Grants:Project/Dr. Blofeld/Contest toolkits and prize funds/Midpoint

This project is funded by a Project Grant

Report accepted

This midpoint report for a Project Grant approved in FY 2017-18 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Dr. Blofeld/Contest toolkits and prize funds.
You may still review or add to the discussion about this report on its talk page.
You are welcome to email projectgrantswikimedia.org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Welcome to this project's midpoint report! This report shares progress and learning from the grantee's first 3 months.

Summary

In a few short sentences or bullet points, give the main highlights of what happened with your project so far.

The contest framework as been fully implemented and designed. The missing articles, bot and rules all developed. The contest mechanism has shown to have had a major impact with some 2500 articles created.

Methods and activities

How have you setup your project, and what work has been completed so far?

I have created the contest page and am gradually working on developing the missing article lists with the WIR project in preparation for a November contest. So far 60 odd people have signed up for the one month contest. The toolkit will be produced in December, based on how the contest runs. An editor has promised to code a bot during October before the contest begins.

Describe how you've setup your experiment or pilot, sharing your key focuses so far and including links to any background research or past learning that has guided your decisions. List and describe the activities you've undertaken as part of your project to this point.

My past experience has enabled me to set up the project pages easier, including a navigation template. The process can easily be replicated for future contests and I intend to give instructions for this and creating project pages with the toolkit.

Midpoint outcomes

What are the results of your project or any experiments you’ve worked on so far?

Given that the contest is running in November (it's a good month for contests I think) I can't comment on the results yet except that 60 people have signed up already and it's not even been publicized centrally yet. The project pages are largely in place but I will create a rules and prizes page in the next week.

Please discuss anything you have created or changed (organized, built, grown, etc) as a result of your project to date.

The prize fund of $4025 remains intact but as many countries don't have many women bios you can't assign the same value to the US and UK as say Tuvalu or Turks and Caicos etc. The prize fund has been divided into larger prizes and as of 27 November articles have been produced for every country on the planet so it has still increased diversity globally and by occupation as originally planned.

Finances

Please take some time to update the table in your project finances page. Check that you’ve listed all approved and actual expenditures as instructed. If there are differences between the planned and actual use of funds, please use the column provided there to explain them.

Then, answer the following question here: Have you spent your funds according to plan so far? Please briefly describe any major changes to budget or expenditures that you anticipate for the second half of your project.

Prizes will be given out in early December after the contest concludes.

Learning

The best thing about trying something new is that you learn from it. We want to follow in your footsteps and learn along with you, and we want to know that you are taking enough risks to learn something really interesting! Please use the below sections to describe what is working and what you plan to change for the second half of your project.

What are the challenges

What challenges or obstacles have you encountered? What will you do differently going forward? Please list these as short bullet points.

Finding somebody to code a bot caused a delay in the contest a month or two, but I think November will be the best month for this contest anyway.

What is working well

What have you found works best so far? To help spread successful strategies so that they can be of use to others in the movement, rather than writing lots of text here, we'd like you to share your finding in the form of a link to a learning pattern.

I don't think this is applicable yet, only after running the contest will I be able to comment on how well it ran.
Your learning pattern link goes here

Next steps and opportunities

What are the next steps and opportunities you’ll be focusing on for the second half of your project? Please list these as short bullet points. If you're considering applying for a 6-month renewal of this grant at the end of your project, please also mention this here.

Next couple of weeks further development of the missing article lists and central publicity on Wikipedia. Try to maximise participation and output. See how the contest goes and create the tookit/contest design in December. Depending on the success, yes, I would like to apply for a new grant for further types of women contests and wider Wikipedia projects in the new year and I hope I would receive something which allows me to focus on the project more and supports me better to bring about a larger impact. At present the Women in Red project and myself are really looking forward to this contest so let's see how that goes first.

Grantee reflection

We’d love to hear any thoughts you have on how the experience of being an grantee has been so far. What is one thing that surprised you, or that you particularly enjoyed from the past 3 months? Nothing has surprised me, I have previous grant experience with WMUK. Dr. Blofeld (talk) 15:14, 5 October 2017 (UTC)