Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Wikimedistas de Colombia/Wikivacaciones 2016/Report

Hi User:Racso. Thank you for your work on this project! The photos were breathtaking and I hope they get featured and used often!

We have a few remaining questions/comments and look forward to hearing your response:

1. How do you plan on improving participation in the writing contest? Do you feel that you the writing contest was as promoted as the photo contest?
   
2. As per your grant report, you’ve mentioned having leftover funds you’d like to reallocate. Please review this page if you plan to reallocate, otherwise please send back the remaining funds at your earliest convenience. We will be able to accept your report after we receive your request.
   

Thank you again for all your work. Best, --SMalik (WMF) (talk)

@SMalik (WMF): Hi! Sorry for the delay answering. We were defining our answer for both of your comments, but we took way more time than expected to get back to you.

1. This isn't an easy question. The factors that contributed to the low participation could have been the following:
   1. Indeed, the writing contest wasn't as promoted as the photo contest. However, it's worth mentioning that it was promoted anyway.
   2. Writing something is more difficult than taking a picture. Therefore, people would probably be more attracted to the photo contest. This would also imply that the photo contest could actually absorb possible participants of the writing contest (so it's possible that a writing contest could be more successful if executed alone rather than in parallel with a more "attractive" option).
   3. The prizes were way better for the photographic contest.

   Of course, we'd like to improve the amount participants of our writing contests, even if we're not sure about the causes of the low participation. For now, we plan to execute some edit-a-thons, in order to see if some momentum can be built around editing so contests are more successful.

2. We decided that we're going to send the funds back. Remux will be in charge of the process.

Thanks! --Racso ^¿¿¿??? 20:55, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi User:Racso! Thank you for letting me know and for your responses :) Your report has been approved. Please note that you will not be able to apply for future grants until your remaining funds have been sent back. Thank you so much again, look forward to future projects.
Warm Regards, --SMalik (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

@SMalik (WMF): Hi again. We wanted to share with you some trouble we got, plus one possible solution. Remux contacted the bank to ask for the process of sending funds, and he was told that it would cost about 30 USD to transfer the money to the WMF. Given that the remaining amount is about 40 USD, we think it wouldn't make too much sense to send it. As an alternative, we'd like to propose reallocating the funds for renewing one of our web domains.

• Budget: the renewal would cost close to 35 USD.
• The sole activity would be the renewal of one of our web domains. Our preferred option would be wikimediacolombia.org. This is the domain for the website of our UG. The amount would cover two (2) years of renewal. While this renewal isn't urgent right now, it would still be well received as we'd have the domain secured for several years on, and we know that we'll need it anyway.
• The activity would be fully executed as soon as possible after this proposal if approved (if it is).

That's it. Thanks. --Racso ^¿¿¿??? 14:52, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

@Racso: Thanks for your response, and for letting us know the situation with your bank and your reallocation request. This reallocation request for your website domain is formally approved. Thanks again for your report. :) I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 17:37, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

@I JethroBT (WMF): Thanks a lot. We renewed the domain on June 8. It's now set to expire on May 23/2020. The renewal costed $33.98. I'm not really sure: Do we need to make any formal report for this expenditure or something else? Regards! --Racso ^¿¿¿??? 16:14, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

@Racso: Thanks for asking; we'll need the expense documentation, which can be sent to rapidgrantswikimedia.org. I'd also like to ask for a short description here of how you plan to use the website over the next two years, but this description doesn't need to be long. You could talk about what activities or projects you'd like to showcase, resources you'd like to provide to website visitors, and what information about your group you'd like to provide. Thanks! I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

@I JethroBT (WMF): No problem. I've just sent the documentation to the e-mail. About the website: we use it as our main hub for news about the group. Each time we make an activity we'd like to share with the general public, we create a blog post that we publish there. This allows us not only to showcase what we do, but serves us as a way to easily compile all our activities (for example, for our activity reports). In the website people also find how to contact us via e-mail or in social media. As for the near future, currently we plan to publish about the 2030 Strategy Process, a nationalwide edit-a-thon we plan to do, and a conference we're also planning to do.

The domain is also important because we decided to keep all our activities' websites under it. For example, our currently biggest contest, Wikivacaciones, has its site in http://wikimediacolombia.org/vacaciones/, and we recently moved the archive site for Wiki Loves Monuments Colombia from http://wikilovesmonuments.co to http://wikimediacolombia.org/wlm (as we don't plan to continue renewing the former domain).

I'm not sure if that's enough information, but if you need something else, please don't hesitate to ask. Regards! --Racso ^¿¿¿??? 01:13, 21 June 2017 (UTC)