Grants:Project/CEE Spring User Group/CEE Spring 2021

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Project Grants

CEE Spring 2021

summaryCEE Spring is an international article writing contest organised by Wikimedia Central and Eastern Europe from around 30 affiliates.

targetWikipedia in 30+ languages

amount11732 USD / 9700 EUR

grantee• Papuass• Philip Kopetzky

advisor• Annemarie Buchmann (WMAT)• Manfred Werner (WMAT)

contact• Mārtiņš Bruņenieks (Latvia)• Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (Poland)• Philip Kopetzky (Austria)

volunteer• 212.133.220.125• Pistontsl

organization• Wikimedians of CEE with fiscal sponsorship from Wikimedia Austria

this project needs...

volunteer

Friendly space expectations

This Wikimedia Foundation grant has a fiscal sponsor. Wikimedia Österreich administered the grant on behalf of Wikimedia Community User Group CEE Spring.

Project idea

Note: Because of the very early grant application for this project, the pages linked here may have not been created yet. This will be done by the end of February at the latest for a planned project start on March 21st.

Wikimedia CEE Spring 2021 is a yearly event (since 2015) organised by Wikimedians and Wikipedians from the region of Central and Eastern Europe with the aim to support article creation about topics from every country and region in Central and Eastern Europe on every Wikipedia. This correlates with the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation to "empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally." While we will not be changing the contest drastically, we will focus on changing up a few things, so that people keep being motivated to write about the CEE region in the participating countries and around the world. Showing off diversity within the CEE region, focusing on minorities and showing off the heritage that connects us all within the CEE region will also be one of the main activities this year.

Wikimedia CEE Spring aims at joining local forces of free knowledge to accumulate and distribute information about history, culture, traditions, and people in every corner of the region to support mutual acknowledgment and understanding and to increase the quantity and quality of free knowledge available about the CEE region globally.

The event itself will take place from the 21st of March until the end of May. During this time period there will be an individual article competition on at least 25 related Wikipedias concentrating on creating and significantly editing articles about history, culture, and notable people of each and every participating country from the region. For more information about the article topics, please consult the structure page.

Local competitions will be organised by local teams and in every community the competition will have a slightly different face to take into account the local context. Contact data of the local coordinators can be found on the contacts page. They are also subscribed to a mailing list at Ceespring-localorganiserswikimedia.bg. In the last three editions it was proved that most volunteering organisers from the different communities carried on the tasks for the contest until the end. Local teams present lists of articles about their country which they would like to see in every possible language in the world and editors from all other places create and significantly edit those articles, whereby participants can write about any topic, connected with the other participating countries and regions in Central and Eastern Europe.

Project goals and impact

The goals and metrics have been adjusted to reflect last year's results - while international participation outside of CEE is still something worth expanding, there is also potential in being more inclusive with small and minority languages in the CEE region. The methods used to achieve these goals are also mentioned in the "project idea" chapter.

Quantitative

Outside factors like a worldwide pandemic or revolutions in the CEE region might occur again, therefore it is difficult to project any total numbers with any certainty. We have used the the metrics from last year, but are expecting more participation because the pandemic will continue well into the year.

Should

These goals have been set based on expectations based on quantitative data analysis from the international organising team and last year's results and will be used as a measure of success. Despite having over-achieved on some of the numbers last year, the total numbers are caused to local circumstances and are therefore difficult to manage on an international level.

• Total number of participants from CEE: 450
• Total number of participants worldwide: 550
• Total number of female participants from CEE: 20% (90)
• Total number of female participants worldwide: 20% (110)
• 40% of all newly created and significantly edited biographies are about women
• At least 20 new articles on topics of every CEE community participating
  • Achieved by adding international prizes for every editor who manages to write articles on all CEE communities, which will be more emphasised this year. The lower number of articles on every CEE community is based on the issue that some communities lack the proper English article base to provide enough articles to translate, which only gets lower when adding minority languages this year

Could

These goals have been set based on qualitative estimations by the international organising team.

• 10% of the participants in all countries are new users
• At least 3 new editors in every language version of Wikipedia with less than 70 regular editors

Strategic

• Closing the content gender gap (correlates with the quantitative goal about biographies about women)
• Adding more content on minority groups in the CEE region and expanding the list of topics in order to diversify the content created
• Further development of the regional partnership Wikimedia Central and Eastern Europe

Project plan

Activities

Tell us how you'll carry out your project. What will you and other organizers spend your time doing? What will you have done at the end of your project? How will you follow-up with people that are involved with your project?

We will continue popularising the event via Facebook, but have stopped writing separate posts on the blog www.ceespring.eu, since it showed to have little impact when we stopped writing last year. Via the statistics, which are run mostly via PetScan, social media and the blog we will steer the participating communities so that the goals can be reached. The international organisation team will write posts directed at active Wikipedians and possible new editors.

We wish to use prize funds of up to 400 Euro per community to help us narrow down the focus of the editors in reaching those aims. By awarding prizes in certain categories we can ensure the writing of articles in the categories, chosen by each local organiser – e.g. there can be prizes for the largest number of articles about women (to close the content gender gap) on different wikis, prizes for the largest number of created articles on every wiki, prizes for excellent and good articles where applicable, as well as prizes for the best new editors on different wikis. The local organisers know their communities best, so they will be free to choose how they will reach the joint goals of the project. At the same time they will have international support if they wish to use it, although in recent years this has also had reduced because of the experience of local organisers and affiliates organising CEE Spring themselves via staff.

We are pleased to see that more and more groups in the CEE region have started to include CEE Spring in their annual budgets, reducing the costs for the international project budget. As of 2021, the balance is about 50/50 in terms of affiliates with their own CEE Spring budgets to affiliates who still derive their prize money from the international budget.

We also wish to use 500 Euro for prizes on international level in order to incentivise certain project goals, depending on how well or how badly those project goals are being met by a certain date. Mostly this is used for users who have written articles about every community participating, and other achievements we would want to highlight but do not fall into the local contest frame.

While we cannot measure the number of good, excellent and featured articles, because this distinguishment does not exist on some Wikipedias, we will advise local organisers to have special prize categories for the best articles on their Wikipedia.

Wikimedia Austria will be the payment processor for the grant on the international level, based on the large size of the chapter, their experience in handling grants, and the fact that being in the EU would reduce money transfer taxes to some of the participating countries. The administrative costs for this project are based on the work hours invested by Wikimedia Austria last year. Wikimedia Austria would process the grant based on the following basic rules.

New Activities for 2021

In 2020 the #femWikiRAINBOW #checkInEditON was an experimental activity following the official competition period of WM CEE SPRING in an attempt to address content and participation gaps, pandemic urgencies and experiments in collaborative learning methods and work. This included developing modification to rules and selecting the articles to be translated by compiling content or updating the existing Wikipedia pages.

Previous WM CEE Spring editions included sub-contest (CEE Women), some language-national lists had sub-lists of people who were from CEE as in-region immigrants and some had general international category (Wikimedia technology)... We would experiment based on these models-practices in 2021 in that this also regards the Wikimedia 2030 movement strategy and UCoC agenda that address social and ethical values. To develop this collectively we will try to do 2 basic preparatory research events and 2 post-event analysis of reflection/evaluation/planning. Participants and guests would be commissioned contributions in thematic sessions of addressing:

1. sex(uality) and gender justice
2. racism and xenophobia.

The topics will be discussed in a brief online webinar with prominent Wikimedians from: ART+FEMINISM, AfroCROWD, les sans pagEs, Whose Knowledge?, exPatYUGOdiasporas...Subsequently, a work session will take place to allow the participants to articulate their competition goals and principles and to draw up an article list (to be included in the respective national lists?) for increased regional relevance. After the end of Spring 2021, there would be a follow-up to reflect and evaluate. These participatory research and reflection activities include producing a list / baseline / map of prominent people, collectives, and organisations across several countries and fields.

-InfoWebinars--PlanningWorksessions----SPRING-2021----Evaluation&PlanningWorksessions-

We see webinars + worksessions as an important part of the outreach and coordination efforts among diverse groups and individuals across the CEE region. These will be used to outreach and pull-in marginalised and/or under-represented participants for potential regional collaboration, as it is likely that most of the members will meet for the first time in a shared online space and most without any links to the existing local or thematic Wikimedia affiliates, thus initiating a transition in the local environments to bring them more in alignment with the global movement for the first time.

Rules on international level

1. CEE Spring 2021 is a set of local contests, however internationally coordinated.
2. Local contests are organized in a way to select winners before the 30th of June 2021, with the reimbursement process open until late November 2021.
3. In order to join CEE Spring 2021, an affiliate or community:
   1. selects one person as the coordinator; this person is ready to reveal to the Wikimedia Austria office their full name, contact address and bank account number in order to conduct money transfers
   2. prepares the set of rules of local contest and documents them on Meta.
   3. prepares (preferably together with their community) a list of articles (roughly 100) in ~10 categories on their community to translate/create before 15th March 2021.
   4. decides about the method of selection of local winners, however it must be clearly defined.
   5. presents to Wikimedia Austria originals or scanned copies of the invoices, for which they get reimbursed or provide an account in an online shop with a full shopping basket, so that only the payment details need be added by the payment processor. The shop must be capable of providing an invoice.

Risks

Risk matrix

Risk	Number	Description
Simultaneous organisation of other article writing contests	R1	The simultaneous realisation of further article writing contests could lead to reduced participation, which would lead to the reducing of the number of created or significantly edited articles, as well as to lower quality articles.
Burnout / pulling out of organisers due to other obligations	R2	Due to the high intrinsic motivation project organisers could overestimate their energy and get burned out. This could lead to a missing local organiser or more work for the international coordination team.
Lack of financing of prizes	R3	Lack of financial rewards would make it harder for organisers to channel the efforts of participants in direction of the goals of the project, e.g. a number of excellent and good articles, number of articles, even distribution of articles and closing of the content gender gap

Risk probability

Risk probability was estimated on the scale “very low - rather low - rather high - very high”

Risk	Probability	Damage
R1	high	moderate
R2	rather high	rather high
R3	low	rather high

Measures

Risk	Preventive measures	Corrective measures
R1	The coverage of the contest via Facebook will be used to draw the attention of the participants and engage them in CEE Spring.	For communities with intensive schodule of article writing contests, we will think of specific ideas for creative, mutually supportive ways to combine different contests and seek synnergy with these, rather then opposition.
R2	Whenever possible, responsibility will be split among a group of people, so that too much workload is not being put on individual persons. The athmosphere, even in situations of urgency and higher pressure, shall be maintained friendly and respectful.	New local and international organisers can be recruited during the project, not only due to burnout, but also as a way to empower and integrate more people.
R3	The Grant Advisory Committee will be presented a well done grant proposal.	Chapters and User Groups will be asked to search for local sponsors and find immaterial ways to express their appreciation for the participants.

Budget

How you will use the funds you are requesting? List bullet points for each expense. (You can create a table later if needed.) Don’t forget to include a total amount, and update this amount in the Probox at the top of your page too!

Item	Cost by unit (€)	Number	Total (€)	Total (USD)	Comments
Prizes on international level	500	1	500	603	For special prizes at international level, which will include a "Hall of Fame" for users who write an article about every participating country/community
Prizes on local level	400	16 local budgets	6400	7712	16 budgets for local prizes, handled by Wikimedia Austria for purposes of this grant according to the rules above (some chapters and user groups choose to use their own budgets for buying the prizes; APG funded affiliates will buy the prizes from their own budgets). Last year 30 communities took part, with 15 actually asked for reimbursements or buying prizes. We will not transfer money between local budgets and will return unused funds. Affiliates funded by the international grant will most likely be Azerbaijani Wikimedians UG, Wikimedians of Bashkortostan UG, Wikimedia Community Belarus, Wikimedians of Bulgaria, Esperanto kaj Libera Scio, Wikimedians of Erzya language User Group, Wikimedia Community UG Greece, Wikimedians of Latvia UG, Wikimedians of Moldova and Romania, Wikimedia Russia, Wikimedia Community UG Turkey, Wikimedians of Slovakia, Wikipedians of Slovenia User Group, Wikimedia Community of Tatar language User Group and Croatian Wikipedia. Funded by their own budgets include APG and sAPG affiliates like Wikimedia Armenia, Wikimedia Austria, Wikimedians of Albanian Language UG, Wikimedia Serbia, Wikimedia Ukraine, Wikimedia Polska, Wikimedia Community User Group Georgia and North Macedonia's Shared Knowledge
Bank transfer costs and risk	30	10 transfers	300	362	10 money transfers to various countries in various local currencies, reduced to the fact that wiring money from Austria is not as expensive. The cost to wire money can be up to 30 EUR. If some of the money is not used we will return it.
New activities for 2021 to expand on knowledge equity and diversity within the CEE region	2000	2 workshops + support during the contest period	2000	2419	Activities outlined in the above section on 2021
Administrative costs	500	1	500	603	Administrative costs based on the previous years, to be used by Wikimedia Austria to cover the reimbursements process
Overall			9700	11732

Notes

The budget itself hasn't grown that much in Euros (only 4 extra local budgets, based on last year's experience), but the worse conversion rate of USD to EUR raises the amount in USD quite significantly.

Get involved

Community notification

Please paste links below to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions. Need notification tips?

• A list for Wikimedians of Central and Eastern Europe: wmcee-l@tools.wikimedia.pl
• Wikimedia CEE Facebook Group
• CEE Spring Facebook page
• Wikimedia CEE Telegram group
• Meta page of CEE Spring: Wikimedia CEE Spring 2021
• Village Pump of every participating Wikipedia language edition

Endorsements

Do you think this project should be selected for a Project Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project below! (Other constructive feedback is welcome on the discussion page).

1.  Support CEE Spring is one of cornerstones of activities of the Esperanto Wikimedia community. Especially for Esperanto Wikivoyage, which has matured from Incubator only lately, so campaigns like this help to drive attention to it to help develop its community. (Full disclosure: I am a local organiser) --KuboF Hromoslav (talk) 20:01, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Participants

• Volunteer Bilim ve teknoloji olarak eserler yayınlamak 212.133.220.125 20:55, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
• Volunteer Bilim ve teknoloji eserler yayınlamak Pistontsl (talk) 20:56, 21 May 2021 (UTC)