Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Rossella Vignola (OBC)/Wiki4MediaFreedom edit-a-thon - II edition/Report

Budget changes

In addition to the expenses which were budgeted (EUR 757,94) we spent EUR 14,00 for printing some materials for the participants. Such expenses were not foreseen in the budget. Also, we spent more money than foreseen (EUR 237,53 instead of EUR 200,00) for "Food and drinks for participants". Since we had some savings under the budget line "Travel and accommodation for international participants", can can we move EUR 37,53 of unspent funds from the line-item "Contribution to Travel and Accommodation expenses for Wikipedians from other European countries joining the event" (450 EUR foreseen, 370,41 actually spent) to the line-item "Food and drinks for participants"? Thank you!--Rossella Vignola (OBC) (talk) 23:54, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Just noting here that funds for this grant were sent during the reporting period to match the amount spent reported in the Finances section, which was less than the original approved amount. As of late January 2018, Rossella has notified WMF of possible changes to the final amount as OBCT is still awaiting another invoice, and will provide an update for the remaining expense of about 200 EUR. Thank you, Rossella! Morgan Jue (WMF) (talk) 19:26, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hi Rossella, and thanks for your report on this second edit-a-thon focused on media freedom. I understand there are some matters related to expenses left to take care of, but I wanted to comment on the other aspects of the report. Here are my comments and questions on your report:

• Thank you for documenting some of the outcomes onthe meta page for the event. It's great to see participants contributing broadly across Wikidata, Bulgarian Wikipedia, and English Wikipedia.
• You remarked that the logistics of the room made it difficult to check people's work. I've run some edit-a-thons myself with new editors in Chicago, and while it is always helpful to have experienced Wikimedians checking article drafts and other contributions, I have found it helpful to encourage participants to check each others' work when there are such limitations as you described. What I've normally done is ask participants to review a neighbor's work for readability, citations to claims (i.e. "is there a reference, and can I find where this claim came from in the reference?"), and some basic stuff to avoid (e.g. heavy reliance on source quotations, using idiomatic or casual language). Consider trying this out, not only as a means to help improve the quality of the work, but also so participants get to know each other a little.
• Based on your outcomes, I am glad to hear you are planning to continue running these events across Europe. Media freedom as a topic has always been important, but I suspect it is becoming increasingly visible in other European countries.

I'll follow-up with you via e-mail regarding the issues related to expenses. Thanks for your work organizing and running this event, and I'm glad to see journalists and media freedom topics represented in our projects. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 19:30, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi I JethroBT (WMF) and thank you for the time you took the review the report and for your comments! I will for sure take into consideration your suggestion of making people help each others to cross-check the work done. In our case there was also another issue: time. As we wanted to dedicated some time also to the Wikidata session we had to "compress" the timeframe for both the sessions, the Wikipedia and the Wikidata one. "Time pressure" did not help to go in-depth. Anyway we are happy for the outcome of the event, we really believe the Wikipedia method has a lot to offer to the world of journalism, especially these days. Yes, in Europe the debate on media freedom and pluralism has revamped in recent years, and this is true also for the most consolidated democracies in the EU. There is a lot of attention on the issue by the European institutions and the general situation of freedom and pluralism has been deteriorating since some years everywhere in Europe. That's why we are trying to to keep up public awareness and work to support quality, independent journalism which can help people to regain trust in the media.

After a check with our financial department, I will follow-up with you via e-mail regarding the issues related to the expenses. Thank you so much for your support! --Rossella Vignola (OBC) (talk) 09:42, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Update, 24 April 2018: We have EUR 200 as remaining fund since still we have not received the invoice from the catering service.

Hi Rossella. Thank you for the update. Please hold the remaining 200 EUR while we make a decision on your new request. Best, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk)