Grants:PEG/Kruusamägi/Minority Translate, phase II/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Project and Event grant approved in FY Pending has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:PEG/Kruusamägi/Minority Translate, phase II.

You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email grants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Project status

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?: YES

Is your project completed?: YES

Activities and lessons learned

Presentation "Minority Translate: new approach for article creation" in Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015.

Activities

A lot of meetings were organized to discuss the project.

The project can be divided into 2 branches...

Application development (i.e. coding)

Final application consists of 35+k lines of code.

A lot of new functionality was added to improve the user experience.

The article download, storage and upload engine was completely overhauled, improving user feedback.
Snippets allow for quick text insertion, coupled with variable substitution.
Wikitext syntax highlight.
Fully configurable autocomplete function simplifies adding tedious wikitext elements (gallery, math, category etc).
Autocompletion is also available for wikilinks and provides a preview of the linked article text.
Pull functionality allows to copy paste articles while translating wikilinks and templates.
Fully configurable lookup from online dictionaries.
Plugin framework for spellers and a Hunspell spell check plugin.
Support for incubators.
Fully customizable and autocomplete capable symbol insertion.
Statistics module update.
Quick start allows new users to better comprehend the application.
Some general UI improvements.
Apertium based translation.
Article recommendations for translation.

Testing the program in Karelian language.

Promotional activities (+ general project management)

New designs were made (logo, icons, etc).

Manuals were written (with main focus on quick-start).

Interface translation (program is provided with 4 interface languages).

Tool was introduced in Wikimedia CEE Meeting and in Finno-Ugric wikiseminar (there were also some unsuccessful bids like Wikimania 2015 and 7th Language & Technology Conference in Poznan).

Personal letters were sent to potential users/testers.

There have been talks to University of Tartu and University of Tromsø language researchers.

Some videos were prepared about the use of program (hopefully they will be published within next few weeks).

Lessons learned

What worked well?

The development process proceeded as planned and suffered only minor delays. All required features were implemented.

Meetups were an excellent source of user feedback.

What didn't work?

Although people showed interest during meetups, not many of them ended up using the application.

The lack of an active userbase makes it hard to test the application and it was difficult to get any feedback even from the users.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

It is really difficult to influence people to try a new thing. We believe that a more aggressive advertising campaign could result in more users.

Better definition for main functionality and additional capabilities. Unclear situation there delayed the start of promotion. It could had started earlier.

Learning patterns

Outcomes and impact

Workshop with MT tool in Finno-Ugric wikiseminar 2015.

Outcomes

Provide the original project goal here.: The first goal is to make the tool more powerful by expanding and improving on its feature set. The second goal was to expand the userbase of some smaller wikis, by promoting the tool.

Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 short paragraphs.: All the planned features were implemented. Some additional features were also introduced. The program is now fully formed are ready for wider use. There is a possibility to add plugins, that makes the program very flexible.; Different promotional activities have been carried out and the applications promotion will continue.

Progress towards targets and goals

Project metrics

Project metrics	Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
functionality is implemented	>100%	all the planned functions and some new ones were implemented
100+ users have tested the program	~30%	getting new users has been difficult and there were some setbacks (like the lack of Internet in Finno-Ugric seminar and also the unavailability of tiny Finno-Ugric languages in the Incubator)

Global Metrics

We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees. In addition to the measures of success for your specific program (in above section), please use the table below to let us know how your project contributed to the Global Metrics. We know that not all projects will have results for each type of metric, so feel free to put "0" where necessary.

Next to each required metric, list the actual outcome achieved through this project.
Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome. For example, if you were funded for an edit-a-thon which resulted in 0 new images, your explanation might be "This project focused solely on participation and articles written/improved, the goal was not to collect images."

For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics.

MT usage statistics have been brought out here.

Note 1: from Oct 2014 to Jan 2015 the server didn't worked and we have no tranlation information from that period.

Note 2: Program development started in March 2014 and phase I was completed in April 2014. So the actual start date is April 2014.

Note 3: it is possible to make your edits without them being recorded to the statistics page (opt-out in the preferences).

NB! It is too early to judge the impact of the tool.

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	?	we haven't looked into the activity of editors beyond their use of tool
2. # of new editors	?	we haven't looked into the activity of editors beyond their use of tool
3. # of individuals involved	19	users who have saved edits with the program based on statistics page
4a. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	0	not in the scope of project
4b. # of new images/media uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (Optional)	0	not in the scope of project
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	215+	based on statistics page with some months of data missing
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	?	we haven't looked into the bytecount

Learning question: Did your work increase the motivation of contributors, and how do you know?

Users have expressed positive emotions towards the tool and said that they are interested of using it.

"It's like content translation on steroids!" -- User:Sky Harbor

There has also been one active user, who has used it in a completely different way. Not to translate articles, but to check articles and categories. Bit more research on how users actually use the thing might be necessary.

Impact

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic priorities?

Option A: How did you increase participation in one or more Wikimedia projects?

There is now a tool to speed up article creation and it is being marketed to a wider crowd of people. It is yet early to tell, if that will have significant effect on participation, but we are hoping for the best.

Reporting and documentation of expenditures

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grants at wikimedia dot org, according to the guidelines here? Answer "Yes" or "No".: YES

Expenses

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. Review the instructions here.

Expenses based on Grants:PEG/Kruusamägi/Minority Translate, phase II#Budget:

Number	Category	Item description	Unit	Number of units	Actual cost per unit	Actual total	Budgeted total	Currency	Notes
1	Program development	Purchase of equipment	1	1	1315.20	1315.20	1500 (+2.3%)	€	...
2	Program development	Wages + taxes	1	1	150.00	150.00	1500 (+2.3%)	€	...
3	Promotion costs	Purchase of equipment	1	1	1031.99	1031.99	1000 (-3.2%)	€	...
4	Other (webserver)	Backend development and server configuration	1	1	350.00	350.00	350 (-0.4%)	€	...
5	Other (paperwork)	copying and scanning	1	1	1.40	1.40	350 (-0.4%)	€	...

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission): 2850 €

Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission, this total will be the same as the total project budget if PEG is your only funding source): 2850 €

Total amount spent on this project: 2848.59 €

Total amount of Project and Event grant funds spent on this project: 2850 €

Are there additional sources that funded any part of this project? List them here.: --

Remaining funds

Are there any grant funds remaining?: Answer YES or NO.; NO

Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.)

1.41

If funds are remaining they must be returned to WMF, reallocated to mission-aligned activities, or applied to another approved grant.

Please state here if you intend to return unused funds to WMF, submit a request for reallocation, or submit a new grant request, and then follow the instructions on your approved grant submission.

We do not plan to return the remaining euro and a half to WMF.