Grants talk:PEG/User:LLRungegordon/Wikipedia edit-a-thon for the Aphra Behn Society

Eligibility confirmed, Inspire Campaign

This Inspire Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for the Inspire Campaign review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review begins on 6 April 2015, and grants will be announced at the end of April. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us at grants(at)wikimedia.org.

feedback and comments from Thepwnco

@LLRungegordon: hello and congratulations on having your grant proposal confirmed as eligible for review! I'd love to hear more about your possible collaboration with FemTechNet - do you have contacts within the group and/or have you already been in contact with them about this idea? -Thepwnco (talk) 12:32, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Additional questions

Hi LLRungegordon. Thanks so much for submitting your proposal! The Aphra Behn Society sounds like a great target audience, with good mission alignment. We still have a few remaining questions on the proposal:

1. Beyond a community page, what are your plans for follow-up after the event? Our experience has shown that one-off editathons do not have much impact in terms of content creation or editor recruitment/retention. Events with robust follow-up, including subsequent trainings and/or online mentorship do show more promise for sustained impact.
2. Can you provide more details on how you would like to partner with FemTechNet? You mention reaching out to them for support and instruction. Did you mean instruction with Wikipedia editing? Have you sought engagement from other experienced Wikimedians who can help with the event? If not, we would suggest you reach out to the local community for their support. A good place to start would be with Wikimedia New York City for suggested contacts.
3. Measures of success: 20-30 people for the event is a solid group and will probably necessitate having at least 3 experienced Wikimedians there to help facilitate. Please also provide other measures related to content creation and editor retention. You read our suggested measures of success for editathons on the program resources page.
4. The budget items for the venue, wifi, and server fee seem quite high. Is holding the editathon at Seton Hall University an option.

Please let us know if you have questions about the above. Looking forward to your responses. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 04:03, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I apologize for not replying sooner. I have not got the hang of the community aspect of Wikipedia, and I confess I am very new at the editing as well. I will address each of the questions you have asked as best I can at the moment, and will follow up with more information from my co-planners.

1. For immediate follow-up, I will be planning a session at the conference that features using Wikipedia in the classroom. I will recruit 2 or 3 other scholar/teachers to speak for ten minutes each describing their efforts at teaching with Wikipedia and follow with a mini-workshop or brainstorming session. We can create a network buddy-system to keep people engaged in the process of using Wikipedia in the classroom, and ABO can further the community through their social network by posting regular updates on success of editing relevant pages or teaching relevant subjects. We can even feature a blog post on ABO: Public. I have not yet used Wikipedia in the classroom, but I intend to use it in my graduate teaching practicum this summer session (and so teach other teachers how to use it in the classroom), and I plan to use it in my fall scheduled course on 18th Century British Women in the Digital Archive. My own presentation on the panel at the Aphra Behn Society meeting in November will be based on these trials. I plan to use some of the advice Adeline Koh has posted to get started.
2. I do not as yet have contacts in FemTechNet. It was suggested to me by Anne Cong-Huyen at the LA wikipedia-thon as a possible source of support in the area of the conference. I will definitely follow up with Wikipedia New York City if that is a better resource. Again, I am very new to this, and I will take all advice offered. I'm guessing that we can get 20-30 people over the period of time (probably not at one time), but it is hard to estimate because this is a first-time event. We will certainly be pushing it through our networks and securing participation. I will follow up on other measures of success momentarily.
3. The budget figures come directly from the hotel personnel who is planning the event with our co-planner Karen Gevirtz. I do not know how onsite logistics would affect participation if we moved off site to Seton Hall (the reception is in the hotel immediately following the planned Wikipedia event). I will ask about alternatives.

More soon, but if you have feedback on this, please let me know. 16:44, 21 April 2015 (UTC)LLRungegordon (talk) 17:37, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

After reading through the resource links you provided, I am again impressed with the organization and planning of Wikipedia. There is already so much to draw upon in designing an edit-a-thon. Thank you for these resources!

I will set up the goals and metrics for the event to reflect the recommendations:

Goals

• Increasing contributions

• Increasing skills for editing/contributing

• Recruitment of new editors/contributors

to measure our success we will evaluate the following metrics:

• Total # of participants

• # of female participants

• # of return participants

• # of new users

• # of articles created or improved

• # of good and featured articles created or improved

• # of participants editing X months after the event

to measure these, we will use a pre survey connected to the registration for the event and a post survey upon exiting. I have seen the Qualtrics and Wikimetrics training guides, and will explore these more fully over the summer when I implement the training in my class. It's a little daunting, but I bet there are people willing to help me understand how to use these tools.

As for follow-up, I believe we could definitely plan to host a regular edit-a-thon at the Aphra Behn biannual meetings, and in the meantime we will establish a buddy-system of mentoring and follow up as suggested above. LLRungegordon (talk) 18:11, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi LLRungegordon. Thank you for your thoughtful responses. We have a few additional comments/questions:

1. Your plan for follow-up is multi-faceted. The main elements seem to be continued communications (social media), recruiting teachers to implement the Wikipedia Education Program in their classes, additional events, and buddy groups. It would helpful to better understand if you have experienced Wikimedians on your project team (it sounds like some of the teachers are already using Wikimedia in the classroom) or in your community who can assist with the inevitable challenges that come up for new editors after events such as this, especially around deletion requests related to notability, and citation issues. We want to make sure that you have the support needed to keep new editors motivated, engaged, and adding high-quality content.
2. It's great that you plan on having regular ediathons at the biannual meetings. Do you expect these events will be sponsored by the Society once their value has been proven? The cost of this one editathon is relatively high (compared to other events funded throughout the movement) and we want to make sure we're setting you up for something that is realistic and sustainable.
3. Please let us know if you heard back about alternatives regarding the venue/expenses. Of course we would like to maximize convenience and the largest number of participants, but the venue costs do seem high, especially around the wifi/server fees.
4. In terms of the measures of success, we will need actual proposed numbers for each of the metrics. You can look at some of the examples on the program resources page provided above for what folks have estimated in the past.

Thanks, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 22:04, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Your concerns are justified, Alex, in that we are an unexperienced group for the most part. I will call on my colleagues from ASECS who organized the wikipedia edit-a-thon in March that inspired me, Courtney Wengerstrom and Christopher Nagle, and I will recruit Tonya Howe of Marymount who is experienced in using Wikipedia in the classroom. I am registered to take the webinar hosted by Adeline Koh and Jami Mathewson of the Wiki Education Foundation Thursday April 29 on Tackling the Gender Gap in Wikipedia Through Course Assignments. I will try to connect there with additional support. I am hoping that we will be able to bring in a few experienced editors from NYC to help with the event, and of course I will encourage all new editors to sign up with a Wikipedia mentor, as I did.

As for the alternative venue, we have the following information from Karen Gevirtz, the President of the Aphra Behn Society and the organizer of this year's conference: "Someone from Math & Computer Science has promised me their lab for whenever I want it, which is incredibly lovely. The Dean of the Libraries will also get back to me about whether they can offer us space. If we do the program at SHU, the space and wifi will be free and I might be able to sweet-talk a department into providing the food and drink. I can price out a shuttle between campus and the hotel, but I couldn’t run it back and forth, that would just be too expensive. I think a shuttle would run about $500. If people were coming directly to SHU, they could park as guests in the parking deck or they could get the SHU shuttle from the train station to campus. The train runs between NYPenn Station and with a transfer, people could also come to campus from Newark airport.

However, I agree 100% with Laura that it’s much better to have it at the hotel. I will call them tomorrow and see what I can do about the charges. I will also see what I can do about getting some departments to contribute some of the cost. One thing—we don’t have to use the hotel’s food service. But the room and the wifi still remain." I think our best bet is to pay the hotel's fee to maintain the same setting as the conference and look for other ways to offset the costs, such as not having food service and getting donations from the university.

I will add some numbers to the measures for success. I will look at some of the examples. Thanks! LLRungegordon (talk) 22:35, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

I've adjusted the budget to reflect the cost without food service, and I've added some numbers to our metrics. Cheers! LLRungegordon (talk) 22:46, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Wikipedia edit-a-thon for the Aphra Behn Society

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	6.9
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	6.0
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	8.0
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	6.3
Additional comments from the Committee: Like the idea of doing this edit-a-thon as a pre-conference event and tapping into an existing community. There is potential for direct impact on gender diversity, but the proposal does not clearly articulate an approach to sustaining or scaling the impact. Would like to see recurring events, but even the one is good. The impact potential for this proposal seems very reasonable, and drawing attention to the utility of Wikipedia among academics always seems worthwhile. Honoring Adrianne Wadewitz is wonderful. Existing community with the society and (possibly) FemTechNet; however, very little interaction with Wikimedia communities. Would like to see community notifications. Present community engagement seems low, but the plans for publicizing the proposal's activities to the target community, which is specific, seem very reasonable. The budget appears reasonable, although further efficiency is possible if a free/donated event space can be identified. Reasonable plan and budget. Would encourage follow up events for the people who are trained to keep expanding reach. The budget seems realistic. However, if 20-30 new editors show up, would suggest having 3-5 experienced Wikipedia mentors on hand to help. The measures of success are well-defined, but may be unrealistic given the past performance of similar events. Realistic measures of success, though would suggest including an additional measure re: attendees holding their own edit-a-thons afterwards. Adding learning patterns related to using networking to extend reach or pre-conference events would be good to add as an outcome of the event. I'd like to see more specific measures of success--perhaps a list of articles that will be improved or created? Overall looks like a well thought out plan with a reasonable budget. Would recommend looking for in-kind donations to cover some costs for future events. The budget covers many expenses we typically see donated for Wikimedia events, including the venue, wifi, and server fees. While its great for academic groups to organize editathons, they need to find more sustainable ways to fund them.

Inspire funding decision

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for a Project and Event Grant through the Inspire Campaign.

The committee has recommended this proposal and WMF has approved funding for the full amount of your request, 900 USD

Comments regarding this decision:
Thanks for engaging in the Inspire campaign! We’ll be in touch about setup soon.

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement.
2. Review the grant implementation information.
3. Start work on your project!

Questions? Contact us at grantswikimedia.org'

Event Page Created

We have created an event page (the requested target?) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Aphra_Behn_Society_Editathon. I'd like to link this to the meet up page if appropriate. LLRungegordon (talk) 14:35, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Request changes to grant budget allocations

We would like to change the budget allocations for the $900 grant we received to run the Wikipedia Edit-a-thon for the Aphra Behn Society on November 4, 2015. The receipts for travel from the visiting Wikipedians amounted to less than allocated, but the room charge was significantly higher than we expected. Hotel rates in the greater NYC area are unusually high.

Original Budget

Room rental $500.00 for the day.

Wifi $250.00.

Transportation Wikipedia Mentor $150.00

Total $900.00

Expenditures

Room rental $909.50

Transportation for Wikipedians $58.50

Without even accounting for the Wifi expense, we have used the $900.00 directly in support of the successful Wikipedia editathon. The other costs were absorbed by the Aphra Behn Society from the income of the conference.

New Budget proposal

Transportation for Wikipedians $58.50

Room rental $841.50

Total $900.00

LLRungegordon (talk) 20:21, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi LLRungegordon, The request for change in budget is approved. Do what caused the significant increase in room cost? What can you do to avoid this kind of surprise when planning future events?--KHarold (WMF) (talk) 01:27, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Sorry I missed this. Thank you for the approval. Regarding the change in room price, I am not sure. This was planned as part of a larger conference that was organized by the Aphra Behn Society, and so the room contract was mixed in with the rest of the conference costs. In the future, we could try to have a separate contract, but that might only increase cost. I will keep an eye on it. LLRungegordon (talk) 20:01, 24 February 2016 (UTC)