Grants:Project/Rapid/AWM/Joint Mathematics Meetings 2020/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2019-20 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/Rapid/AWM/Joint Mathematics Meetings 2020.
• 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 rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went? Yes for the most part. Some things, like exact room location, were out of ours hands but overall it worked well. Except for 3 people, all of the attendees were new to editing, any more people would have been hard to manage. Hopefully by continuing to do these types of events at large conferences like this we will start to see more returning editors. Many of the attendees stayed for a long time, a few new ones even stayed for the full 4 hours. A collection of books was brought to the event as well which a few of the attendees commented that they like using those and had not known of good references for finding women mathematicians.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
2 events, 2 hours each	1 event, 4 hours	The cost to have the room and internet at two different times was too much, basically twice the price as having the 4 hours in one block.
30 participants	20-25 participant	Close, it would have been nice to have more experienced editors.
15 new editors	17-22	Nearly everyone who attended was new to editing Wikipedia.
20 articles to improved or create	23 articles edited and 2 new ones created	With such an overwhelming amount of new editors, the few experienced editors help them edit existing articles rather than work on creating new ones.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

• What worked well?

Holding the event on the third day of the four day conference, the organizers were able to advertiser the event in person. The four hour block worked well too. It allowed people to come and go. A list of suggested articles to work on or create was shared via the meet up page. It gave people a starting spot. There were 3 experienced editor in attendance, each set up at one on the big round tables in the room and worked with the new editors at that table. This approached worked well, but if there had been many more attendees it would have been hard without more experienced editors. Offering coffee helped too, allowing people to take a break without needing to leave the room. Many attendees stayed for well over an hour.

• What did not work so well?

Only one electrical outlet was in the room, which made for charging computers hard. We were unaware that there are additional cost if that was something we needed more of. The list of suggested articles was not initially editable, so some people tried to work on the same article at the same time which didn't work. Once the list was re-shared as a google doc, people would add their name next to articles on it that they were working on. Also by the end all of the quick/easy edit on the suggestion list were completed, so when a few people can in near the end it was hard to get them started editing right away. We had to do a bit of research first, not a bad thing. It's just something mathematicians know how to do and we wanted to focus on the how to edit part. The location was a bit farther away from the main conference rooms than ideal, but it was at the conference hotel so easy to find.

• What would you do differently next time?

Make the suggestion list group editable from the start and perhaps displacing this on a projector screen would be useful too. Writing some new articles right ahead of the events so that new editors will have some quick easy edits to do at first.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

$315 Room and internet charge

$264 Coffee

$579 Total

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

Remaining funds from this grant have been returned to WMF in the amount of US$171.

Yes, $171.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

We plan to continue to run edit-a-thons like this at future conferences. Since the rules of the rapid grants have changed we are looking for other sources of funding.

Also see our meetup page.