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Grants:Simple/Applications/Wikimedia Thailand/2020

< Grants:Simple | Applications
Application or grant stage: grant in progress
Applicant or grantee: grantee
Amount requested: THB699,600 (USD22,885)
Amount granted: 20,804.71 USD
Funding period: 1 April 2020 - 31 December 2021
Midpoint report due: 15 October 2020
Final report due: 30 April 2021

Background

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Annual Plan

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  • Link to any outside relevant document around your annual plan

Budget Plan

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Staffing Plan

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  • No staffing plan for 2020

Strategic plan

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  • Link to your strategic plan if you have one

Introduction

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Wikimedia Thailand was approved as a Wikimedia Chapter in June 2019. At the moment we are at the process of being incorporated. This is the first time we apply for a simple annual plan grant. Our main objectives are to increase amount of reach, new participants, and increase content of Wikimedia projects both quantitatively and qualitatively. In 2020, we hope to continue doing the activities we have been doing since 2014 including the WLX photo competitions, article competitions, meetups, and education program. Portion of this grant request is also devoted to the hosting of Wikimania 2020, especially volunteer training program. Apart from these contests and meetups, no other major activities will take place because WMTH will primarily focus on Wikimania.

Statistics for Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments in Thailand. Note that WLE was first organized in 2015 and the WLM 2019 statistics is missing.
Education program results as of 2018

Programs

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Community engagement and support

Photo and article contests

Photo contests including Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments have been very successful for the past five years. In addition to high quality contributions to Wikimedia Commons, these contests have been proven effective at bringing in new contributors and partners into the movement. According to our statistics, approximately 78% of the participants for these photo contests are new users (having their account registered during the contest period). Photographs submitted from Thailand have constantly won the international prizes.

Despite overall success, it is clear that number of participants is reaching a plateau or even declining. A number of strategies will be employed to enhance participation and sustainability of these contests in years to come. Photo displays at galleries and museums could be used to increase the visibility. Interview and blogpost was shown to be effective. In 2016, one of Wiki Loves Monuments organizers in Thailand was interviewed by Techsauce, an online newspaper, during the contest period. As a result, number of submission that year reached a record high of 4,707 files. In the future we plan to interview previous contest winners and post the content on social media platforms in order to inspire potential participants. Partnership with external organizations, GLAMS in particular, using the idea of "preserving by sharing" will be used as an incentive to demonstrate how uploading to Wikimedia Commons makes a difference with respect to preservation of cultural and national heritage. These strategies will be employed all together to prolong the success of the photo contests and ensure sustainability in a long run.


Meetups

Meetups will be hosted on a regular basis at several locations. Some of them will happen as part of the education program consulting sessions. More details on the education program can be found below. Meetups are also expected to use as a means locally advertise Wikimania 2020 at various locations around Bangkok including museums, galleries, and public spaces.

SMART objectives
  • 3,000 uploads for all photo contests
  • 70 participants
  • 3 new partners/sponsors
  • renewal of the existing partners
  • 5 meetups prior to August 2020

Education

Wikipedia writing assignment

Our education program has been up and running since September 2014. Over 130 students have participated in the program resulting in the contributions equivalent to over 120 written pages. Apart from the program's ability to recruit new faces into the movement and create contributions of highly technical content, we found that Wikipedia writing assignment in general is aligned with the 4Cs of the 21st century learning, including creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication. Students are also relatively more motivated throughout the program in comparison with the conventional writing assignment. Education is expected to continue in 2020 and 2021.

Content evaluation

WMTH also has an initiative to evaluate the quality of scientific content on the English Wikipedia using modified DISCERN instrument. Our protocol and instrument were approved by the institutional review board of Mahidol University, Bangkok. The instrument was piloted by the evaluation of anatomy articles on the English Wikipedia. The results have already been published in a very reputable academic journal in the field, and can be utilized as a model for other researchers or even Wikimedia affiliates for content evaluation. In 2020, we plan to continue our education program and expand the scope of article evaluation to other fields of study including neuroscience and cell biology.

SMART objectives
  • 30 students signing up for Wikipedia writing assignment
  • 30 pages of high quality and technical contribution from students (considering 2500 bytes and 2 images per page)
  • Expansion of content evaluation to at least one field of study
  • At least 1 academic publication(s) on the result of education program and content evaluation
  • At least 1 talk(s) and presentation(s) at academic conferences

Wikimania 2020

The ESEAP regional collaboration has been chosen as the host of Wikimania 2020, which will take place in Bangkok from 5-9 August 2020. There are several elements that need to be prepared.

Scholarships to attend Wikimania 2020

Twenty scholarships will be provided for certain people to attend Wikimania 2020. These groups of people include contest winners and people who have contributed significantly to the community. Grantees will be chosen by WMTH and are expected to write a follow-up report after the event.

Volunteer training

Volunteer recruitment and training are among the most crucial elements in hosting Wikimania. A two-day training session will be provided, which consists of a lecture session, site visit, first aid and CPR training.

SMART objectives
  • 5 scholarship recipients to attend Wikimania 2020
  • 5 scholarship reports
  • 20 trained volunteers who are capable of performing first aid and CPR

ESEAP capacity building workshop

Led by Wikimedia Indonesia (WMID), the ESEAP regional collaboration is planning to host a capacity building workshop at the end of 2020. All chapters within the region will be invited to participate in this training. The rationale behind is to strengthen the region in line with Movement Strategy process. This event is still in a discussion stage and awaits inputs from a broader ESEAP community. Affiliates will be asked to send two representatives, one of them will be supported by WMID.

Grant Metrics Reporting

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Metrics, targets and results: Please see here.

Midterm report

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Program story

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Program Progress

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Community engagement and support

Photo and article contests

Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments 2020 were successfully organized. Unfortunately, number of submitted photographs dramatically declined and did not meet our expectations. This is not unanticipated due to the lock down and closure of natural parks and monumental sites which took place between March and September 2020. Despite small number of submissions, quality of the submitted photos were not compromised and we look forward to submitting our winning photographs to the international WLE and WLM contests. Number of sponsors were the same. We did not lose or gain any more local sponsors. In October 2021, we came in touch with the organizers of Wiki Science Competition and resumed holding the photo contest at the local/national level after a hiatus in 2019. Wiki Science Competition 2021 in Thailand is expected to conclude in January 2022.


Meetups

Regular meetups were not organized due to social distancing policy and national lock down. We plan to resume meetups in January since the COVID-19 situation in Thailand has been stable and no local transmission has been observed for months. In September, six WMTH volunteers were invited for a meeting at the Technology Crime Suppression Division of the Royal Thai Police. Some of the budgets were used to cover travelling and lunch costs.

Education

Wikipedia education and writing assignment

Conducted by Dr. Taweethem Limpanuparb (Username: taweetham), students at Mahidol University International College (MUIC) were to create a new article on the English Wikipedia related to science or improve an existing one. The writing assignment was integrated into 2 chemistry courses as an optional objective. The total number of participants in the assignment program is 29.

Wikimania

Wikimania 2020 in Bangkok has been postponed due to COVID-19. A virtual event will be hosted as a substitute of this year's Wikimania.

ESEAP capacity building workshop

The ESEAP capacity building workshop is not being organized due to travel restriction.

Spending update

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Please link to a detailed financial report for your spending during the first half of your grant period. This should be in the same format as your detailed budget from your Simple APG application.

Please include the total amount of Simple APG funds you spent during the grant period:

  • 3,218 THB

Grant Metrics Reporting

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Metrics, targets and results: Please see here.

Final report

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Program story

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Learning story

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The photo competitions are relatively easy to participate. They are the most common activities to train new volunteers to work for the chapter. However, we need to be more innovative as maintaining the same standards and procedures is not good enough to keep us relevant and influential. Without implementing new ideas, the quantity and quality of the submission decrease overtime, and the click conversion rate for banners on Wikimedia sites is low and considered wasted.

It is imperative that future competition events should be advised by local subject matter experts (e.g. photography professionals). These people could be past winners or local organizations. In kind support for Wikimedia banner should be valued and used wisely. Focus group/satisfaction survey for past winners and participants could be conducted to learn about their (dis)motivation to participate in our activities.

For Wikipedia education via a written assignment, the number of students that stayed on track with the program and were able to completed the tasks assigned decreased significantly. There might be several reasons as to why this happened, including the assignment being labeled as an optional one. This may have caused the significance of the education program to be evaluated at a low level by the students who also had other coursework to complete in addition to this optional assignment. The Wikipedia written assignment cannot be enforced due to the courses into which the assignment was integrated were chemistry courses which had fixed goals and objectives, and thus the significance of the program will likely remain low in future implementations. Another possible reason is the nature of the written assignment itself which requires the topics to be researched upon and written to be science-related which may have discouraged some participants. To make possible other topics to be opened up, the Wikipedia education program is to be conducted outside of the chemistry courses, such as via an activity of an extracurricular club.

Programs Impact

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Community engagement and support

Photo contests

Wikimedia Thailand held three photo contests across 2020 and 2021, including Wiki Loves Earth 2020 in Thailand, Wiki Loves Monuments 2020 in Thailand, and Wiki Science Competition 2021 in Thailand. Despite COVID-19 having an impact to some extent on the participation in the events (e.g., travel restrictions and quarantine possibly causing fewer photos to be taken and, consequently, fewer participants), the photo contests still have considerable number of submissions given the expected-decline. There were even new Wikimedia Commons account created in part for the submission for the photo contests. For Wiki Science Competition 2021 in Thailand, the organizing team implemented new local prizes (e.g., desk calendar and umbrella) as well as revisited old ones (e.g., water bottle and T-shirt), coming up altogether with a set of tokens to attract and be given to the participants. The organizing team was also able to reach out to science agencies which helped promote the photo competition. All in all, looking at the impact on the bigger picture, the submissions in each contest contributed toward more contents available on Wikimedia Commons which, hopefully, may be found useful by Wiki users or anyone, such as students and educators, in the future.

Education

Wikipedia education and writing assignment

A writing assignment was integrated into 2 chemistry courses at MUIC to introduce students to the world of Wiki community. As reported in the Midterm part, there were 29 participants in total. However, the number of students that complied with the assigned tasks as the course progressed dropped, and in the end only 6 students remained and were able to successfully create new articles on the English Wikipedia, improve existing ones, upload media to Wikimedia Commons, etc. 3 new article pages were created and 5 articles were improved upon as a result.

Spending update

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From our previous grant, the amount that was sent to us was 277731.51THB (half of the proposed budget). The amount spent was 220683.34THB. As a result, the amount remaining from the 2020-2021 SAPG is 57048.17THB.

A email was sent from Athikhun 

date:	25 Feb 2022, 08:01 (UTC+7)
subject:	Re: [action required] Wikimedia Thailand General Support R-GS-2112-07531

Grant Metrics Reporting

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Metrics, targets and results: Please see here.

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