia classroom assignments, leading to the retirement of the MediaWiki education program extension in 2018. Over the years since 2015, more than 180 people have contributed to the dashboard’s journey with about 16,500 changes (“commits”).

For more documentation on technical development see also:

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