Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2012-2013 round1/Wikimédia France/Progress report form/Q1

Link to staff summary

We have published a staff summary of all 2012-2013 Round 1 Q1 reports here: FDC portal/Proposals/2012-2013 round1/Staff summary/Progress report form/Q1. We ask each entity to also review our general comments there. All the best, KLove (WMF) (talk) 00:00, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Appreciation

Thank you for your work on this report and for creating it in a way that is easy to understand with respect to WMFR’s proposal form even though you did change your plans this quarter due to the adjustment in funding. In particular, we appreciated the following:

1. We appreciate the metrics that WMFR is using, particularly the metrics you use for the photos that are uploaded to Commons in partnership with the Museum of Toulouse. We also appreciate the way WMFR has consistently defined its metrics and reported against those goals. We were particularly pleased to see WMFR tracking the content added and used as a result of its programs.
2. Thank you also for the detailed event coordination pages where participants in some of your educational workshop have defined their goals and activities. We hope this information will help you continue to track results effectively. We hope that in future reports you are able to share more results of the surveys you’ve conducted as well as the content of these surveys.
3. Thank you for openly sharing your reflections on what is working well and what is not. These experiences will build the movement’s understanding and knowledge base on particular approaches and programs.

Again, thank you! KLove (WMF) (talk) 00:00, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the comments! You mention the metrics for the photos with the Museum of Toulouse, could you elaborate on why you find them especially relevant? This could help us improving and refining them further. Thanks! Jean-Fred (talk) 13:02, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Sure, Jean-Fred. The reason this was specifically highlighted was because WMFR explained how it is measuring the success of the program, that is through the number of "valued pictures," "quality pictures" and "featured pictures." WMFR shared, then, how many pictures are in each of those categories. We see metrics as a tool for each entity to define and use as they make sense in their context and programs. It is helpful to understand how each entity is tracking its own progress, and WMFR shared some interesting ways of approaching this issue. So the explanation and the rationale is always useful. Cheers, KLove (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

We would like to learn more

We are particularly interested in learning more about your strategy in attracting contributors and participants and also about some challenges with engaging your community effectively in WMFR’s projects.

• You note the community has not demonstrated interest in participating in Research Award voting. Would you offer some insight about how the chapter decided to proceed with the project in the coming year in spite of a lack of community interest? Further, can you explain how WMFR has changed its strategy in the coming year in order to encourage more participation in the voting?
• You note a large difference between trainers in Afripedia trainings: 50% of them are very active on Wikipedia and the other 50% are not active. You also shared that some countries seem to have more motivation to participate after the trainings than others. What do you think accounts for the difference in activity?
• How does WMFR attract trainers and participants (contributors) for workshops in West Africa for Afripédia? Attracting participants for workshops in this region is a big challenge for many projects.
• Could you share any of the specific challenges faced by the microfunds committee? We are looking forward to learning more about the redesign in the next quarter’s report.

Thank you for your time and attention, KLove (WMF) (talk) 00:00, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Microfunding program

Challenges — We believe the microfunds program is a great opportunity for Wikimédia France to support the communities and the contributors of the projects. The microfunds program is about 2 years old now, and we think it is time for it to evolve:

• We want this program to get public: the requests used to be posted by e-mail or on the chapters' wiki, and discussed on this wiki which is only accessible to members. We also want to reach a wider part of the communities.
• We also noted that during the last year, part of the budgeted funds were not spent ; we believe that our members censored themselves while the chapter was running on low budget due to the failure of our first FDC request.
• The resulting low activity led to higher delays to process the request (it may seem strange however, without fixed deadlines, the committee involvement decreased while there was a lower pressure to proceed the requests)

Redesign of the program − Our redesign is quite simple but should address all challenges noted above.

• The requests pages will be on Meta, which will ease the request process for non-members.
• We are working on our communication strategy, and we want to include the promotion of this program in it. We believe that the two first point of the redesign will address challenge 1 and 2
• We have increased the number of volunteers that are member of the committee, and set-up a process with deadline to ensure a request is processed in due time (while retaining sound safekeeping measures). We also have a staff member who will help the volunteer to keep up with the deadlines. We believe this modification should tackle our last challenge.

--PierreSelim (talk) 06:27, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks for sharing these reflections. It's quite interesting to learn about. Cheers, KLove (WMF) (talk) 16:04, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikimédia France Research Award

We have decided to renew the Wikimedia France Research Award in autumn 2014. We made the assessment of this project in order to overcome the difficulties encountered this year. The award research award has a considerable potential, including :

• supporting/encouraging research teams working on Wikipedia and free knowledge ;
• popularizing scientific research on Wikipedia and free knowledge ;

For the WMFr Research Award 2014, we will  :

• paying attention on the calendar for a sitenotice on the Wikimedia projects in order to encourage more participation in the voting
• paying particular attention to provide summaries of scientific papers in several languages and other medias (for example, interviews of co-authors and jury members, etc.)on our dedicated website.
• expanding the network for the voting call (find other mailing lists involved in these issues).
• finding external partners to better promote the project and planning an award ceremony.
• finding a dedicatee : for example Roy Rosenzweig (the first recipient)

--CarolAnnO (talk) 14:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing this, CarolAnnO. It's helpful to understand how WMFr is thinking about this. KLove (WMF) (talk) 17:54, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

About Afripédia project

You note a large difference between trainers in Afripedia trainings: 50% of them are very active on Wikipedia and the other 50% are not active. You also shared that some countries seem to have more motivation to participate after the trainings than others. What do you think accounts for the difference in activity?

• The difference between active and non-active countries is difficult to be explained, but it seems that the involvment of the trainers just after the training session is very important. When they immediatly install offline access to Wikipedia and organize conference and training sessions for students, they are more active after some months. If they wait before install and train, they are not active later, or have more difficulties to re-start projects. It seems that the project monitoring is very important : we must help, encourage, fix personnal objectives and encourage people with individual and collective help.
• In Mali, we have a very interesting experience with Afripedia project : the trainer who was present in the training session is helped by a Kiwix developer living in Bamako and involved with bloggers and software activists in the project. They have a little but very active community and Afripedia runs very well. We think that sustain or create communities is very important. For the 2d training session in Kinshasa, we had at least 2 people from each city, and encourage them to work together for the project.
• We note that external factors are also important : political situation (for example in Central African Republic) and the situation into the university (strikes, opposition against Wikipedia from teachers etc) are very crucials for the results of the project

How does WMFR attract trainers and participants (contributors) for workshops in West Africa for Afripédia? Attracting participants for workshops in this region is a big challenge for many projects.

• We work with the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie, a network for universities in french-speaking areas in the world. They provide the "Campus numériques francophones" (CNF), some places near or into universities with computers, internet access, libraries and programs to train students and teachers about digital questions. When we organize a training session, we ask the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie to call in first the staff of the differents CNF to be trained by Wikimedia trainers. They are professionnal trainers, they have a good level in technology questions (to install and keep alive offline access). They are in general a good target public for Afripedia training sessions. When they come back in their universities, they can integrate Wikipedia workshop into the general program of the CNF and organize some training sessions. For example, in the University of Bamako you have a Wikipedia workshop every friday morning. In other universities, like in Niamey (Niger), workshops are organized by the woman we trained in november every 2 months.
• For the 2d training session in Kinshasa, we called again CNF staff from Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and Congo-Brazzaville, but we worked also with a specific cooperation program between Belgian universities and congolese universities. A large part of trainers trained during this session are involved in academic libraries in Congo and in digital development in these congolese universities.
• We try to very well explain the partners which type of trainers we want for the training sessions. They can give us the Curriculum vitæ of the people they have choosen, to be sure that they have the right profile. We consider that it's very important to have people confortable with digital issues and already involved in training in their job to be more efficient after the training session. We consider that it is consistent with a "train the trainers" approach. --SereinWMfr (talk) 14:50, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for this additional information! I now have a better understanding of the approaches and the differences. KLove (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Membership fees

There is a mistake in the membership fees (Table 2): we anticipated €4,000 = $5,220 (not $2,220). GuillaumeG (talk) 21:51, 2 July 2013 (UTC)