Shared Knowledge/Annual plan 2018

This is the Annual plan of the activities of Shared Knowledge for 2018. It is a page linked to from the Simple APG application for the year.

Programmes

Education

The Education programme has proved to be a successful way for engaging new users to contribute to the Macedonian Wikipedia and subsequently fill the content gaps on specialist topics through collaboration with educational institutions. The model of collaboration consists of running workshops on the process of editing Wikipedia articles intended for students who are going to apply this knowledge to create or improve Wikipedia articles as an assignment of the grading process. The members of our educational team have been mostly working with students attending the Josip Broz – Tito Grammar School in Skopje on topics in physics and the activities at this institution have resulted in engaging several hundred students to create or improve hundreds of Wikipedia articles. The major strength of the programme so far has been the exceptional quality of editing, which has lead to the promotion of 3 featured articles and 1 good article on the Macedonian Wikipedia. However, despite the wide reach and positive outcome of the activities, the following three problems have remained present for years: 1) low number of educational institutions involved, 2) low retention rate of participants and 3) limited geographic distribution.

The planned educational activities for 2018 were shaped in a way to address the identified problems. First, we plan to continue with the model of collaboration implemented thus far at the Josip Broz – Tito Grammar School in Skopje but also to expand the programme to two other educational institutions. Considering the size of our educational team and the other available resources, we have come to the conclusion that we can manage activities at two additional institutions while keeping the high quality of editing at the same time. Second, we plan to introduce lectures about the processes of editing Wikipedia articles, uploading files on Wikimedia Commons and generating items on Wikidata that will be given to interested participants in three other cities in Macedonia. The target audience of these lectures will be broader than students attending the traditional educational institutions and will also include others willing to acquire new knowledge. Third, we also plan to introduce an editing contest intended only for students participating in the Education programme through the model of collaboration with educational institutions. This activity will have to stimulate participation through the awarding of prizes and also divert participants' attention to other topics of interest as an attempt to both increase retention and further fill the content gaps.

The SMART objectives of the Education programme are the following:

to have at least 258 participants from the Education programme during the year;
to have at least 205 newly registered users users from the Education programme during the year;
to have at least 530 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Education programme during the year; and
to spend at least 1,763 volunteer hours on the Education programme during the year.

Community

Editing challenges

The editing challenges primarily aim to increase the content quality and fill content gaps on the Wikimedia project but also to reach out to specialist groups of people and boost more productive editing by the experienced editors. The scope of the editing challenges in 2018 will remain unchanged compared to 2017 and they will thus include: edit-a-thons, editing contests, editing days and editing weekends.

The edit-a-thons have underwent a successful transition from community events intended for experienced users towards outreach events intended for new editors. This transition has eventually contributed to an increase in the content quality and substantial improvements in filling content gaps on many underrepresented topics. Nevertheless, we think that our edit-a-thons have not yet attained the level of outreach events for specialist groups of people and therefore we plan to negotiate with groups who possess knowledge and expertise on topics that are poorly represented on the Wikimedia projects and that other community members do not have. The number of edit-a-thons will see increase to six events during the year.

The editing contests have drastically improved the coverage of underrepresented topics and have also led to re-activating of users who have not been active for a pretty long time. They have also resulted in high-quality editing with 7 featured articles and 1 good article on the Macedonian Wikipedia. Because the goal of the editing contests focus on adding quality content, they mostly focus on engaging the community of experienced users, yet the participation of newly registered users is also welcome. There are no major changes that we expect to make to the editing contests during the year with regards to the selected topics and the awards distribution. The number of contests that will take place during the year will be four, including the Wikimedia CEE Spring in joint collaboration with the other communities from Central and Eastern Europe.

The positive evaluation of our editing days and weekends as zero-budget projects that encourage participation of community members in writing articles on a pre-selected underrepresented topic during a 24-hour and 48-periods, respectively, was convincing enough to include these two projects anew. These editing challenges are especially suitable for holidays and commemorating days but can also be used to coordinate the community towards generating local content from the available sources that we have.

The SMART objectives of the Education programme are the following:

to have at least 168 participants from the Editing challenges sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 104 newly registered users from the Editing challenges sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 2,046 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Editing challenges sub-programme during the year; and
to spend at least 3,432 volunteer hours on the Editing challenges sub-programme during the year.

Community support

User:Тиверополник (Aleksandar Popovski) with his daughter on a photohunt in Vasilevo Municipality in May 2017

The relation between the Wikimedia affiliate and the community as a key for healthy development of the movement during the year will be enhanced through working equally on extending support for conducting photohunts and city tours, growing the community through Wikicamps and building up the community through frequent gatherings and meet-ups as well as increased participation in international events and conferences.

The photohunts have established as a successful low-budget project with high cost-effectiveness. Despite the fact that this project helps the community members to get financial support for conducting hunts for images, the project also rewards special right to the community rather than the regulatory bodies of the affiliate to make the final decision on delivering support. The concept of the photohunts will be replicated in a new project called Wikicity that will aim at extending financial support to community members for conducting hunts for images restricted to city areas. These two projects, however, can be properly accommodated in our entire eco-system, which is a good opportunity to attract interest not only from the experienced editors but also from the new users engaged in the other programmes.

The positive outcome of the Wikicamp Brajčino 2017 has guided us to expand this project to organising two camps in 2018. The Wikicamps are a good way to introduce a group of interested people with the Wikimedia culture through an outdoor seminar. Importantly, the activities during the camps do not help only develop skills for contributing to the Wikimedia projects but also for conducting research, compiling sources for editing and improving photographic skills. The project can also be easily integrated to our eco-system because the participants at the camps will have the possibility to apply their knowledge on the other programmes.

The frequency of community gatherings and meet-ups has sharply decreased in the last couple of years, whereas the Wikipedia Day celebrations remain the only formal events that socialise number of community members. For that purpose, apart from the Wikipedia Day celebration, we also plan to revive the meet-ups that took place on a regular basis in the past.

In 2018, we plan to send two representatives (including a staff member) at the Wikimedia Conference 2018, two representatives at the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2018, to award one scholarships for participation in Wikimania 2018 and to have participants at regional conferences (e.g. WikiLive in Belgrade, OSCAL in Tirana).

Programme story: Wikicamp Brajčino 2017

During the extended weekend on the occasion of the Independence Day of Macedonia from 8-10 September 2017, Shared Knowledge organised a Wikicamp that took place in the village of Brajčino. The camp was attended by 18 young people from several towns in Macedonia, who had the opportunity to get acquainted and trained for contributing to the Wikimedia projects and conducting field research in the scope of geography, nature, agriculture, cultural heritage, architecture and archaeology through mutual acquaintance and socialising. The field research also covered the neighbouring village of Ljubojno. The participants took over 170 images that are freely available on Wikimedia Commons. Considering the fact that the activities during the camp were directly connected to other community projects (for instance, the expeditionary projects), the participants may get involved in these projects in near future.

Participants during the lectures
Participants during the workshop
Toni Ristovski giving a lecture
Participants on a field research

The SMART objectives of the Community support sub-programme are the following:

to have at least 66 participants from the Community support sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 30 newly registered users from the Community support sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 1,560 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Community support sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 800 photographs used in Wikipedia articles from the Community support sub-programme during the year; and
to spend at least 3,060 volunteer hours on the Community support sub-programme during the year.

Expeditions

The expeditionary projects have had enormous impact on the field research capabilities of our members over the last couple of years and have contributed to the creation of local content from multiple sources that had not been used for editing before as well as high-quality images of different places in Macedonia with 5 featured pictures and 1 quality image on Wikimedia Commons. Our plans for 2018 encompass having five generic Wikiexpeditions (including a cross-border expedition), four Geoexpeditions, two Veloexpeditions and two Agroexpeditions, totalling to 13 expeditions overall.

The idea about organising a cross-border Wikiexpedition in Northern Greece (Aegean Macedonia) has become a topic of discussion after having completed an edit-a-thon and two editing contest on topics about inhabited places in the region, which have resulted in adding substantial content to the Macedonian Wikipedia and have helped identify the lack of images from the villages, monumental buildings and landscapes in Aegean Macedonia, especially in the region north of Thessaloniki. Following the endorsement received from several community members in Greece, we think that this expedition will have two-fold positive impact, as it allows us to take the necessary images for the use in the articles and share the practice of organising successful expeditions with the colleagues in Greece.

The SMART objectives of the Expeditions sub-programme are the following:

to have at least 26 participants from the Expeditions sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 5 newly registered users from the Expeditions sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 3,520 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Expeditions sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 2,432 photographs used in Wikipedia articles from the Expeditions sub-programme during the year; and
to spend at least 5,558 volunteer hours on the Expeditions sub-programme during the year.

Wiki loves contests

The value added from the Wiki loves contests organised in Macedonia during the 2013-2015 period has gradually decreased on a contest-by-contest basis because of the increased uploads of abundant images from subjects that have already been well represented on Wikimedia Commons and the very low rates of images used in Wikipedia articles from the contests. However, after identifying the necessities of having images, in particular, from variety of traditional and worldwide known dishes, we have come to the conclusion that there is enough room organising the Wiki Loves Food contest. The first edition of the content took place in 2017 and we plan to continue with the second edition of the contest in 2018.

The SMART objectives of the Wiki loves contests sub-programme are the following:

to have at least 53 participants from the Wiki loves contests sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 40 newly registered users from the Wiki loves contests sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 2,000 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Wiki loves contests sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 800 photographs used in Wikipedia articles from the Wiki loves contests sub-programme during the year; and
to spend at least 1,030 volunteer hours on the Wiki loves contests sub-programme during the year.

Partnerships

Cultural heritage

The documentation of the cultural heritage of Macedonia has been successfully achieved through a variety of projects that we were having throughout the past years, such like the Wikiwine, Wikicrafts and Shared Knowledge/Projects/Macedonian dialects projects. Taking care of the national cultural heritage will remain one of the main priorities of the Partnerships programme in 2018. In that sense, we plan to introduce the Wikibeer and Wikiindustry projects.

The idea beyond the Wikibeer project relies on the successful Wikiwine and Wikirakija projects, whose goal was to document the country's rich history of wine and rakija production by partnering with wineries. Similarly, the activities of the Wikibeer project will be oriented towards documenting the country's history in producing beer by partnering with local breweries. The experienced project members from the Wikiwine and Wikirakija projects will make visits to breweries and document the production process as well as the different types of beer produced.

The Wikiindustry project traces back to the Wikicraft project but also closely resembles on the Wikiwine, Wikirakija and Wikibeer projects given its implementation. Its principal goal is to make visits to industrial capacities and document the manufacture process in different industries as well as the final products. Arrangements have already been made with the management of a company from the clothing industry and we expect to reach out to companies from other industries as well.

The SMART objectives of the Cultural heritage sub-programme are the following:

to have at least 10 participants from the Cultural heritage sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 280 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Cultural heritage sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 160 photographs used in Wikipedia articles from the Cultural heritage sub-programme during the year; and
to spend at least 440 volunteer hours on the Cultural heritage sub-programme during the year.

Exhibitions

The success of the photographic collaboration between Shared Knowledge and Wiki Education Brazil has been motivating for us to introduce a separate sub-programme on organising exhibitions. The model of the photographic collaboration that we have worked out helps to promote the cultural and natural heritage of the collaborating countries through images displayed at exhibitions but it also attracts community members to edit content on topics related to the collaborating country. In this way, the exhibitions can be easily connected to the editing challenges in our eco-system. In 2018, we plan to extend two photographic collaborations that we result in having two exhibitions.

Programme story: Macedonia-Brazil photographic collaboration

On 13 October 2017, on the occasion of marking the establishment of diplomatic relations between Macedonia and Brazil, a two-weeks long photographic exhibition titled "Brazil through pictures: In front of the eyes of the Macedonian public" was officially opened in Skopje. The event was part of the photographic collaboration between Shared Knowledge and Wiki Education Brazil with the goal of promoting the cultural and natural heritage of both countries through photographic exhibitions. Over 40 visitors were briefly introduced about the Wikimedia projects and the idea beyond the photographic collaboration, which was followed by a presentation of a geopolitical analysis of the development of relations and cooperation between Macedonia and Brazil. Afterwards, the audience had the opportunity to see 20 images depicting cultural and natural heritage of Brazil, much of which were winning photographs from the previous editions of Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments in Brazil. The images were displayed with QRpedia codes, enabling the visitors to easily navigate to Wikipedia articles about the topics depicted. There were also two editing challenges, an editing weekend and an edit-a-thon, as side events that attracted editing content on topics related to Brazil.

The audience of the exhibition
The opening speech
Visitor tests the QRpedia codes
Kiril Simeonovski explains an image to the visitors of the exibition

The SMART objectives of the Exhibitions sub-programme are the following:

to have at least 100 participants from the Exhibitions sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 10 newly registered users from the Exhibitions sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 120 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Exhibitions sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 30 photographs used in Wikipedia articles from the Exhibitions sub-programme during the year; and
to spend at least 105 volunteer hours on the Exhibitions sub-programme during the year.

GLAM

The GLAM activities in 2018 will include a GLAM contest that will be intended for employees of GLAM institutions in Macedonia and a tenure of a Wikipedian in residence at the National and University Library "St. Kliment of Ohrid".

The GLAM contest envisages several types of activities such as lectures and workshops with employees of at least three GLAM institutions and subsequently an editing contest which will last for a month, where the winners will be awarded a trip to visit a GLAM institution in a country with a collaborating Wikimedia affiliate. This will have to increase the number of highly educated employees in GLAM institutions who will be informed, trained and included in the Wikimedia projects and will give us the chance to expand the institutional collaborations in the future.

The tenure of a Wikipedian in residence at the National and University Library "St. Kliment of Ohrid" comes as a result of our plans immediately after signing the memorandum of collaboration with this institution in June 2016, which stipulates that the signing parties are going to broaden their collaboration through workshops, lectures, edit-a-thons, exhibitions and other activities related to the Wikimedia movement. The library abounds in the largest book fund in Macedonia and is certainly a repository that our Wikipedian in residence will have to examine in order to provide the community with sources for content creation. The internship programme for the Wikipedian in residence will include a flexible work time of 20 hours per week, in which the main responsibilities will be to organise events for engagement of the library staff, integrating the participants from the library to our eco-system, digitising materials in public domain and liberating copyrighted materials.

The SMART objectives of the GLAM sub-programme are the following:

to have at least 78 participants from the GLAM sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 70 newly registered users from the GLAM sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 1,080 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the GLAM sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 155 photographs used in Wikipedia articles from the Exhibitions sub-programme during the year; and
to spend at least 1,108 volunteer hours on the Exhibitions sub-programme during the year.

Metrics

Table 3

Shared metrics

Participants: The number of people who attend your events, programs or activities, either in person or virtually. This definition does not include people organizing activities, social media followers, donors, or others not participating directly.
Newly registered: The number of participants that create new accounts on a Wikimedia project. These include users who register up to two weeks before the start of the event.
Content pages: A content page is an article on Wikipedia, an item on Wikidata, a content page on Wikisource, an entry on Wiktionary, and a media file on Commons, etc. This metric captures the total number of content pages created or improved across all Wikimedia projects.

Grantee-defined metrics

Photographs used: The total number of distinct photographs from the programmes used in articles.
Volunteer hours: The total number of hours spent by volunteers to support the organisational work.

Program	Participants	Newly registered	Content pages	Photographs used	Volunteer hours
Education	258	205	530	0	1763
Community	313	197	9,126	4,032	13,080
Partnerships	188	80	1,480	345	1,653
TOTAL FOR ALL PROGRAMS	759	482	11,136	4,377	16,496

Priority levels

The following table grades the eight sub-programmes of the four programmes on a priority scale with high, medium or low priority. The grading is mainly based on the metrics derived from the SMART objectives for each programme.

Level	Sub-programme
High	Education programme Exhibitions Expeditions
Medium	Community support Editing challenges GLAM Wiki Loves Food
Low	Cultural heritage