Grants:PEG/UG TH/WLM 2014/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/UG TH/WLM 2014.

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

Activities

Advertisement of WLM2014 & WMTH

Letter to schools

Exhibition at MRT Metro mall

Registered a domain name wmth.org.
Sent 158 advertisement letters to schools and university around the country.
Displayed photos from WLMTH2013 at MRT metro mall.
Various other media coverage e.g. Praew Magazine article in November, pantip.com announcements

Facilitating WLM2014 core activities in Thailand

Certificates and trophies

Prizes/souvenirs were sent by post to all over the country/all over the world

Updated monument IDs in WLM2013 submissions and created a new list.
Created webpage for WLMTH2014 and answered questions during the competition period.
Facilitated upload campagin and coordinated judging process.
- All submission (September 2014)
- 1st round (10 Oct)
- 2nd round (16 Oct)
- 3rd round (24 Oct)
Distributed prizes to participants and souvenirs to volunteers, juries and partners.

Lessons learned

What worked well?

We generally delivered what we promised and completed the contest successfully.

Central notice appears to be the most efficient method for advertisement of this project.
We have made good local partners for future collaboration/projects.

What didn't work?

Compared to 2013, we have significantly smaller number of uploaders. We have a number of theories for this: (a.) lengthy instructions may discourage new people to join (b.) we did less work on online advertisement (c.) the contest information page is only in Thai and (d.) the scope of the contest is reduced to gazetted monuments only.
Compared to 2013, we have smaller number of winners that we cannot contact, but we still have a few of them.
We still have the issue of what counts as an ancient monument. Juries may interpret this differently as well.
We keep getting photos from popular and easily accessible monuments. It may be too many and redundant.
Though the structure/intention of WLM/grant application are good but we have experienced a number of issues in this international contest. We summarize the issue as (a) time-consuming/resource-intensive tasks (b) neglected Wiki cultures and (c) unrewarding returns.
- time-consuming/resource-intensive tasks The structure of the contest requires a number of tasks to be done.
  1. Monument list business is a very important entry requirement. We created new list of about 8,000 entries in 2013. In 2014, we have revised the whole list and changed monument IDs on photo uploaded in 2013. So, the work in 2014 was even more than 2013. Precious volunteer hours were spent on this to conform with the international team requirement.
  2. There are other administrative tasks involving with the international contest. We spent a significant effort on translating the uploadCampaign interface, bilingual pages and forms for the contest in 2013. (In 2014, we make the contest page in Thai only.) We also require grant application and general coordination with the international team. There are requests at short notice and volunteers have to be available to complete the requests. Written English skill is not common among our volunteers in Thailand. This kind of work is considered relatively expensive task for us though in the eyes of developed nation our labour is generally cheap.
- neglected Wiki cultures It appears that we are focusing too much on the competition and the ease of entry for participants. Do we really need that many people and photos if they don't understand our Wiki cultures?
  1. The reviewing and judging process is done predominantly by a small cohort of volunteers and juries. The mechanism is not scalable and ignore the potential of the contest participants.
  2. It is difficult to see direct and immediate impact on Wikipedia (or sister project apart from common). We are yet to understand the correlation of number of photos and other Wiki indicators.
- unrewarding return We paid the price so that we could enjoy the privilege of the international contest. However, it appears that the return does not weight up with the effort spent.
  1. Lack of PR: It is very attractive to say that we are participating in the biggest photo contest in the world certified by Guinness World Records and we are mentioned in the BBC news. However, this is not the case for 2013-14. We can not lean on the international team to do this for us.
  2. Unattractive/limited international prizes: Photo contests in Thailand normally have a high monetary prize. For a similar competition (ancient monument contest by Thai Department of fine art), the 1st prize was 100,000THB. We need some figures for PR purpose but the value of international prize has significantly diminished in 2014.
  3. Delay in key aspects of the competition: Though the national team has tried its best to deliver everything on time. Many things were behind schedule because of the international side of the contest. PR campaign was delayed because we waited for prize information. Request to change redirection of th.wikilovesmonuments.org to a proper page was not processed for weeks. Submission start time was delayed because of technical glitch. Final international result announcement was also delayed. In 2013, we got our international winner emailing us every week or two to ask for help. It was not until the end of March 2014 where he received his award of EUR100 for amazon.com. It seems that the delay problem is chronic and inevitable in our movement.

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

Prizes should be more attractive for the intended audience. (Doesn't need to be more expensive!) Prizes from sponsors should be sorted out before sending out PR materials. Chance of winning should also be advertised, e.g. one in six uploaders of WLMTH2014 got a prize. This is our strong point for next year.
Design a more effective workflow for first and subsequent uploads.
- Uploaders should take less than a few minutes to read overall rules and should be encouraged to come back to an announcement page for results.
- Email contact is a must. We should explore technical tool to enforce this.
Let juries make a resolution regarding eligibility criteria before the commencement of the contest/sending out PR materials.
Fine tune the rewarding schemes to encourage people to take photos of monuments not already on commons.
Make announcement long before September so that people have plenty of time to collect good photos.
The nature of w:en:Wikipedia:Wiki_Loves_X contest is a good one. However, we should move on from the photo contests. As we have invested a lot on the infrastructure for WLM, WMTH should continue it in the coming year but (a.) deprioritized from the top of WMTH agenda and (b.) prepare to work with no or limited support from the international team e.g. running our own site wmth.org and write our own grant proposal. We should also create new national contest e.g. Wiki Loves Schools, Wiki Loves Temples, Wiki Loves LAA "local administrative area", Wiki Loves local attraction/product where issues form WLM are being addressed:
- Contest participants should peer-review others submission. This would make the contest scalable and reduce workload of volunteers and juries.
- The contest is directly related to outcome on Thai Wikipedia e.g. photo+content.
- Administrative work should be cut to minimal. (1) Consolidate grant applications for Wiki Loves X and associated tasks. (2) Physical letters or physical meetings may still be needed but a part-time person should be hired to help on a day-to-day basis.
- Online training must be provided to participants as Wikipedia editing require understanding of guidelines/policies and technical aspect of the code.
- Gender gap should be addressed in the contest e.g. Set entry requirement to be a team of three that includes both male and female participants. We are guaranteed to see at least 33% female participation. Also, women may be able to contribute better in a team environment.
- If the contest works well, we can expand it to other countries. This may work for a country of a similar profile e.g. developing countries/global south/similar education system.
- Local discussion for Thai Wiki Loves X can be found at w:th:วิกิพีเดีย:ศาลาชุมชน/อภิปราย/Wiki Loves X in Thailand 2015. The grant application page is also in its drafting stage at Grants:PEG/UG TH/Wiki Loves X in Thailand 2015.

Learning patterns

Outcomes and impact

Outcomes

Provide the original project goal here.

To produce freely licensed images of heritage sites and monuments of Thailand
To make Thai people aware of the Wikimedian community in Thailand and consider contributing to various Wikimedia projects.
To secure partnership for WMTH and strengthen user group to be ready for a larger project.

Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 short paragraphs.

We have achieved our project goal:

We received about 4,287 images from 121 uploaders during the campaign period.
We have a reasonable present in the media during the campaign period.
We had increased the number of partners significantly.

Progress towards targets and goals

Project metrics

Project metrics	Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Images We expect to receive at least 1,000 files uploads. We expect at least 10% of the uploads are quality images and will be used in various project over a period of time.	4,287 images uploaded	Target reached
People We expect to have at least 10 volunteers (3 core volunteers) in the organising team. We expect to have contribution from at least 100 participants (mostly new Wikimedians).	We had about 4-5 core volunteers and 121 uploaders	Target reached
WMTH This would be the first activity under the name of WMF-recognised user group Wikimedians in Thailand. We expect to have at least 3 local partners (2 old and 1 new). We expect to get coverage in the national media outlet and have our advertising materials sent to schools and universities.	We continued our relationship with 2 old partners (pantip.com & Siam Society) and made 3 new partnerships (dtac, BMN-MRT, CCHT).	Target reached

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.

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	10-100 persons	involved as volunteers, juries, participants
2. # of new editors	~100 persons	estimated from number of uploaders
3. # of individuals involved	100-200 persons	participants (uploaders) + WMTH (volunteers) + partners (5 organizations)
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	4,287 images added to common	from contest statistics
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	190	Using the Glamrous tool 190 images have been added to articles so far (178 distinct images), which is 4.15% of all images in the category.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	12687.0 MBytes [1]	according to WLM stat tool

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

YES. This is the only yearly activity of WMTH. It makes Thai contributors unite for international competition.

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?

WLMTH increases participation on Wikimedia Commons.

Option B: How did you improve quality on one or more Wikimedia projects?

WLMTH may indirectly improve quality of Wikimedia projects by making images available for uses in articles/pages.

Option C: How did you increase the reach (readership) of one or more Wikimedia projects?

WLMTH increase readership on Wikimedia Commons.

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 -- sent on Thu, 25 Dec 2014 14:59:41 +0700

Expenses

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	Promotion	Color printing	1 A4 Page	160	4	640	9,000	THB	13AUG14
2	Promotion	Black & White photocopies	1 A4 Page	160	.35	56	9,000	THB	13AUG14
3	Promotion	Envelopes	1 Pack	6	15	90	9,000	THB	14AUG14
4	Promotion	Postage				570	9,000	THB	14AUG14
5	Promotion	Domain name				2,205.17	9,000	THB	14AUG14
6	Promotion	Postage				42	9,000	THB	19AUG14
7	Promotion	Fuel				1,260	9,000	THB	04SEP14
8	Promotion	Postage				34	9,000	THB	11SEP14
9	Awards	1st Prize				10,000	20,000	THB	05NOV14
10	Awards	3rd Prize				1,000	20,000	THB	10NOV14
11	Awards	Trophies				5,150	20,000	THB	10NOV14
12	Promotion	Food & bus ticket				748	9,000	THB	16NOV14
13	Awards	4th prize + bank fee				1,012	20,000	THB	17NOV14
14	Promotion	Postage				1,669	9,000	THB	18NOV14
15	Promotion	Packaging service				1,000	9,000	THB	18NOV14
16	Awards	Correcting a trophy				200	20,000	THB	18NOV14
17	Promotion	Postage				115	9,000	THB	26NOV14

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission): THB35,000.- was approved but THB34,496.32 was received after bank fees/commissions.

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): THB35,000.- was approved but THB34,496.32 was received after bank fees. [WMF transferred USD1,114.71 via US ACH]

Total amount spent on this project: THB25,791.17

Total amount of Project and Event grant funds spent on this project: THB25,791.17

Are there additional sources that funded any part of this project? List them here.: No other source of fund. Prizes were given to us by local partners. The most valuable one is smart phones by dtac. (10 phones, total retail value is THB29,900.-)

Remaining funds

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.)

THB8,705.15 (~USD265)

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.

Request for reallocation

We would like to reallocation the remaining fund for Thai Wikipedia 100K-Article project. (See the local page w:th:วิกิพีเดีย:โครงการวิกิแสนบทความกับวิกิพีเดียภาษาไทย.) The project has been running since September 2014 and will be continuing until we have 100,000 articles on Thai Wikipedia -- ~ late 2015 or early 2016 -- about 1 year from now. We normally give 3 prizes per month for users that write most articles, make most major edits and a separate prize is given to new users. The budget are as follows: (1USD is approximately 30THB)

Postage/packaging THB200 per month [3 prizes] -- projected total cost for 12 months = THB2,400.-
An acrylic trophy costs about THB800 each. We will give this out every three months as a prize to encourage long-term contribution. -- projected total cost for 12 months = THB3,200.-
Wikimedia merchandise (t-shirt, pin, stickers, etc) & Incidentals (Printing/local t-shirt production/Travel/Communication/ - postage can be very expensive if editors reside overseas - this occurs sometimes.) : We usually pay THB1,000 for customs/tax/duty on the receiving end for each shipment of Wikimedia merchandise. We may get this reimbursed if we wished to but we can use this budget to absorb the cost as well. -- projected total cost for 12 months = THB3,000.-

Total cost = THB8,600.- Prizes will be given to ~36 editors and we expect that 100-1,000 editors would be actively involved during this campaign period of ~ 1 year. (We advertise this project on new user welcome page and this may encourage new people to be active. We may expand further to site notice if we have awards/trophies.)