Grants:Project/Rapid/Cline Library Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2016-17 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/Cline Library Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon.
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?

The main goals that we wanted to achieve through this event included recruiting new female editors, increasing the skills for existing editors, and add or improve content on women, trans, and femme-identified artists/designers/creators on Wikipedia. We successfully accomplished all of these goals during our one-day event. While it was more challenging to get everyone signed into the event in order to count their edits towards the larger Art+Feminism efforts we were excited by the number of contributions to existing articles, as well as the new articles that were created both individually and collaboratively.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1 Event	1 Event
Number of Participants: 40	Number of Participants: 35	Although we had 50 register, only 35 attended
Number of new editors: 30	Number of new editors: 36 of the registered 50	Out of the 50 registered for the event 36 indicated that they were new to editing Wikipedia.
Number of of articles created or improved: 40	Number of of articles created or improved: 15	This number is based on our dashboard sign in, which we had some trouble with/not everyone was able to sign in to get their edits to "count." I believe this number would be significantly more if everyone was able to log in. https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Cline_Library_NAU/Flagstaff_Cline_Library_NAU_ArtAndFeminism_2017/home

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?

We had a fun and effective name tag system that helped identify new editors and those with experience editing, as well as artists, scholars, etc. using stickers. This helped participants get to know one another while everyone was getting settled. The event started with a presentation by School of Art faculty on trans and cis gender feminist artists and this helped pique students' curiosity on a few of those artists so that they had a good place to start when it was time to edit. We provided enough laptops for everyone who attended so that they did not need to bring one or check one out from the library front desk. The room set up was also helpful in getting one group of attendees to collaborate on creating a single article since they had the ability to share screens.

What did not work so well?

The dashboard function was very challenging to use and those who signed in were not seeing their edits right away, which discouraged others from getting signed in (we all thought something was wrong with the dashboard). I do not believe the edits we made were accurately represented because of this issue. I know that this is the first year Art+Feminism has used the dashboard and later found out that others had similar issues with it, so I hope that next time goes a little smoother. It would be fantastic to see the contributions made in real time, as editors are editing.

What would you do differently next time?

We believe this event was a success but next time we can improve by having one person dedicated to signing into the Dashboard and account creation. It was a challenge to navigate the issues we were having with it with limited staff and knowledge. Next time, an expert ON the Dashboard would be helpful. It might also be a good idea to implement some kind of buddy and/or mentoring system at the next event to help retain new editors. While this was suggested by Wikimedia Foundation it was not possible this time around given the number of new vs. experienced editors.

Finances

Grant funds spent

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

Food and drink = $832.13
Miscellaneous supplies = $37.76 (name tags, stickers, markers, etc.)

Total spent = $869.89 USD

We were also granted $120 for food from Art+Feminism and will request the remaining $69.89 from them upon approval of our report to WikiMedia Foundation.

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?