Grants:Project/Rapid/WLX in Thailand 2017/Reallocation/Report
- Report accepted
- To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/WLX in Thailand 2017/Reallocation.
- 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
editDid you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?
Mentor project was aimed to build positive relationships among editors, to encourage new editors to be bold, and to promote editor retention. Moreover, the project intends to stimulate creation of new articles as well as content improvement on Thai Wikipedia.
- We expect at least 100 articles to be created
- We expect at least 100 articles to be edited
- We expect at least 30 mentees to participate in 2018.
The project is planned to be piloted for a month, then with positive feedback, we plan to convert it into regular event in which winners will be awarded either monthly or bi-monthly.
- We expect at least 100 articles to be assigned into category:articles needing images.
- We expect at least 100 images to be uploaded into Commons.
- We expect at least 100 images from Commons to be added into articles.
- We expect at least 20 volunteers to participate in the first month.
Outcome
editPlease report on your original project targets.
- Mentor project
Ten individuals were involved in this project including 7 mentees and 3 mentors (+2 more users signed up as interested). Three hundred and eighty-four articles were created with 90 uploads to the Wikimedia Commons as part of the project. There were more than 4,710 edits across Wikimedia projects with 1,540 edits to the article namespace alone. To date, 5 of the 7 registered mentees completed the requirement and had been awarded.
- 122 articles were created (goal achieved
) - 800 articles were edited (goal achieved )
- 7 mentee participated (goal not achieved
, but the project is ongoing) - See statistics in Outreach Program(note that activities of mentors were not tracked)
- One article, one or more images Project
Twelve users had signed up for the program. Among those, 9 users participated and contributed.
- 'category:articles needing images' now has 109 articles (goal achieved )
- 209 images had been uploaded to Commons (goal achieved )
- 79 images from Commons had been added into articles (goal not achieved )
- 12 users signed up with 9 users participated in the program (goal not achieved )
- See statistics in Outreach Program
Learning
editProjects 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:
- Mentor Project
- What worked well?
The program in general can be considered as successful. Though the initial goal of the project was to assist new inexperienced editors, majority of the registered mentees were already somewhat active on Thai Wikipedia, but want to further develop their skills. This by itself helped in boosting the engagement within the community and elevated quality of articles.
- What did not work so well?
It was hard to recruit participants, especially mentors. Despite attempts to send personal invitation to active editors, they were not so successful and we still have only 3 mentors to date even though the requirements for becoming a mentor is rather modest. Although the project encourages participants to contact and reach out to another users, which they want as their mentees/mentors, no one actually did it. Furthermore, the tracking tool (Outreach Program) is unsuitable to keep track of participants' contribution as it cannot select for number of article created/edited by each participant.
- What would you do differently next time?
We will try to be more active in recruiting participants both as mentors and mentees. We will try to promote the project in a better way and to use site notice. We would like to try to use bots to send out invitations to new editors who has good faith in order to increase the participation rate.
- One article, one or more images Project
- What worked well?
The site notice worked well in advertising the project. The awareness of articles that need images has been raised.
- What did not work so well?
Outreach Program is not the best tracking tool for this project. The self-report scoring system was too tedious and inefficient both for participants to use and project manager to validate scores. Participation rate is rather low.
- What would you do differently next time?
We will announce the event earlier by using site notice, so people may sign up and prepare for the event beforehand. We will make the scoring criteria clearer with more detail. It was stated that participants will obtain 3 points per image uploaded into Commons with proper category and description. However, during the contest, one of the participant used a tool to reupload images from flickr onto Commons, which is not what we aimed for but did fulfil the scoring criteria. In the end, we did not take those reupload images into account. Next time, the scoring criteria should be more elaborate to cover these cases. Moreover, we also want to come up with a specific theme for the next contest (ex: Food, culture, animals, insects, science, etc.), so participants will have an area to focus.The scoring criteria and tracking system should also be more efficient to make it easier and more appealing to participate. We will try to find or come up with the tracking system that suits our needs to make it easier for both participants and organisers. Also, this time the program was launched before we know the specific prices for the winner; hence, the prices were not announced until the contest had ended. Next time, we wish to announce all prices together with the event.
Finances
editGrant funds spent
editPlease describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.
| Number | Category | Item description | Number of units | Cost per unit | Budgeted cost (THB) | Actual cost (THB)* | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Awards | T-shirts, water bottles, rubber stamps, and stickers | n/a | n/a | 14,000 | 13,387.5 | |
| 2 | Postage | Costs associated with physical mailing, stamps, and packages | n/a | n/a | 2,000 | 503 | |
| 3 | Poster | Poster for ESEAP Conference in Bali, Indonesia | 1 | 850 | 2,000 | 850 | |
| 4 | Contingency | Incidental costs | 0 | 0 | 1,488 | 0 |
Remaining funds
editDo you have any remaining grant funds?
YES. The remaining amount is 2,827.32 THB
The actual remaining fund was 4,747.50 THB but 1,920.18 THB was not transferred to us. The remaining usable amount in our bank account is therefore 2,827.32 THB. FYI, this grant was solely funded from this underspend in our 2016 grant. (please refer to an email sent to us dated April 8, 2017)
Anything else
editAnything else you want to share about your project?
We struggled to attract participants for the project. The remaining merchandises (t-shirts, water bottles, and stickers) will be distributed as prizes for activities proposed in our new grant.