Shared Knowledge/Annual plan 2016

This is the Annual plan of the activities of Shared Knowledge for 2016. It is a page that links to Simple APG application for this year.

Goals

Our goal is to further increase the presence of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in Macedonia. We achieved that in the previous year through the projects that were successfully completed with some of the goals overachieved as explained in the report.

Education

Educational programme

to introduce and increase the presence of the Wikimedia projects in the educational institutions;
to extend cooperation with educational institutions;
to promote the Wikimedia projects as useful educational tool;
to raise awareness about the benefits that the editing offers to the students;
to increase and improve the content on different topics;
to get access to materials that can be used for referencing.

Lectures about Wikipedia

to offer the general public clear and engaging insight into wikipedianship, how Wikipedia works, the benefits and what Wikipedians stand for.
to reach out to potential institutional or organisational collaborators through our lectures in their institutions

Community

Edit-a-thons

to increase activity on the Wikimedia projects;
to improve the quality of content;
to reach out to new potential editors.

Editing days

to enrich Wikipedias on topics that are insufficiently covered;
to encourage edtors to be more active and devote more of their free time to writing.

Editing contests

to achieve comprehensive coverage of topics on Wikipedia by a combined effort of various editors for a prolonged period of time;
to increase community strength and collaborative spirit.

Wikipedia 15

to celebrate the fact that Wikipedia has been with us for a decade and a half and has achieved so much that noone would hae thought possible;
to raise awareness of our movement and encourage participation via the media, where we will be promoting this event.

Photohunting

to encourage individuals with interest in topics to make expeditions to photograph a thematic unit and upload them;
to promote the approach of members of the public taking initiative in widening the scope and ideas of our organisation.
to draw the general public with interest in particular areas to become active participants in our movement by supporting them in their initial endeavour.

GLAM

Wikimedian in residence

to provide as many free content as possible through the digitalisation of public domain words and old documents;
to serve the projects of Shared Knowledge and the editing community in general, by providing invaluable source material on all topics.

Wikiexpeditions

to visit different regions in Macedonia in an organised manner, photographing them, visiting museums, old houses and monuments around the region, and writing articles on them;
to raise awareness of the features of interest and the heritage of places within those regions, that have often been forgotten for many decades.

Archaeoexpeditions

to make invaluable images of important archaeological sites that have not had significant exposure in the mainstream and tourist guides.
to make images from rare and famous artifacts found on archaeological sites throughout Macedonia and writing articles about them
to make images from artifacts that are common for archaeological sites and exchavations and use them for writing general articles on archaeology, archaeological terminology and research
to promote the historical and cultural heritage of Macedonia and specific Macedonian regions thus raising the awareness of the features of interest and the heritage of places within those regions, that have often been forgotten or have not been known for many decades
to improve the quality and widen the scope of articles related to archaeology through cooperation with the Wikimedians in residence

Geoexpeditions

to explore, photograph and documents various geographic features and landmarks in areas that are remote and inaccessible
resolving the problem of lack of content on those areas, both visual and textual.
familiarise the public with these places with detailed descriptions, good images and information about the way to get to these places

Veloexpeditions

to visit two areas in the vicinity of Skopje (our hometown) with bicycles and camping equipment, photographing them, visiting their landmarks, old houses and monuments around the region, and writing articles on them;
to raise awareness of the features of interest and the heritage of places within those regions, that have often been forgotten for many decades.

WikiWine

enrich content by 10 new articles on various wines and wine regions, illustrating them with at least 30 high-quality images taken on these 'wine tours' of wines and winery items;
to increase the interest in wine and wine science, as well as spread the knowledge of this region's ancient wine traditions by documenting at least 10 indigenous and regional wine varieties.

Macedonian dialects

to improve the rather theoretical and dry articles on the various dialects of Macedonia with audio samples by recording native speakers of those dialects in their areas;
to possibly inspire a collaboration with the language institutes to further enrich Wikipedia on that topic through their participation and/or collaboration.

Macedonian Radio Heritage

to make valuable old recordings of interviews and performances held in the Audio Archives of the Macedonian Radio by famous people freely available to the general public.
to enrich articles by illustrating them with the content in question

Research

Research

to advance the understanding of the Wikimedia movement, the open knowledge movement and the free culture movement by implementing concepts in experimental, digital and open-source economics;
to support the decision-making process with results obtained from analyses on the communities as integral part of the Wikimedie movement.

Plan

Activities

Educaton

Educational programme

We plan to continue our successful educational programme in various schools and universities, thereby creatinga good number of new content on different topics.The team working on the educational programme has overachieved some of the goals set for the year that passed. Based on our experience so far, we plan to expand the volume of our activities regarding the educational programme. Our main efforts will be focused on creating new content about economy at the Faculty of Economics at Ss. Cyriland Methodius University of Skopje, and then on various topics at the Josip Broz – Tito Grammar School. A lot of new challenges await for us during the oncoming period, so along with expanding the volume of activities in the educational institutions we currently collaborate with, we also plan on forging collaborations with institutions that have already been contacted and those that haven't. We also plan to The plan is to hold lectures on editing Wikipedia in other educational institutions, such as the Faculty of Natural Sciences (departments of Chemistry, Physics and Biology), Faculty of History, Faculty of English Language and Literature and Orce Nikolov Grammar School, Georgi Dimitrov Grammar School and the Construction School Centre in Skopje. We also plan on using current and future GLAM projects in education, with the focus on improving articles already created with those projects.

Lectures about Wikipedia

The project includes series of lectures devoted to the Wikimedia movement, free knowledge and free culture with the goal of promoting and popularising them. It is intended to be short and engaging, full of facts about the movement and recent cool activities in the world and in Macedonia. The main goal is to inspire all the attendats of the lectures to join the community of Wikipedians and contribute in the movement's activities.

Community

Edit-a-thons

The goal of this project is writing articles on a pre-selected topic, in which participants gather in-person while editing. Thus, edit-a-thons are good opportunity for interested persons to come and meet members from the community by directly contributing to the Wikimedia projects. Along with contributing on Wikimedia projects, this is also a usefull way of strenghtening the Wikipedian community. For the upcoming year, we plan to organise six edit-a-thons (app. one in two months).

Editing days

The goal of this project is writing articles on a pre-selected underrepresented topic during 24-hour period (CET). Unlike the edit-a-thons, it is not necessary participants to gather in-person in order to participate in an editing day, which is particularly useful for those living in geographically remote areas. Thus, we expect to encourage large portion of the active membership to take part and enrich the amount of content on the given topic on the Wikimedia projects. We plan to organise twelve editing days in the upcoming period (app. one per month).

Editing contests

The editing contests will be organised for the users active on the Macedonian Wikipedia with the main goal of improving the quality of the existing articles or creating new articles on specific topics. In each contests, the interested users will have to sign up their participation and contribute within the previously specified period for the contests. After the end of each contests, a jury consisted of three experienced Wikipedians will review the contributions of all participants and select the best three participants who will get awarded. We plan to organise four editing contests in the year to come (app. one quarterly).

Photohunts

The idea of this project is to provide members of the public an opportunity to go on a 'photographic hunt' after a particular topic or thematic unit and then be reimbursed by us for the travel and food costs while on the hunt. This way, we think that we will gain an opportunity to attract new members and active contributors.

GLAM

Wikimedian in residence

For the upcoming year we plan to extend the term of our Wikimedian in residence at the State Archives of the Republic of Macedonia (DARM). Shared Knowledge and DARM are both satisfied of the work done by the Wikimedian in residence in the previous months and there is interest from both sides to extend the cooperation. We also plan to introduce an additional Wikimedian in residence: at the National and University Library "St. Clement of Ohrid" (NUBSK). Our second Wikimedian in residence is already working at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU), who has already been on that position in the MANU Library for a month now, and is digitising materials, collect information and release content on many topics. The arrangements that were made with the National and University Library "St. Clement of Ohrid" last year did not end successfully and this year we plan to take the issue on a higher level in order to get the needed support. The role of the Wikimedian in residence at NUBSK will be to address a significant problem we are facing as Wikimedians in this country - severe lack of digitised literature and material of any sort, other than classic literary works.

Wikiexpeditions

The goal of this project is to visit six new regions in Macedonia and to continue the success from the previous year. The Wikiexpeditions is planned to include visiting of villages, museums, taking photographs of monuments and landscapes and writing articles on the Macedonian Wikipedia. For the upcoming year, we plan to organise six Wikiexpeditions; two of them will be during the autumn and the other four during the spring.

Archaeoexpeditions

Archaeoexpeditions are very similar to the Wikiexpeditions with the main difference that they strictly focus on visiting archaeological sites. Macedonia has more than 6,000 archeological sites but most of them lack photographs and need improvements. Thus, the project aims at working together with archaeologists, searching for information and taking photographs from the sites. The first archaeoexpedition was successfully conducted during the previous year visiting 2 archaoglical sites that are officialy declared as sites of the highest and capitat national importance.

Geoexpeditions

The Geoexpeditions are to be visits to mountainous areas and valleys aiming to cover, explore and photograph the various geographic landmarks in the relevant areas, such as peaks, ridges, topographic areas, passes, falls, forests, plateaus, rivers, brooks, streams, tributaries, waterfalls, lakes, as well as specific native (and endemic) flora and fauna. We also intend to explore soil types, rocks, hiking and mountaineering trails.

Two such expeditions are planned: Šar Mountain area and the Mokra massif. One is to take place during June-July, and the other in August-September 2016. We intend to stay in the local mountain lodges, serving as starting points of our exploration. Before, after and in between the expeditions, we intend to collect a considerable amount of research material on the areas visited, all of which is available in the fund of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU), where the project organiser/expedition leader serves as our Wikimedian in residence.

Veloexpeditions

The goal of this project is to visit two regions adjacent to the Skopje region in Macedonia with bicycles (hence the 'velo' in the name) and camping equipment. We will camp around villages, visiting them with the bikes and make photographs of them, their monuments and surrounding landscapes, recording their heritage, churches, places of interest and other riches. Then we will write articles on the Macedonian Wikipedia, using the images provided.

WikiWine

WikiWine is a thematic project with the goal of enriching the Wikimedia projects with quality content on different sorts of wines. The plan is to visit vineyards and wineries which will provide information for all the wines that they produce, so that we can take photos and create articles on them. In this way, we will promote country's long tradition in the production of wine and make detailed and valuable information regarding Macedonian wine available to the general public.

Macedonian Radio Heritage

This project arose from the need to digitise valuable old recordings from the Audio Archives of the Macedonian Radio that will be invaluable in illustrating articles on various famous people (by excerpts of old interviews), events and performances. The Archives already have digitisation equipment, so we need to pick material. The material needs to be transferred on audio files, excerpts will be cut and metadata will be provided and entered with the help of the archivist.

Research

Research

One of our goals for the upcoming year is to start writing research papers on topics related to the Wikimedia movement, open-source economics, experimental economics, sharing economics, network economics and digital economics. Our research activities will be carried out in line with the other research projects and we hope that our findings will be presented at future conferences. The research activities will also include surveying of the community members with the goal of providing information about the demographic structure of the community that will be helpful in setting the goals for our future projects.

Participation in conferences

Participation in conferences

In the upcoming year, we also plan to send three representatives (including a staff member) at the Wikimedia Conference 2016, two representatives at the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2016 and also to award scholarships for participation in Wikimania 2016 and other conferences.

Impact

Target readership

The activities from annual grant will have impact on the following projects:

Wikimedia Commons;
Wikipedia in all languages;
Wikivoyage in all languages;
Wikisource in all languages;
Wikidata.

Fit with strategy

What crucial thing will the project try to change or benefit in the Wikimedia movement? Please select the Wikimedia strategic priority(ies) that your project most directly aims to impact and explain how your project fits. Most projects fit all strategic priorities. However, we would like project managers to focus their efforts on impacting 1–2 strategic priorities. Examples of strategic priorities can be found here.

The activities and projects that we plan to carry out during the course of the year will address all of the aforementioned objectives to a certain degree. A reflection of increased reach and participation will come from our educational programme along with the community-oriented projects. Quality content will be generated through our GLAM projects and educational programme, while quality improvements of the existing content will be pursued through the editing contests. The lectures that we plan to give about specific topics such like the Wikimedia movement with its projects, the value of the free knowledge, and the licencing of free content have the potential of presenting and promoting our movement in the way that will have to increase credibility as well. Most of the people involved in our activities will be community members or people who have very good experience in project management and are interested to increase their knowledge about our movement (each of them contributing in their own area of expertese and helping out when volunteer work needs to be done). The linkage between these two groups of people will lead to a faster growth of our capacities, increased effectiveness of all processes, and greater openness to the external environment. With regard to the future financing of our activities, our strategic priorities include securing financial sustainability, increasing the number of different funding sources, and raising the level of financial independence. Our goal in the first year will be to promote our activities and get in touch with different institutions, which will have to help us achieve our strategic priorities on the long run.

Measures of success

Please provide a list of both quantitative and qualitative criteria that will be used to determine how successful the project is. You will need to report on the success of the project according to these measures after the project is completed. See the PEG program resources for suggested measures of success.

The success of the annual plan will be assessed through the following measures

at least 20% female members;
at least 10 successfully completed projects;
establishing cooperation with at least 3 institutions or organisations.

Educational programme

establishing cooperation with at least 2 educational institutions;
at least 10 lectures and workshops given in the educational institutions (including the lectures on movement-related topics);
at least 500 students reached;
at least 100 students involved;
at least 100 high-quality articles created or improved.

Lectures about Wikipedia

at least 3 lectures given in collaborating or potentially collaborating institutions and also public places like cultural centres, youth centres etc.;
at least 200 people reached.

Edit-a-thons

organising exactly 4 edit-a-thons;
at least 20 participants altogether;
at least 120 articles created or improved.

Editing days

holding exactly 12 editing days;
at least 60 participants altogether;
at least 500 articles created or improved.

Editing contests

organising exactly 4 editing contests;
at least 25 participants;
at least 1,000 articles created or improved.

Wikipedia 15

at least 5 media reporting about Wikipedia;
at least 20 participants in the conference day;
at least 50 persons attending the birthday party.

GLAM

establishing cooperation with at least 2 GLAM institutions;

Wikimedians in residence

at least 30 scanned and uploaded images monthly;
at least 30 images used in articles;
at least 20 articles created or improved.

Wikiexpeditions

conducting exactly 6 two-day Wikiexpeditions;
at least 1,200 images uploaded;
at least 100 articles created or improved.

Archaeoexpeditions

conducting exactly 6 one-day achaeoexpeditions;
at least 30 archaeological sites visited;
at least 600 images uploaded;
at least 40 articles created or improved.

Geoexpeditions

at least 1,000 images uploaded;
at least 50 new articles created;
at least 100 existing articles improved.

Veloexpeditions

at least 1,000 images uploaded;
conducting exactly 2 Veloexpeditions;
at least 100 articles created or improved.

WikiWine

at least 3 wineries visited;
at least 10 sorts of wine documented;
at least 30 images uploaded;
at least 10 articles created or improved.

Macedonian dialects

at least 3 dialects recorded.

Macedonian Radio Heritage

at least 10 recordings/excerpts obtained, documented, uploaded and used in articles.

Research

writing of at least 2 research papers;
conducting exactly 1 survey on the demographic structure of the community.

Note: In addition to your project-specific measures of success, you will also be asked to report on some global metrics at the end of your final report. Please keep this in mind as you plan, and we'll support you as you begin your project.

Resources and risks

Resources

The main risks concerned with our annual plan include:

Negotiations with GLAM institutions may be long and it is unclear whether they will end with success.
Engaging of community members to work on the organisation's activities may be difficult.
Training of volunteers who are interested to get involved but lack experience may take some time.
Efficiency of the public relations may suffer from the reluctance of the media to cooperate.
Participants in the photographic contests may not upload images from unrepresented sites.

Priority levels

Level	Project
High	Wikiexpeditions Educational programme Editing contests Wikimedian in residence Wikipedia 15
Mid	Archaeological Museum of Macedonia Research Lectures about Wikipedia Editing days Edit-a-thons Open Streets of Skopje Photohunts Archaeoexpeditions Geoexpeditions Veloexpeditions
Low	Macedonian dialects Macedonian Radio Heritage WikiWine