Community Resources/Reports/Grantee partners’ intended programming and impact 2022/Content contributions

All Wikimedia Foundation Funds reports

Grantee partners’ intended programming and impact
Content contribution

• Key takeaways
• Contributors
• Content contribution
• Building organisational capacity
• Awareness-raising and advocacy
• Partnerships
• Regional learning sessions

Executive summary

“If they [potential contributors] do not see themselves reflected online with articles in their language and relevant to their experiences, they are unlikely to contribute content” (grantee MEA region) Challenges:

• Grantees are seeking opportunities, not only to grow and diversify content in line with the Movement Strategy focus on Knowledge Equity, but also to work with partners to position Wikimedia projects as a service for their institutions, and for wider public interests, be it in education, social change, public services, etc.
• Addressing global issues through access to better information (particularly in the LAC and MEA regions) and address knowledge injustices by empowering content creation in underrepresented communities, preserving culture and heritage, re-writing histories and working with a decolonisation framework.

Strategies:

• For 60% content contribution is a main focus. Grantees prioritise addressing content gaps related to gender, geography, and language. Some regional variations, with contents representing cultural/ethnic diversity being more prevalent in the MEA and SA regions, whilst “topics of impact” prioritised more in LAC and USCA.
• Wikipedia is still a central focus of content contribution (for 80% of grantees) however there is a growing interest in Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata, particularly with key partners to show it as a service to digitalise and open their knowledge. However, there are challenges with measuring the use/quality of these contributions and documenting case studies.
• A small group of grantees are working on smaller Wikimedia projects, mostly newer grantees in underrepresented communities in SA, MEA, and LAC.. Whilst they are seen as easier entry points for knowledge equity because of more lenient policies and formats for documenting knowledge. However, there are ongoing questions about the readership scope of this content and some uncertainty about future Movement-wide investments in these smaller projects.
• Some of the more common strategies to mobilise contents are: Campaigns (55%) that provide structure, straightforward tasks and connection to organised interest groups. Content-building events with training: Edit-a-thons are still the main method, despite questions around their effectiveness as one offs. GLAM partnerships (69%) to digitalise and open collections. Educational partnerships (70% state it is a top strategy, but 40% mention working with the formal educational sector) more focused on building awareness, but also state a desired outcome in terms of content contribution. An expectation that could require further measurement and discussion.
• Less common strategies include things like participatory list building with different audiences, reviewing the inclusivity of policies on reliable sources (including things like oral citation), decolonisation approaches and research about content gaps.
• Grantees are also seeking to decentralise content contribution initiatives, by encouraging more individual/group organiser-led initiatives through micro-grants or by offering logistical support.
• An interesting challenge that a few grantees are starting to discuss is how to integrate programming to ensure that different content-creation tactics are not silos, but that there are efforts across programmatic areas and sustained through a period of time to be more effective (ie. over a month).

Learning and evaluation:

• Grantee partners are planning to contribute to Wikipedia stating an estimated goal of 201,000 contents, between improved and created articles. For 67% of grantees, Wikimedia is where most of their content contribution efforts are placed. 53% of grantees aim to contribute to Wikidata with 1.7M contents, and 60% of grantees to Commons with 1.1M contents. Content metrics can not be compared between Wikimedia projects however, it is interesting to note that 97% of content goals are for the content on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata, and only 3% on smaller Wikimedia projects.
• Grantees metrics are mostly focused on the number of contents per Wikimedia project (89% capture these), even though there is an expressed interest in the quality of the content and what we understand by quality - is how it is used across Wikimedia projects, its readership or value in terms of representing a knowledge gap or injustice? Only 10% are collecting data to analyse content use/quality, 5% disaggregate content targets per knowledge gap.
• Having clearer definitions and prioritising this data collection would be valuable so that content contributions can be guided by this and contributors can also feel value in their work (a key aspect that can determine continued engagement).
• Whilst contexts and programmes differ greatly, having content metric benchmarks for different types of strategies and Wikimedia projects would be useful, particularly for new grantees and for Regional Funds Committees in their proposal review. Without acting as a strict parameter, but to give numbers a bit more context, comparative sense, and historical analysis.
• As with contributor metrics, there are a number of challenges to improve the way these metrics are captured and this is a collective effort. Here is a list of some of the shorter-term issues that can be addressed with better guidance, support, and format adjustments, and medium terms ones that require Foundation and Grantee-wide efforts that we need to start discussing together.
• It should be a Foundation priority to invest in user-friendly tools to support grantees in this analysis across many editors and content-creation activities. Grantees do not have the time to do this on a more manual basis.

Detailed report

Challenges grants want to address/changes they seek

Wikimedia community-related challenges:

• Knowledge equity: A common challenge, particularly in ESEAP, SA, LAC, and MEA regions is bringing in content that reflects local languages and culture and contributing greater Knowledge Equity.
• Another challenge is understanding how contents are valued and used by readers and across Wikimedia projects and tools to measure the quality, accuracy, and representation of content.

Society-related challenges/free knowledge ecosystem challenges related to content

• Address knowledge injustices against marginalised communities. “Communities historically written out of history to participate in writing (and righting) our stories”. This is also related to the idea of “decolonising the internet”, preserving culture and heritage, particularly those that are at risk of being transformed or damaged, and tackling the loss of “minority languages” or World Heritage sites.
• Addressing global issues through access to better information, as a starting point for individual and collective action, as well as advocacy and policy efforts. This is particularly relevant around topics such as climate change and human rights, both of which have become areas of focus for work in the LAC and MEA regions.

Strategies

Knowledge equity

Priorities in terms of addressing knowledge content gaps:

• In responding to this challenge 60% of grantees state that improving or creating content is one of their main focuses. The content gaps that grantees want to address as a priority are those relating to gender, geography, and language. Language and geography are very much associated with writing about local culture and history. For the Alliances Fund, the top 3 priorities differ, being Geography, Topics for impact, and culture/ethnic diversity.
• Regional variations: cultural/ethnic diversity also appear in the top three priorities in LAC, SA, CEE, and MEA. In the MEA region, language diversity is the top issue, with many grantees partners focusing on contributions to smaller language Wikipedias, whilst also contributing to English Wikipedia. “Topics for impact” is more prevalent in the LAC and USCA regions.
• Sexual diversity is not recognised as one of the main content gap priorities. It is slightly more important for grantees in LAC and USCA regions. Few countries in most regions are focusing on socio-economic issues in terms of addressing content gaps.
• Despite diversification (with over 70% of grantees working on more than 2 to 3 projects), Wikipedia is still a central focus of content contribution (for 80% of grantees). Smaller language  Wikipedias are seen as keen in the strive for knowledge equity, particularly in the MEA region. Whilst past data has not been aggregated to compare numbers, in grantees’ narratives there seems to be a growing interest in Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.
• A surprisingly small group of grantees are working on smaller Wikimedia projects (such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource), mostly newer grantees in underrepresented communities in SA, MEA, and LAC. Whilst they are seen as easier entry points for knowledge equity, there are ongoing challenges related to the use of this content and future Movement-wide investments in these smaller projects.

Knowledge as a service:

Grantees are seeking opportunities, not only to grow and diversity content in line with the Movement Strategy focus on Knowledge Equity, but also to work with partners to position Wikimedia projects as a service for their institutions, and for wider public interests, be it in education, social change, public services, etc.

• Wikipedia: grantees focused on educational programs are doing awareness-raising around Wikipedia as the world's most open educational resource and a pedagogical tool to help develop media, literacy and information skills. This is complex advocacy work for serval grantees, particularly those working in certain regions where negative views of Wikipedia are widespread in the formal educational sectors.
• Wikidata: grantees starting to engage with Wikidata see it as a new opportunity to showcase the value of mass open/free information. They are using this to further enhance partnerships with GLAM institutions, particularly libraries.
• Wikimedia Commons: seen as a growing opportunity for digitising knowledge - particularly with GLAM institutions or professions (such as photographers). Also to diversify the way knowledge is documented and shared - incorporating more audio-visual resources. A key challenge is showing interesting case studies of the value of these images/videos in terms of their usage.
• Wikisource: is seen as an opportunity to document traditional knowledge (transcripts, oral history) and an entry point for knowledge that is not documented in written form with reliable sources.
• Smaller projects: Wiktionary and Wikiquote are seen as a way of documenting local languages.

Common strategies:

Campaigns as content mobilisers: around 55% of grantees participate in 1 or more campaigns and contests that operate at a local, regional or global level. They act as important content contribution mobilisers, particularly for newer communities that want a clear way to organise activities around set topics and a determined period of time. Some user groups base most of their work around these campaigns. It also allows organisers to connect to training and support from regional or internationally run campaigns. The most common ones are: For photos: WikiLovesAfrica (mostly in the MEA region, but now with interregional participants such as Haiti), WikiLoves Monuments (the most global involving all regions). For images linked to articles: Wikipedia Wanting Photos (WPWP), WikiLovesFolklore. For Articles: Art + Feminism, WikiForHumanRights, 1Lib1Ref, WikiGap.

Content-building events with training: Edit-a-thons continue to be one of the main tactics used in grantee mobilisation, either within campaigns or within their own programs. However, several grantees have started to question whether the one-off event is really enough to engage newcomers to edit and whether a more phased approach is needed focusing on small actions that can be done over a course of time and linked to more training and support. This is linked to the strategy of mobilising around topics that are of interest to specific communities or professions - such as human rights, climate change, academic research, and scientific knowledge.

Individual organiser-led initiatives: Another form of content mobiliser is encouraging local organisers to lead content-building activities, be it as part of campaigns, as one-off events or more continuous meet-ups. For this, several grants are exploring micro-grants or logistical support for individual organiser-led activities. Aside from being a part of decentralising efforts, it is also seen as a way to encourage more autonomy and skills development in local organisers and to build trust and connection with local editors.

Culture, Heritage, and GLAM partnerships: Given its nature, GLAM is one of the most important programs to mobilise content contribution. 69% of grantees are working in this area with partners to digitalise and upload collections onto Wikimedia projects, particularly Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. Long-term partnerships seem to evolve when there is more ongoing collaboration through Wikimedia-in-Residence roles, and when digitising, adopting open access and uploading are part of their institutional strategies.  

There are some regional differences in the way GLAM mobilises contents, and this requires different approaches and levels of effort. In MEA and CEE individuals related to institutions may become engaged as a professional development opportunity, bringing in their institutions, often with difficulties in engaged institutional leadership. In LAC content contributions with Wikimedia are seen as an opportunity to engage with issues that are not yet receiving widespread public attention or funding, such as digitalisation, conversation, decolonisation or concepts such as visual literacy. In NWE and USCA, where GLAM digital content partnerships are more consolidated, grants are focused on expanding and finding ways to “institutionalise/or embed'' these processes so that it is financed by and part of the institution’s strategy and a way to enhance their mission, and not dependent on the efforts of engaged individual professionals that are primary drivers, as is so many times the case.

Educational partnerships: 40% of grantees state they are working within formal educational contexts and with educational partners. Teachers and students have also been seen as a focus of  content-creation efforts,  as well as a means of shaping negative perceptions of the use of Wikimedia projects as an open educational resource, as well as its value as a pedagogical tool for developing key media, literacy, and information skills. Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom (RWIC) has been a key program in incentivising work in this area and it is a growing trend amongst grantees. Grantees working within this RWIC are starting to adapt the program to local languages and contextualising resources and training for teachers, as well as others reaching this through their own initiative.

Something to think about: How much content can and should be created through educational programmes? Educational programs are becoming an important platform for large-scale awareness building and skills development that are central to the Free Knowledge Ecosystem. Given that some grantees focused on working with teachers and structures see it as an exciting way to grow in contents and contributors it may be worth digging deeper into this, with some use cases to see if this is the case.

Less common strategies:

Participatory list building: A less common strategy, but one that has started to be more widely discussed by grantees is to work with different audiences (particularly those coming from underrepresented groups) to discover topics of interest and build good lists for contributors to guide and track contributions.

Decolonisation approaches: Some larger affiliates (type C), with the inter-regional scope, are working on content that has been underrepresented with a lens of decolonisation, as a central objective of their content contribution or by working with underrepresented groups such as indigenous communities finding diverse formats to document that knowledge.

Engaging in content research: a few grantees include research within their strategies to define knowledge content gaps or around topics related to reliability and sourcing, with discussions around the inclusivity of reliable sources guidelines.

Learning and evaluation for content contribution

What do grantees learn about their work?

• How are contents used? What is their value for readers?
• Deeper understanding of knowledge gaps and audiences related to these / how do we most effectively identify gaps and work with volunteers to bridge them?
• What is the best way to encourage contributors to maintain and update article contributions, particularly about important and popular topics?
• Can Wikimedia projects become an important platform for local historical research?

What are they measuring?

An overview

The total number of contents contributed in the three main Wikimedia projects grantees contribute to.

Grantees metrics are mostly focused on the number of contents per Wikimedia project, even though there is an expressed interest in the quality of the content or how it is used across Wikimedia projects and the impact this might have. There is a lack of easy tools that can measure content quality and use across several editors and content-creation activities, and it is a priority to invest in movement-wide user-friendly tools for this.

There have been several discussions on the definitions of quality. On one hand, it may mean that the content is reused in Wikimedia projects or has the largest readerships, for others, it is of value in sense of the knowledge gap it addresses. Having clearer definitions and prioritising this data collection would be valuable so that content contributions can be guided by this and contributors can also feel value in their work (a key aspect that can determine continued engagement).

Common metrics included

• # of new content contributions per Wikimedia project (89% of grantees measure these)
• 35% disaggregate the type of contribution. For instance, describing what type of image on Commons, or if a contribution on Wikipedia is a minor edit, substantial edit, creating a stub or substantial article, or rewriting an article with an equity lens.
• 10% are collecting data to analyse content use/quality.
• 5% disaggregate content targets per knowledge gap, they do so more by program or tactic.

Wikipedia as a primary focus: 80% of grantee partners are planning to contribute to Wikipedia stating an estimated goal of 201,000K contents, between improved and created articles. For 67% of grantees, Wikimedia is where most of their content contribution efforts are placed. 53% of grantees aim to contribute to Wikidata with 1.7M content contributions, and 60% of grantees to Commons with 1.1M file uploads or edits.

Content contribution metrics can not be compared between Wikimedia projects - for instance comparing 1 Wikibook with 1 Wikidata item. However, it is interesting to note that 97% of content goals are for the content on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata, and only 3% on smaller Wikimedia projects.

Diversity of Wikimedia projects

Percentage of grantees that intend to contribute to different Wikimedia projects.

As the graph above shows across regions more than 51% of grantees are contributing to between 2 and 3 Wikimedia projects, the majority to Wikipedia, Wikidata, and/or Commons. This is a tendency across all regions and grant sizes.

Only 20% are only contributing to a single project, of these most only contribute to Wikipedia, but there are a few others that contribute only Commons, Wikidata, or smaller projects.

22% of grantees are focused on more than 3 Wikimedia projects, mostly grantees in CEE, MEA and NWE. In the latter case, it is interesting to see larger funds investing in content in these, such as France, Spain, and Israel. There are no projects in the USCA focusing on a variety of smaller Wiki projects.

The MEA region accounts for a majority of  content goals for Wikiquote (77%), and Incubator for new language Wikipedias (89%) and Wikivoyage (86%). CEE accounts for the majority of content on Wikibooks (59%) and Wiktionary (57%).

5% grantee partners that do not have content metrics, given the nature of their work, for instance, Wikimedia Community User Group CEE Spring and Wiki Loves Monuments given that they are international campaign organisers and these metrics are counted by participating countries, or projects focused on training. There are a few cases of projects that have decided to determine their metrics through a more detailed learning and evaluation plan to be developed at the start of their grant.

It is interesting to see a quick overview of how Wikimedia projects and content goals are distributed globally. The darker colours in each map indicate higher content goals.

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  Global map of grantees intended contribution to Wikipedia (darker colours signalling larger contributions)
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  Global map of grantees intended contribution to Wikidata (darker colours signalling larger contributions)
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  Global map of grantees intended contribution to Wikimedia Commons (darker colours signalling larger contributions)
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  Global map of grantees intended contribution to Wiki Source (darker colours signalling larger contributions)
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  Global map of grantees intended contribution to Wikiquote (darker colours signalling larger contributions)

An important note on aggregating and comparing metrics:

The purpose of aggregating data is not to rank or value grantee’s work based on their level of contribution. It is important to first consider that these metrics should always be contextualised. Grantees with higher funding but a smaller number of participants, editors, or organisers are often making efforts in terms of training or researching and testing new approaches, or bringing in smaller groups from underrepresented communities.

However, aggregate data can perhaps serve as general benchmarks and be useful for grantees to review their targets -  comparing their targets with grantees with similar programs, funding, or contextual dynamics. They can also be helpful for newcomers that often express that they find it hard to set targets when initiating their work.

An in depth view of content contributions in each Wikimedia project

Wikipedia

80% of grantees are planning to contribute to Wikipedia stating an estimated goal of 201,000 contents, between improved and created articles. 36% disaggregate the data, stating whether they will be items improved or created or provide a description of the content.

The following image shows some of the main countries with their intended targets of improving or creating articles on Wikipedia.

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  Global map of grantees intended contribution to Wikipedia (darker colours signalling larger contributions)
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  List of countries and their target for articles created or improved on Wikipedia

Regional and programmatic variations

Regional distribution of grantees’ targets for articles created or improved on Wikipedia

Looking at regional averages is not very telling as the content contribution targets vary widely from 50 to 20.000 in some regions.

• NWE is the region with the highest target, aiming to contribute 75,000 articles created or improved with 37% of all articles improved or created globally. This is largely due to the history of larger chapters (type C grantee partners) with a lot of years of experience contributing content with a wider editor base and able to improve or edit over 10K per year. Those contributing smaller amounts, also emphasise that they are more focused on contents related to knowledge gaps, on contributing to different language Wikipedias or concentrating more efforts on other Wikimedia projects.
• CEE represents 33% of the global target for content on Wikipedia (with an average of 5.500 per project, but also with a large variation within grantees in the region. A third of these content targets are from Serbia, followed by Ukraine with a specific focus on the gender gap. An interesting innovation to look for is the Alliance Fund in Armenia where young graphic designers will be trained to illustrate the most read Armenian Wikipedia articles, this could be an interesting development in linking different visual content on Wikipedia.
• USCA represents 8% of the global target for content on Wikipedia. 70% of these are Wiki Education Foundation content contributions. Lower content counts can be explained by other larger grantees focused on addressing the knowledge gap through contributions to other Wikimedia Commons, on finding new approaches to work with academic content or media institutions or in training and strengthening communities and working with a more global scope. What will be important in these cases, is documenting these learnings so they can show their value for the movement and be widely shared with others.
• MEA represents 8% of the global target for content on Wikipedia. There is less of a variation between grantees, most of them have a target of 50-1500 contents per grant.
  • Many grantees are focused on smaller language Wikipedias such as Igbo, Hausa, Dagbani, Swahili, Twi, and new incubators. Also on the quality of content that documents local language and culture.  
  • Some grantees are focusing more on training or community building or creating new content on other Wikimedia projects.
  • 66% of grantees in this region are working on more than 2 Wikimedia projects, mostly combining Wikipedia, with Wiki Data, Commons, Wiktionary, and Wikiquote, however only 1 grantee is using Wikisource.
  • MEA community members have expressed interest in learning more about Wikisource, particularly for knowledge that has not been documented in commonly used sources and has difficulties in being used in Wikipedia.
• LAC accounts for 6% of Wikipedia content goals with an average of 1,000 contents per grant. Those contributing above the average are larger grantees (type B and C) such as Argentina, Brazil, and Wikimedia México. Likewise, those contributing less, are with Alliances Funds more focused on awareness or advocacy with important audiences such as journalists, or smaller user groups with smaller content contributions but focusing on addressing content around gender, ecology, and culture or researching new approaches.
• ESEAP accounts for 8% of content goals on Wikipedia, with Wikimedia Indonesia accounting for 80% of this. The other projects on average contribute 200 contents per grant. Several of the projects are focused on creating new content around topics that have not been represented, but also focusing on working with underrepresented groups. There are also important contributions to Wikimedia Commons with active participation around cultural and heritage contents through campaigns such as Wiki Loves Heritage and Wiki Loves Earth and Alliances Funds OpenStreetMap experimenting with street-level 360-degree quality images linking Wikidata-Commons, Wikipedia, and Wikivoyage. A majority are also contributing to Wikidata.
• South Asia, represents 1% of Wikipedia content goals in three grants. This is because the largest grant is focused on content contribution to a number of other Wikimedia projects as well as languages another is focused more on researching the value of Wikipedia as a pedagogical tool in Indian-specific contexts. 96% of Wikisource content goals are from these 2 grants in South Asia.

Wikimedia Commons

61% of grantees are planning to contribute to Commons stating an estimated goal of 1.1M contents, between improved and created articles. 80% disaggregate the data, stating whether they will be items improved or created, with a target of 869,000 new file uploads and 51,000 improved files.

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  Global map of grantees intended contribution to Wikimedia Commons (darker colours signalling larger contributions)
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  List of countries and their target for files uploaded or improved on Wikimedia Commons

Grantee type and regional variations:

Regional distribution of grantees’ targets for files uploaded or improved on Wikimedia Commons

The average contribution of those contributing to Commons is 18,000 per grant. However, it is important to see the huge variation within grants, from 20 contents to 500,000.

NWE: Represents 68% of the global contribution target. Within the region, Wikimedia Sverige (Sweden) accounts for 70% of this, largely because of its history and capacity to engage in multiple GLAM partnerships, and as an active batch editors history. This is followed by CEE which aims to contribute 12%, mostly from Ukraine as an organiser of the Wiki Loves Earth campaign.

15% of grantees aim to contribute less than 300 files. They are mostly from smaller organisations (type A) or Alliances Funds partners, that are starting to explore Commons. It also includes projects working on audiovisual content to capture the local culture, such as the Wayuu indigenous community in Colombia/Venezuela.

23 % aim to contribute 350-1,000 files. These mostly type A and B grantees from various regions (except NWE), working mainly on Wikipedia but contributing to Commons through photo competitions.

40% aim to contribute 1-10,000 files. They mostly type B and C grantees, some of whose main focus is Wikimedia Commons, and participate actively in international photo competitions. In this group, interesting innovations to look for are Wikimedia Cameroon, which is contributing 6000 Images and audio file pronunciations for words, and Wikimedia Thailand uploading high-quality 3D models.

22% aim to contribute between 10-500K are all type B and C organisations, mostly from NWE and a few more experienced grantees from MEA, CEE, SA, and LAC regions.

Wikidata    

53% of grantees are planning to contribute to Wikidata stating an estimated goal of 1.7M contents, between improved and created articles. 27% of gratees disaggregate the data, stating whether they will be items improved or created. This means 101,000 data items created and 256,000 improved.

The following graph shows the countries ranked according to their goal of improving or creating articles on Wikidata. This data is shown in comparison to the amount of funding they receive (in pink) and the % of this funding in terms of the global funding (in blue) for the top 15 contributors.

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  Global map of grantees intended contribution to Wikidata (darker colours signalling larger contributions)
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  List of countries and their target for data items created or improved on Wikidata

Grantee type and regional variations:

Regional distribution of grantees’ targets for data items created or improved on Wikidata

As with the other Wikimedia content contribution the target contribution sizes vary widely per grant, from 30 “items” to over 300K. It is currently difficult to compare data numbers given the different ways of counting contributions. This needs to be standardised to get more comparable data. For instance, some grantees count “the number of links between external identifiers and Wikidata items”, others specify that they are counting the “unique content pages created or improved, not the number of edits to each page”,  whilst others just mention “items created or improved” with no further detail. This may account for the huge variation in data.

All the following analysis has to be considered just an approximation given that many of the numbers may not be comparable.

If we look within the regions, there are few organisations contributing most of the content - for instance in ESEAP it is Wikimedia User Group New Zealand, in CEE Wikimedia Czech Republic, and in NWE, Avoin GLAM, and Wikimedia Netherlands.

The region with the most number of grants contributing to Wikidata is the MEA region (with 15 grants). The MEA region is exploring important partnerships with governmental, educational, and GLAM institutions to open valuable databases that have an important public value. There is an opportunity to document interesting Wikidata case study uses in this context. There is particular interest in connecting databases of public library resources regionally, particularly resources related to regional culture and heritage. There is also an interest in creating or translating items into local languages and experimenting with the use of Wikidata to document local knowledge, such as Igbo endangered dances and linked data to Commons files and Wikipedia articles.

However, the average number of content contributions per grant is lower than in other regions. Particularly because in many cases they are sourcing new data documenting cultural heritage rather than just connecting existing data sets. Lower contributions tend to be in grants focused more on Wikipedia and on Wikimedia Commons, but that are starting to experiment with Wikidata to show its value, for both new and existing editors, but also for partnerships.

Likewise in the ESEAP region is exploring important partnerships with governmental, educational, and GLAM institutions to open valuable databases that have an important public value. There is an opportunity to document interesting Wikidata case study uses in this context.

Types of contributions:

• There is an increase in the tendency for more grantees to use Wikidata, as a way to link this to Wikipedia and Wikimedia contributions. So it has become a key support structure for other Wikimedia projects.
• Grantees seek to build capacities to use Wikidata, rather than the number of contributions. For instance, organisations working with Libraries to include Wikidata (ie. the Global-Open Initiative Foundation in Ghana, Wikimedians of United Arab Emirates User Group). Wikidata is seen as an opportunity to open up public library resources, particularly on information about the culture and context.
• Partnerships are a key aspect of Wikidata, with grantees seeking to build partnerships with governmental, educational, and GLAM institutions to open valuable databases that have an important public value
• Innovations to look out for: Wikimedia User Group of Aotearoa New Zealand has created a Wikidata Fellowship. Some communities like the Dagbani User Group (Ghana) are focused on describing Wikidata labels in Dagbani. The Analysis & Policy Observatory (Alliances Fund grantee) is using Wikidata to upload information related to organisations and reports focused on First Peoples policies. OpenStreetMap Indonesia intended to work with youth to link Wikidata to Open Street maps to enrich knowledge about historical infrastructure. There is an opportunity to document interesting Wikidata case study uses, particularly with data that includes GLAM partnerships and addresses knowledge gaps – for instance related to gender or geographical diversity.

Other Wikimedia projects    

• A surprisingly small group of grantees are working on smaller Wikimedia projects (such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, and Wikisource), mostly newer grantees in underrepresented communities in South Asia, MEA, and LAC. They are seen as easier entry points for knowledge equity because they allow contributors to work with primary sources, such as archival documents, images, and audio-visual material. However, there are ongoing questions about the readership scope of this content and some uncertainty about future Movement-wide investments in these smaller projects.
• The MEA region accounts for a majority of content goals for Wikiquote (77%), and Incubator for new language Wikipedias (89%) and Wikivoyage (86%). CEE accounts for the majority of content on Wikibooks (59%) and Wiktionary (57%). Despite the interest in WikiSource, there are no current grantees contributing to Wikisource, at least stated in their intended metrics.  
• In LAC there are just a few smaller grantees working on Incubator, Wikivoyage and Wiktionary. Only Argentina affiliate is working on Wikisource. There are no grants focused on Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or Wikiquote.
• In South Asia: 96% of global Wikisource content goals are from 2 grants with 22,000 pages proofread. Also investing funds in improving technology for Wikisource through an Android app. There are now current grants contributing to Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wiktionary, Wikivoyage or Wikiversity.

Challenges and opportunities

Whilst contexts differ greatly it would be useful, particularly for new grantees to have a sense of what can be expected for certain types of tactics and priorities for each Wikimedia Project: for instance, a project that seeks to largely make smaller improvements to bring in newcomer editors, to a program focused more on efforts to create diverse contents in local languages or covering specific gaps. This benchmark in each region is also something that Regional Funds Committees have asked for to support their proposal review, without acting as a strict parameter but to give numbers a bit more context, comparative sense, and capture past experiences.Several newer grantees have also requested this.

There is also room for better supporting grantees during their submission and review process, to make sure that projects that do propose content contribution try to establish goals for these metrics, as it is the case with a few grant proposals.

As with contributor metrics, there are a number of challenges to improve the way these metrics are captured and this is a collective effort. Below is a list of some of the shorter-term issues that can be addressed with better guidance, support, and format adjustments, and medium terms ones that require Foundation and Grantee-wide efforts that we need to start discussing together.

List of things that could be improved

	Short term (for next funding round in 2023)		Medium term (for fiscal year 22/23)
Project	Grantee portal (Fluxx) adjustments	Grantee Metric registration and support	Collective thinking - Grantees-RFC and Foundations
Wikipedia	Provide a space to disaggregate contents per Language Wikipedias, or at least register which languages the project addresses when registering metrics.	Work with grantees to make sure they correctly disaggregate their goals per Wikimedia project. About 10% did not do so and 1:1 follow-up was necessary to get clear metrics.	Create classifications for types of content contribution to give more value to each effort and not just count the number (ie. from minor edits to rewriting whole articles with an equity lens)
Wikidata		Improve unified measurement of how contents are counted. Standardising the way contributions are counted to make the numbers comparable and also.	Think of ways to also classify contributions based on their value and use. For instance, distinguish the creation of new dataset from the migration of existing datasets recognising that they are both valuable but imply different levels of effort. Also, depending on the different ways Wikidata contributions are used by consumers or partners and the value this adds.
Commons	Provide a space to disaggregate contents per content type.	Better categorisation of types of content to compare the content-creation effort, quality, and potential use. Support grantees in making sure they describe what types of content they are going to upload or improve, as 20% do not give any descriptions when describing the metric.	Disaggregate commons uploads with some type of “quality” catagorisation.
General	Have a space to numerically  disaggregate new or improved contents or types of contents and encourage this where possible (only 30% disaggregate)	Grantees not using additional documents for this as the information is not automatically pulled on Fluxx.	Start to build regional or programmatic/tactical benchmarks for content metrics. This will also help newcomers write proposals. As a guide, not as a requirement. Working with international campaign organisers to report  metrics related to the international organising and support, rather than the contents produced by campaigns themselves as these are also counted by participating countries, many also grantee partners.