Grants talk:PEG/User:Samir I. Sharbaty/Egypt Wikimedians User Group/WikiWomen Prize/Report

Thanks so much for this report and congrats on a successful project! We're really excited to hear it was such a success and your results were better than anticipated. The winner's articles are very impressive, especially considering the competition was targeted at new users. We have a couple of follow-up questions:

1. Were all the participants part of the Wikipedia Education Program? If yes, and it was only advertised to WEP students, do you think you would do a broader competition next time? My sense is that the content was of such high quality because they had the support structure of their teachers and WEP.
2. You mention that if you did the project again you would look for more volunteers, especially offline volunteers. What aspects of the project required the most time?
3. What would you like to do with the remaining funds? If the user group plans on submitting another grant request soon, you can retain the funds. Please let us know.

Thanks again for all your work on this project! Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 04:42, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

• Hi Alex, thank you for your support. We are happy that you like the results too! This success is a result of the collaboration spirit and the great work everyone did. The students, volunteers, the Wikipedia community and surely you. Here are my answers to your questions:

1. Were all the participants part of the Wikipedia Education Program? If yes, and it was only advertised to WEP students, do you think you would do a broader competition next time? My sense is that the content was of such high quality because they had the support structure of their teachers and WEP.

   All the participants were WEP students, though it was not targeted to the program students only nor users in Egypt only but no one outside the program in Egypt joined. I don't have an exact answer to why no users from other Arabic-speaking countries or from outside the program has participated. We have advertised on the Village pump and other places on wiki and social media, but may be we would have needed more advertising to reach out to other users, like adding a banner ad on the Arabic Wikipedia or sending it in the welcome message to new users for example.

   This is an interesting observation and definitely something to think about for the next online competition. Before planning another one, let's discuss ideas for broadening the outreach!

2. You mention that if you did the project again you would look for more volunteers, especially offline volunteers. What aspects of the project required the most time?

   Volunteers are needed to plan, promote, train participants, and organize workshops and celebrations for them. If we would like to target more participants in the future we may need to spend more time planning and may need more volunteers.

3. What would you like to do with the remaining funds? If the user group plans on submitting another grant request soon, you can retain the funds. Please let us know.

   Yes, it would be so helpful if let us retain the remaining funds for future projects. I think they can be used together with the remaining funds of the other grant of the user group discussed here.

   It looks like the group has enough funds for the history writing competition. Please retain the remaining $50 for additional activities. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 12:49, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you so much for all what you did to make this project successful. -- Samir El-Sharbaty ^{(talk to me)} 23:19, 26 January 2015 (UTC)