Grants talk:IdeaLab/Wiki Awareness Campaign/Report

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

@RaoSahil88 and Shypoetess: Thank you for an excellent report on the Wiki Awareness Campaign. Speaking as someone who helped plan and ran the Inspire Campaign on New Readers that this project was submitted for, I'm elated to see these kinds of outcomes in your engagement with educators, students, and Wikimedia volunteers. Here are my comments:

• I'm glad you noted where the outcomes were surprising based on your expectations, such as noting that students were more interested in the Hindi Wikipedia session compared to the Commons session. I think it was a good idea that you ran both events to provide a broader understanding of Wikimedia projects, and this new information can help you consider how much time or resources to commit to sessions on different topics in future events, or perhaps trying to assess interest among your audience before running an awareness-building event.
• Regarding staff, I am glad you found they were cooperative, and it suggests to me that you were proactive in planning and communicating with them. The misunderstandings around the expectation that you would be doing some teaching that the teachers found difficult sounds like it was hard to resolve, but these sorts of misunderstandings around Wikipedia projects and the role of volunteers are fairly normal. The work of resolving these misunderstandings is an important and difficult part of awareness building, and I am grateful you took the time to work with staff to resolve these misunderstandings.
• Congratulations on your achievements in participation, new registrations, and media coverage. These outcomes are especially important considering the vast majority of your participants were unfamiliar with Wikipedia before the workshop, and the media coverage highlighting your work is a great way to start building a culture and larger conversation around using and contributing to Wikimedia projects.
• The remaining underspend of₹1085 can be kept for the requested purpose to organize Meetups at Karnal.

This report is officially approved. Thanks for your work in this awareness-building campaign. These outcomes and your report will help us at the Wikimedia Foundation build new criteria for grant applicants seeking to do this kind of outreach work. Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:47, 5 September 2018 (UTC)