Shared Knowledge/Annual plan 2019

This is the Annual plan of the activities of Shared Knowledge for 2019. It is a page linked to from the Simple APG application for the year.

Programmes

Approved programmes in Simple APG application

Community

Editing challenges

Participants in the Velo-city edit-a-thon in January 2018

The editing challenges primarily aim to increase the content quality and fill content gaps on the Wikimedia project but also to reach out to specialist groups of people and boost more productive editing by the experienced editors. The scope of the editing challenges in 2018 will remain unchanged compared to 2017 and they will thus include: edit-a-thons, editing contests, editing days and editing weekends.

The edit-a-thons have underwent a successful transition from community events intended for experienced users towards outreach events intended for new editors. Last two years all of the edit-a-thons have been organized with interested group comprised of mostly highly skilled and motivated individuals possessing high degree of knowledge on a certain topic which is decided in advance in order to cover the lack of the content on articles on those topics on Wikipedia. The last 2017 year Shared Knowledge organized 6 edit-a-thons and entirely helped on 2 other edit-a-thons providing instruction to the participants and logistical support on the events. The topic covered on this edit-a-thons were: bicycle related topics, Biology, Gender, Business Administration and Accounting and Cerebral Palsy where all of the participants who in the biggest majority were newbies who acquired knowledge of editing and working on Wikipedia and in the same time contributed by sharing their knowledge in creating over 100 new articles. The number of edit-a-thons will be maintained to six events during the year. Four of these six events will be conducted as part of larger project WikiLiga in collaboration of Goethe Institut in Skopje.

The editing contests have drastically improved the coverage of underrepresented topics and have also led to re-activating of users who have not been active for a pretty long time. They have also resulted in high-quality editing with 7 featured articles and 1 good article on the Macedonian Wikipedia, while in the last year aiming to reach the goal of 100,000 articles on Macedonian Wikipedia the editing contest have contributed with over 300 new articles. Because the goal of the editing contests focus on adding quality content, they mostly focus on engaging the community of experienced users, yet the participation of newly registered users is also welcome. There are no major changes that we expect to make to the editing contests during the year with regards to the selected topics and the awards distribution. The number of contests that will take place during the year will be four, while the Wikimedia CEE Spring in joint collaboration with the other communities from Central and Eastern Europe will be also a possibility for the users to participate.

The positive evaluation of our editing days and weekends as zero-budget projects that encourage participation of community members in writing articles on a pre-selected underrepresented topic during a 24-hour and 48-periods, respectively, was convincing enough to include these two projects anew. These editing challenges are especially suitable for holidays and commemorating days but can also be used to coordinate the community towards generating local content from the available sources that we have. Considering the strategic goal of reaching 100.000 articles, last year the outcome of editing days and weekend contributed with nearly 500 articles. Thus for this year to have twenty editing days and weekends each during the year.

The SMART objectives of the Editing challenges within Community programme are the following:

to have at least 168 participants from the Editing challenges sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 104 newly registered users from the Editing challenges sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 2,228 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Editing challenges sub-programme during the year; and
to spend at least 3,388 volunteer hours on the Editing challenges sub-programme during the year.

Community support

Image of fireworks taken on the photohunt on D Festival in July 2018

The relation between the Wikimedia affiliate and the community as a key for healthy development of the movement during the year will be enhanced through working equally on extending support for conducting photohunts and city tours, growing the community through Wikicamps and building up the community through frequent gatherings and meet-ups as well as increased participation in international events and conferences.

The photohunts have established as a successful low-budget project with high cost-effectiveness. Despite the fact that this project helps the community members to get financial support for conducting hunts for images, the project also rewards special right to the community rather than the regulatory bodies of the affiliate to make the final decision on delivering support. Considering the broadening of the scope of the photohunts with cultural events which was done in the last year, we intend to continue with photohunts with largely broadened offered list and scope for taking images with encyclopedical value, which can be properly accommodated in our entire eco-system, which is a good opportunity to attract interest not only from the experienced editors but also from the new users engaged in the other programmes, which proved to be a case last year where we have photohunts granted to a participants from the Wiki Camp, interested professional and amateur photographs.

The positive outcome of the Wikicamp Dihovo 2018 has guided us to expand this project to organising two camps in 2019, one jointly with the colleagues from Wikimedia Serbia as a cross border collaboration. The Wikicamps are a good way to introduce a group of interested people with the Wikimedia culture through an outdoor seminar. Importantly, the activities during the camps do not help only develop skills for contributing to the Wikimedia projects but also for conducting research, compiling sources for editing and improving photographic skills. The project can also be easily integrated to our eco-system because the participants at the camps will have the possibility to apply their knowledge on the other programmes, which proved to be a case whereas 1/4 of the participants of the Wiki Camp Dihovo 2018 participated in at least three other projects after the camp. This would be a strong incentive for organizing two more camps which will help to rise the knowledge of Wikipedia and also growth of the Wikimedia Community in Macedonia.

The frequency of community gatherings and meet-ups has sharply decreased in the last couple of years, whereas the Wikipedia Day celebrations remain the only formal events that socialise number of community members. For that purpose, apart from the Wikipedia Day celebration, we also plan to revive the meet-ups that took place on a regular basis in the past.

In 2019, we plan to send two representatives (including a staff member) at the Wikimedia Conference 2019, two representatives at the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2019, to award two scholarships for participation in Wikimania 2019 and to have participants at regional conferences (e.g. WikiLive in Belgrade, OSCAL in Tirana).

Programme story: Wikicamp Dihovo 2018

Logo of the Wikicamp Dihovo 2018

During the holiday weekend on the occasion of the Independence Day of Macedonia from 7^th to 9^th of September in the village of Dihovo on the foothills of Baba mountain near Bitola, the second Wiki-Camp was organized. The camp was attended by 20 young people from several towns in Macedonia who, through mutual acquaintance and socializing, had the opportunity to get to familiarized, instructed and be trained for editing articles on Wikipedia. Moreover all of the participants have been trained for creating a good quality articles by adding references, categorizing articles and formatting text in the articles. The second main focus of the training during the wikicamp was the uploading and licensing images on Commons Wikimedia. For the first time on this wikicamp has been conveyed presentation and workshop on Wikidata, whereby the participants have edited several subjects of articles. Apart from the editing activities the second main activity about which the participants have been trained was the manner of conducting expedition field research in the area of geography, nature, agriculture, cultural heritage, architecture and archeology through hikes on different places in the surroundings whereby over 130 photos have been taken and made available for free use. Within the editing activities during the Wikicamp in Dihovo, more than 50 new articles on Wikipedia have been created and more then a dozen were improved in Macedonian Wikipedia. Further in the month of September 1/4 of the participants of the Wiki Camp Dihovo 2018 participated in at least three other projects after the camp, which indicates the success of this camp

The SMART objectives of the Community support sub-programme are the following:

to have at least 164 participants from the Community support sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 140 newly registered users from the Community support sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 1,380 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Community support sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 534 photographs used in Wikipedia articles from the Community support sub-programme during the year; and
to spend at least 2,289 volunteer hours on the Community support sub-programme during the year.

Expeditions

Group photo of the participants of the second Wikiexpedition in Azot region in June 2018 with the two new female members

The expeditionary projects have had enormous impact on the field research capabilities of our members over the last couple of years and have contributed to the creation of local content from multiple sources that had not been used for editing before as well as high-quality images of different places in Macedonia with 5 featured pictures and 1 quality image on Wikimedia Commons, so far. Moreover, expeditions have significant impact towards the general Wikimedian community and the public, thus through social media, exhibition and presentations on all other projects, considerable and constant number of new members are joining on every expedition which is an indicator about the success and the outreach significance of this programme.

Our plans for 2019 encompass having five generic Wikiexpeditions, four Geoexpeditions, two Veloexpeditions and two Archaeoexpeditions which will replace the Agroexpeditions after two years break, totalling to 13 expeditions overall.

Considering the aim to grow and expand the community this year we plan to organize the expiditions with close collaboration with highly skilled and specialized individuals and groups such as the Student's Geographical Society for the Geoexpeditions along with the Mountaneering club "Transverzalec" which is our collaborator for two years, professor and students of archaeology from the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University for the archaeoexpeditions and local support for the Wikiexpeditions. The plans and the implementation of the expeditions will be closely defined with those groups which will provide help in expertise, experience, equipment and staff which will eventually became part of the community being instructed and skillfully contributing on Wikipedia.

The SMART objectives of the Expeditions sub-programme are the following:

to have at least 18 participants from the Expeditions sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 7 newly registered users from the Expeditions sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 3,020 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Expeditions sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 2,112 photographs used in Wikipedia articles from the Expeditions sub-programme during the year; and
to spend at least 4,657 volunteer hours on the Expeditions sub-programme during the year.

Wikisketch

Wikisketch lesson given to a journalist Ljubiša Vladimirov in September 2018 in the office of Shared Knowledge

Wikisketch has started as a new kind of activity intended to grow up the knowledge about Wikipedia by providing quick and fast training for working on Wikipedia by creating and editing articles, uploading images, doing a research on highly skilled individuals who are not yet contributing users on Wikipedia. The participants who have been instructed for editing and working on Wikipedia are carefully chosen primarily from the acquaintances known to have a higher degree of knowledge on a certain topic in business, sciences and professions such as economy, marketing, informational technology, banking, journalist, printing, transport etc. which lack or are scarcely covered with articles on Macedonian Wikipedia.

The instructions are given directly and individually with a person in a time span between 30 minutes and hour where the participants are given a sketch of a Wikipedia articles which they follow as a pattern in creating and editing new articles by their own choice with the support of skilled editors who show them editing with the three main tool editors: coded, visual and the translation tool with mandatory embedding image, hyperlink and references.

For 2019, we plan to extend and implement Wikisketch lessons throughout the entire year, every month during a week we will conduct fast Wikisketch lessons to individuals having experience and expertise in a field about which Wikipedia lacks content. Also, Wikisketch lessons will be provided to already registered users who do not contribute on other fields such as members of community who participate on projects just with uploading images but not with writing text and adding content on Wikipedia. Besides recruiting newly registered users with this programme we intent to improve the level of the knowledge of working and contributing on Wikipedia on the already registered members of the community. Thus, we plan to reach two goals: growth and expansion of the community and growth of the number of articles reaching the strategic goal of 100 thousand articles.

The SMART objectives of the Wikisketch lessons sub-programme are the following:

to have at least 75 participants from the Expeditions sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 72 newly registered users from the Expeditions sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 300 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Wikisketch lessons sub-programme during the year;
to spend at least 150 volunteer hours on the Wikisketch lessons sub-programme during the year.

Photographic contests

Photographic contests are proved to have considerable impact to towards the growth of community and providing high quality images for further use as a content on Wikipedia and public domain. Hence, in 2019 we will continue with organization of photographic contest which will focus on the Cultural heritage and monuments in Macedonia and will last for a longer period in order to include the national, regional and local institutions throughout the entire country for support and recruit a larger involvement of different level contributors beside just the attracted competitors.

The SMART objectives of Photographic contest sub-programme are the following:

to have at least 53 participants from the Wiki loves contests sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 40 newly registered users from the Wiki loves contests sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 2,000 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Wiki loves contests sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 800 photographs used in Wikipedia articles from the Wiki loves contests sub-programme during the year; and
to spend at least 1,030 volunteer hours on the Wiki loves contests sub-programme during the year.

Wikigroups

Wikigroups sub-programme is intended to broaden the community membership by including groups which are bonded on a specific activities and tasks. This sub-programme bear resemblance and will include project activities on the similar pattern as the Education programme where the specific groups will be introduced to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects and will continue to add and improve contents on Wikipedia with information, files and content acquired through their regular activities. This sub-programme will start in 2019 with two groups: scouts in the project so-called Wiki Scout and translators in the project so-called Wiki Translate.

Wikiscout

In the last several years on our other programmes it was noticed the increasing participation of users who are active in scouting. Regarding the information and knowledge sharing and acquiring through out door activities of the scouts, Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects are considered as very suitable and useful for their work which led us to start a joint project with scouting federation and clubs in Macedonia in 2019. The activities will include introduction of Wikipedia and all Wikimedia projects to scouts who will increase the community and enrich the contents by their information and activities shared on the wikis.

Wikitranslate

Regarding the increased usage of the translation tool and the search for Macedonian language articles and content on internet, which was noticed to us by Amir Ahoroni on the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin in April 2018, we will start a joint projects with translators who are working as professionals, foreign language teachers, students who will be introduced to Wikipedia and will help by improving text content of the articles by their regular activities.

The SMART objectives of Wiki Groups sub-programme are the following:

to have at least 60 participants from the Wiki Groups sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 50 newly registered users from the Wiki Groups sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 300 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Wiki Groups sub-programme during the year;
to spend at least 600 volunteer hours on the Wiki Groups sub-programme during the year.

Other programmes (without funding in Simple APG)

Education

Logo of the Education Programme in Macedonia

The Education programme has proved to be a successful way for engaging new users to contribute to the Macedonian Wikipedia and subsequently fill the content gaps on specialist topics through collaboration with educational institutions. The model of collaboration consists of running workshops on the process of editing Wikipedia articles intended for students who are going to apply this knowledge to create or improve Wikipedia articles as an assignment of the grading process. The members of our educational team have been mostly working with students attending the Josip Broz – Tito Grammar School in Skopje on topics in physics and the activities at this institution have resulted in engaging several hundred students to create or improve hundreds of Wikipedia articles. The major strength of the programme so far has been the exceptional quality of editing, which has lead to the promotion of 3 featured articles and 1 good article on the Macedonian Wikipedia. Moreover, since 2018 our educational programme has been extended to the "Krume Kepeski" Primary School in the higher classes, notably the last two 8^th and 9^th grades, on the topics of geography on the optional courses of the subject "Study of the homeland".

Participants of the Education programme at "Krume Kepeski" Primary School in May 2018

Finally, in 2018 within the education programme we have also established the lectures and lessons given mode of instruction for engaging new users in the three months Wiki Club at American Corner in Skopje and two others lecture seminars in the city of Bitola and Livadišta summer resort. However, despite the wide reach and positive outcome of the activities, the following three problems have remained present for years: 1) low number of educational institutions involved, 2) low retention rate of participants and 3) limited geographic distribution.

The planned educational activities for 2019 were shaped in a way to address the identified problems. First, we plan to continue with the model of collaboration implemented thus far at the Josip Broz – Tito Grammar School and Krume Kepeski Primary School in Skopje but also to expand the programme to at least two other educational institutions. Considering the size of our educational team and the other available resources, we have come to the conclusion that we can manage activities at two additional institutions while keeping the high quality of editing at the same time. Second, we plan to continue with the lectures about the processes of editing Wikipedia articles, uploading files on Wikimedia Commons and generating items on Wikidata that will be given to interested participants in three other cities in Macedonia. The target audience of these lectures will be broader than students attending the traditional educational institutions and will also include others willing to acquire new knowledge. Third, we also plan to continued with the already introduced editing contest intended only for students participating in the Education programme through the model of collaboration with educational institutions. This activity will have to stimulate participation through the awarding of prizes and also divert participants' attention to other topics of interest as an attempt to both increase retention and further fill the content gaps.

The SMART objectives of the Education programme are the following:

to have at least 235 participants from the Education programme during the year;
to have at least 150 newly registered users users from the Education programme during the year;
to have at least 540 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the Education programme during the year; and
to spend at least 2,272 volunteer hours on the Education programme during the year.

Partnerships

Exhibitions

Visitor checks the QR-pedia code on a image on the Wikiexpeditions Exhibition in April 2018

The success of the photographic collaboration between Shared Knowledge and Wiki Education Brazil in 2017 has been motivating for us to introduce a separate sub-programme on organizing exhibitions. The model of the photographic collaboration that we have worked out helps to promote the cultural and natural heritage of the collaborating countries through images displayed at exhibitions but it also attracts community members to edit content on topics related to the collaborating country. In this way, the exhibitions can be easily connected to the editing challenges in our eco-system. In 2019 we plan to continue with the photographic collaboration that will result in having one exhibitions.

The SMART objectives of the GLAM sub-programme are the following:

to have at least 50 participants from the GLAM sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 5 newly registered users from the GLAM sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 60 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the GLAM sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 30 photographs used in Wikipedia articles from the Exhibitions sub-programme during the year; and
to spend at least 50 volunteer hours on the Exhibitions sub-programme during the year.

GLAM

Shared Knowledge have established partnerships with several GLAM institutions in Macedonia where project activities such as Wikimedian in Residence, Macedonian Dialects project have successfully been done. However, the GLAM institutions shows a little interest in using Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects as platforms for placing information and digitalizing in public domain their content of books, artworks, which led us to the idea to organize educational and instructional conference with lectures and workshops for the GLAM institution workers.

In 2019 we plan to organize a national conference about GLAM employees which will be held at a partner institution venue and will provide thorough lectures and instructions about Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and all possibilities for partnership and resident projects in the institutions such as Wikimedian in Residence, Wiki Clubs with regular lectures and editing challenges as a part of their programs and budgets in the future. The event will be intended and open for the GLAM employees from institutions nationwide (not just those with which we have signed memorandums of cooperation) thus we expect to accomplish the objectives of familiarizing with Wikipedia to the staff of specialized institutions and expand the community of newly registered users with unimpeded and constant access to materials eligible for public domain and free use, establish partnerships with new GLAM institutions as well as joint projects.

The SMART objectives of the GLAM sub-programme are the following:

to have at least 60 participants from the GLAM sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 50 newly registered users from the GLAM sub-programme during the year;
to have at least 120 content pages created or improved on the Wikimedia projects from the GLAM sub-programme during the year;
to spend at least 300 volunteer hours on the Exhibitions sub-programme during the year.

WikiLiga

WikiLiga (on English: WikiLeague) is project started in 2019 in collaboration and funded from external funds from Goethe Institut in Skopje after month of negotiation. Project includes four lectures in duration of six hours each, conducted in space of National Library in Skopje, fully equipped with WiFI and computers. Every lecture is held on different topics: German Literature, German Film, German Music and World Heritage in Germany.

Apart from lectures in space of the National Library, every participant is expected to continue editing on that topic after the lecture online on Macedonian Wikipedia about topic presented on the lecture. Therefore, participants is part of larger competition (or league), so they will receive awards after four lectures and editing on four different topics.

This project was approved and funded from Goethe Institut in order to increase German culture on Macedonian readers through their translation of German articles in Macedonian language.

Metrics

Table 3

Shared metrics

Participants: The number of people who attend your events, programs or activities, either in person or virtually. This definition does not include people organizing activities, social media followers, donors, or others not participating directly.
Newly registered: The number of participants that create new accounts on a Wikimedia project. These include users who register up to two weeks before the start of the event.
Content pages: A content page is an article on Wikipedia, an item on Wikidata, a content page on Wikisource, an entry on Wiktionary, and a media file on Commons, etc. This metric captures the total number of content pages created or improved across all Wikimedia projects.

Grantee-defined metrics

Photographs used: The total number of distinct photographs from the programmes used in articles.
Volunteer hours: The total number of hours spent by volunteers to support the organisational work.

Program	Participants	Newly registered	Content pages	Photographs used	Volunteer hours
Education	235	150	540	0	2,272
Community	403	291	8,628	3,446	11,364
Partnerships	110	55	180	30	350
TOTAL FOR ALL PROGRAMS	748	496	9,348	3,476	13,986

Priority levels

The following table grades the eight sub-programmes of the four programmes on a priority scale with high, medium or low priority. The grading is mainly based on the metrics derived from the SMART objectives for each programme.

Level	Sub-programme
High	Community support Education programme Expeditions
Medium	Editing challenges Exhibitions Wikigroups Wikisketch
Low	GLAM Photographic contests