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Grants:PEG/SMarks/Pollard Memorial Library and UMass Lowell Wikipedia Edit-A-Thons/Report

< Grants:PEG | SMarks/Pollard Memorial Library and UMass Lowell Wikipedia Edit-A-Thons


Report accepted
This report for a Project and Event grant approved in FY 2014-15 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.
  • 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

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

Yes

Is your project completed?

Yes

Activities and lessons learned

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Activities

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  • December 7, 2014: Session 1 - Downtown Lowell themed edit-a-thon at Pollard Memorial Library
  • January 25, 2015: Session 2 - The Acre neighborhood themed edit-a-thon at Pollard Memorial Library
  • February 21 2015: Session 3 - The Highlands neighborhood themed edit-a-thon at UMass Lowell Library
  • March 28, 2015: Session 4 - Pawtucketville neighborhood themed edit-a-thon at UMass Lowell Library


Lessons learned

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What worked well?
  1. Personal invites and building relationships with people who were interested. Aside from the final session, most of the people who created new account returned for a second session.
  2. Using Lowell Project page (LibGuide) as a central organizing tool was effective. With 4 events over 4 months, it served as a central organizing point to help train and organize. We could have used it more, but the Wiki event pages got lost and weren’t very helpful for new users.
  3. Having food gave natural breaks for conversation and learning more about Wikipedia in general.
  4. Using computer labs, especially at UML, took the pressure off participants to come with their own computers. It provided an enclosed space that made it easy to identify who was participating and who could help.
  5. Promoting specifically to the Honors College on campus generated more campus participants than our general promotion on campus.
What didn't work?
  1. Open invitation to the public didn’t generate much interest. Two curious onlookers came to the first event, but left without editing.
  2. Promoting to the Boston group only brought people to the first session.
What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?
  1. Go to a number of Pollard library events (such as book clubs) and give invitation to edit-a-thon at beginning of event. And then give them an opportunity to ask me questions at end of the event.
  2. Go to local community groups with a lot of immigrants and bi-lingual members. Recruit them to work on the non-English Wikipedia
  3. Work with specific professors on campus to develop assignments around the edit-a-thon theme.
  4. Just before our first session we discovered a social media conference through the local television station. We promoted briefly, but next time we should present at the conference and run an edit-a-thon as part of that event.
  5. We would do them less frequently. Running one every month was a lot of work. Once we were more comfortable doing them, it may make sense, but it was more work than we realized.
  6. The length of time was something we should have adjusted. The events felt just a bit too long at 6 hours. We would have been better at about 5 hours.
  7. Promote as an Open House style event to make clear expectations that people need to spend the entire day at the event.

Learning patterns

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Outcomes and impact

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Outcomes

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Provide the original project goal here.
Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 short paragraphs.
  • We reached almost 75% of our goal to train 20 editors.
  • We increased participation in WikiProject Massachusetts - Lowell by getting 14 editors, 10 active editors and 4 new editors, to edit entries in the project.
  • All of our new editors were women who were local editors.
  • The majority of our participants were women: 9 women and 5 men.
  • Most of our local editors returned for a second or third event, continuing the work they started at previous events.
  • Three of our participants were students at UMass Lowell.

Progress towards targets and goals

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Project metrics

Project metrics Target outcome Achieved outcome Explanation
Attendance records indicating the number of people who attend the edit-a-thons and come for multiple events: ideally 5-10 people per event. Yes We had between 6-8 people at each event.
Statistics on accounts created by those participating in edit-a-thons: ideally 5 new accounts per event. no We had a total of 4 new editors attend and 3 created accounts.
Statistics on entries edited or added by participants during edit-a-thons to identify which Lowell, MA project pages were edited or created. yes See statistics elsewhere


Global Metrics

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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.

  1. Next to each required metric, list the actual outcome achieved through this project.
  2. 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.

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. # of active editors involved 10
2. # of new editors 4
3. # of individuals involved 14
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages 0 The goal was not to add new media.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects 20
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects 53866 Breakdown: 72860 added and -18994 removed
Learning question
Did your work increase the motivation of contributors, and how do you know?
  • Discussions during the event indicated that some editors felt "ownership" of articles and would continue editing them after the edit-a-thons. Three of the four new editors created accounts and we can see their contributions.  Since the last event one is working on a new article in her sandbox. Our one anonymous user was not interested in creating an account, but attended three of the four sessions.

Impact

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What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic priorities? Option C: How did you increase the reach (readership) of one or more Wikimedia projects?

Reporting and documentation of expenditures

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This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation

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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

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Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. Review the instructions here.
Number Category Item description Unit Number of units Actual cost per unit Actual total Budgeted total Currency Notes
1 Food & Beverages Dunkin Donuts Box O'Joe 1 5 $15.99 $79.95 $103.92 USD After first session, only got 1 box
2 Food & Beverages Dunkin Donuts Dozen Donuts 1 box 5 boxes $7.49 $30.47 $27.96 USD First session, got 2 as a result of special deal- came with $6.98 discount.
3 Food & Beverages Dunkin Donuts Box 50 munchkins 1 box 0 boxes 0 0 $27.96 USD We decided this would give us too much food.
4 Food & Beverages Dunkin Donuts bagles and cream cheese Half dozen 4 $13.99 $54.00 $48.00 USD First session, got discount to $12.03.
5 Food & Beverages Large Pizza 1 5 $6.95 - $14.50 $59.49 $180.00 USD Took advantage of specials. Includes $2 delivery fee
6 Food & Beverages Small Pizza 1 3 $4.99 - $9.20 $22.30 0 USD
7 Food & Beverages 1 Medium Tea 1 2 $1.95 $3.90 0 USD allowed person to request specific beverage
8 Food & Beverages Breakfast sandwich 1 3 $3.39 $10.17 0e USD allowed person to request specific food
9 Food & Beverages Large Fries 1 1 $4.25 $4.25 0 USD allowed person to order specific item
10 Food & Beverages Water- 1 per event 1 case 5 $1.50 - $3.35 $10.53 $16.00 USD your notes here
11 Food & Beverages Soda- 2 per event 1 4 $3.69 - $4.40 $20.09 $24.00 USD includes bottle deposits- $8 total
12 Food & Beverages additional soda 1 can 3 $1.00 $3.00 0 USD allowed people to request specific soda
13 Food & Beverages Veggie Platters for 8-10 people 1 platter 4 $5.99 $23.24 $76.00 USD
14 Food & Beverages Fruit Platters for 8-10 people 1 platter 4 $2.99 - $17.99 $39.75 $18.99 USD We incorrectly estimated cost of fruit platters
15 Food & Beverages Cookies 1 box 3 $9.50 $21.99 $80.00 USD Third box cost $2.99
16 Supplies Name Tags 1 pack 0 0 0 $9.00 USD We found a pack in library supplies
17 Supplies Cutlery 1 pack 2 $1.69 - $3.99 $5.52 $8.00 USD 1 box came with 4% discount
18 Supplies Plates 1 pack 2 $3.49 $6.70 $25.00 USD came with 4% discount
19 Supplies Napkins 1 1 $1.59 $1.53 $5.00 USD came with 4% discount
Total project budget (from your approved grant submission)
$649.83
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)
$649.83
Total amount spent on this project
$396.88
Total amount of Project and Event grant funds spent on this project
$396.88
Are there additional sources that funded any part of this project? List them here.
no

Remaining funds

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Are there any grant funds remaining?
Yes
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.)
$253.00
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.
return unused funds to WMF


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