Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Ebenezer Mlay/Wikimedia Awareness Workshops and Editathons

Comments from WMF

Hello Ebenezer Mlay, I'm so excited to see you carry on workshops after the training you had in Dar es Salaam with Wikimedia Tanzania User Group members. I also got your email in regards to the event you already organized in October. Thank you for sharing the photos. I have a few questions before moving forward with your request.

1. I know you were able to have 20 volunteers gather at your October 5th event. Can you let us know how many articles you were able to improve or create at that event? I ask this question because I want to encourage you to base your impact section on what you were able to see at that event.
2. Earlier in your application you mentioned renting a venue for the editathons but I don't see that in your budget. Are you able to get the space for free?
3. 450,000 shillings for tea is a high price if you're just serving tea to volunteers. Perhaps you can check in with Ingo how much he spent the last event to estimate your cost for this series. For example, at the Dar es salaam event, breakfast for 20 volunteers cost around 275,000 shillings.

Please let me know if you have any questions. I look forward to working with you on this project. Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 23:07, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Reply to comments from WMF

Hello Wjifar(WMF), I'm so excited getting responses from you. I am glad to provide answers to the questions you posed to me.

1. The 20 volunteers I gathered on 5th October included 16 new volunteers and 4 experienced volunteers making the number to be 20. On that day 11 articles were created by the new volunteers with the help of the experienced ones who did not to part to create articles instead they assisted. So almost 5 new volunteers did not publish their articles. Later after the event, few volunteers created 3 more articles.

2. It is possible finding a free venue to conduct the editathons. I have passed across the application but I have not seen where I have written about renting the venue but if it is there then it is by mistake.

3. 450,000 Tsh is for the series of three events whereas for every event the cost of tea is 150,000 Tsh and the number of volunteers expected to be engaged is 30, not 20.

Additional Comments from WMF

Hello Ebenezer Mlay, thank you for providing responses to my questions. I wanted to clarify one thing with you and comment on your clarification.

• Since you mentioned that you were able to create/improve 11 articles from your October 5th event, I'm thinking you would be able to get between 30 - 40 articles in your upcoming series. Does that calculation make sense to you? If so I just wanted you to adjust your impact section from 90 articles to 30 - 40 articles. Just wanted to make sure that we set realistic goals especially given that most of your participants will be new editors who will be learning how to engage with Wikimedia projects.
• I re-read your proposal regarding renting space and I realize I misunderstood you saying you'll get a venue with enough computers for volunteers as you renting space. I apologize for my confusion.

Please let me know your thoughts about the impact section and I will follow up promptly. Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 23:14, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Reply to additional comments from WMF

Hello WJifar (WMF) , thank you for your response and clarification.

Thank you for the clarification it is of help to ensure that the goal set is realistic. I have changed the number of articles expected to be created/improved to 30 articles.

Edit-a-thon resources

Hi Ebenezer Mlay, thanks for your proposal to run a series of workshops and edit-a-thons in Tanzania. I wanted to provide some resources that may be helpful to you in planning and organizing these events. This program guide for edit-a-thons provides a lot of guidance in terms of tools to measure impact, how-to-guides, and learning patterns from other organizers. Specifically for newer editors, these set of training modules from the Wiki Education Foundation might be useful in terms of selecting workshop topics. Out of curiosity, what topics were you hoping to cover at your workshop events? I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:06, 6 November 2019 (UTC)