WikiProject Pangasinan/2014 Pangasinan Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

The Pangasinan Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was a day-long wiki editing event to improve the Pangasinan Wikipedia and served as a follow-up to the WikiProject Pangasinan Outreach project that was conducted last November 2012. The actual edit-a-thon was held at the Malong Building, Pangasinan Capitol in Lingayen, Pangasinan on August 25, 2014. The Pangasinan Wikipedia community was the one who managed the whole event including mobilizing the participants. Wikimedia Philippines volunteers from Manila helped in assisting the participants on wiki editing. This event was solely funded by Wikimedia Philippines.

Activities and lessons learned

Activities

Pre-preparations

In July 2014, the Pangasinan Wikipedia community initiated the edit-a-thon by contacting Jojit Ballesteros and Butch Bustria who facilitated the very first Wikimedia event in Pangasinan last November 2012. The community wanted a follow-up on the first event. After a series of communication, the date for the event was set on August 25, 2014. After referring this to Johnny Alegre, President of Wikimedia Philippines (WMPH), a proposal was sent for the WMPH Board's approval. The proposal was formally approved on August 22, 2014.

As agreed with the Pangasinan Wikipedia community, there have been volunteers including veteran Wikipedians from Manila that helped in conducting the edit-a-thon since most of the expected participants are newbies. The Pangasinan Wikipedia community chose JR Padilla as the Project Lead for the whole project while Vanj Padilla who is also from the Pangasinan Wikipedia community mobilized the participants.

Volunteers from Manila were originally composed of Johnny Alegre, Jojit Ballesteros, Bel Ballesteros and Eric Calica. Eric informed the Manila volunteers that he cannot make it to the event and Butch Bustria became his replacement. Jojit served as the resource speaker for the pre-edit-a-thon lecture while Bel and Butch assisted in answering questions from the participants during the actual edit-a-thon. At the end of the event, Butch also presented Wikivoyage and some of the possible articles to improve. Johnny was there for administration tasks and answering questions from the press.

Jojit and Bel arrived in Lingayen, Pangasinan the night (10:30 pm) before the actual event while Johnny arrived around 2:00 am on August 25. They were welcomed by Vanj during their breakfast. Butch arrived at around 11:00 am on August 25.

Actual event

The event was held at the Malong Building in the Pangasinan Capitol, Lingayen, Pangasinan on August 25, 2014.

Here are the highlights of the event:

9:00 am – Participants started to arrive

9:35 am – Vanj Padilla delivered her opening remarks

9:45 am – Jojit Ballesteros gave his lecture about the basics of Wikipedia editing and uploading to Commons

11:00 am – Morning break

11:15 am – Edit-a-thon started

12:00 pm – Lunch break

1:00 pm – Edit-a-thon resumed

(2:00 pm – Johnny and Jojit were interviewed by GMA News Dagupan)

3:00 pm – Afternoon break

3:15 pm – Edit-a-thon resumed

4:30 pm – Edit-a-thon ended and Jojit began tallying the contributions of each participant

4:55 pm – Jojit announced the top ten editors and the top three who got the most number of characters edited won prices. He also announced that the goals of the edit-a-thon were achieved. There were more than 41,000 characters contributed by the top 10 contributors of this event.

5:00 pm – Butch gave the closing remarks, introduced Wikivoyage and the possible articles to improve.

5:15 pm – Event ended

Post event

The organizing team had a dinner after the event. Jojit and Bel went back to Manila after the dinner while Johnny left earlier. Butch stayed in Pangasinan and went back to Manila on August 27, 2014.

List of participants

No.	Username	Contributions in characters	Newbie?	Images uploaded	Articles added and improved^[1]	Projects contributed^[2]
1	Nilpasiliao29	6446	Yes	0	18	pag
2	Regz0912	6345	No	0	19	pag
3	Jladelavega	6110	No	0	13	pag
4	Cookiekruncher	5339	Yes	0	7	en
5	Abranteslouie19	5278	Yes	5	5	en, commons
6	April Delarosa024	5132	Yes	13	25	tl, en, commons
7	Prince Harold	4549	Yes	0	4	tl, pag
8	Eliekurt	3050	Yes	0	2	tl, en
9	Spnvmvt	2889	No	1	17	pag, en, commons
10	Jhoyah06	2632	Yes	0	4	pag
11	YogurtEr13	2449	Yes	0	9	pag, en
12	Jojo abarra villanueva	2329	Yes	5	16	en, commons
13	Mary Gwendolyn	2008	Yes	4	12	en, commons
14	Zjake	1960	Yes	0	6	pag
15	Lemor Gutierrez	1734	Yes	2	3	en, commons
16	Mobrix14	1681	Yes	1	13	pag, commons
17	Rafiecamaso	855	Yes	2	3	en, commons
18	CHubz	653	Yes	0	1	tl
19	Kibong17	508	Yes	0	1	tl
20	Kimchuchay	433	Yes	0	3	pag
21	Assemel	383	Yes	1	3	en, commons
22	Sej Soid ed Oniuqa	333	Yes	2	1	commons
23	Clavin29	285	Yes	1	1	commons
24	Rhaine24	0	Yes	0	0	-
25	JesterLhee	0	Yes	0	0	-

Notes

^{^} Essentially the total edit count. The project team did not document the articles contributed or improved.
^{^} Legend: en = English Wikipedia; pag = Pangasinan Wikipedia; tl = Tagalog Wikipedia

Lessons learned

What worked well?

Everyone was able to collaborate with each other and became familiar on wiki editing.
Majority of the participants were able to edit articles and even some tried to upload some pictures.
The Pangasinan Wikipedia community had strong coordination skills. They were able to mobilize the participants well.
Everyone was able to create usernames. Although several of the participants have the same IP addresses, they were still able to have their usernames because of the presence of a Wikipedia administrator, Jojit Ballesteros, who created the usernames for them. The six users cap per IP address was no longer a problem.

What didn't work?

Participants were having trouble on where to get sources. It could have been better if the participants were taught on how and where to get sources for the Wikipedia articles. This could have been included in the pre-edit-a-thon lecture.
An administrator in the English Wikipedia blocked an IP address that affected some of the participants. The affected users were advised to connect to another broadband router and continue their editing.
Two participants were not able to edit because they did not bring their own laptops.
The localization of the Pangasinan Wikipedia interface was not carried out because the organizing team decided that since most are newbies, they are not expected to edit the interface messages and the localization became optional for the event.

Additional lesson

If we are going to plan a similar project, the project team suggests doing the planning at least two months before the main event.

Learning patterns

Endorsement of two existing learning patterns

Six account limit - In this edit-a-thon, the problem on creating more than six accounts per IP was solved because the presence of an account creator in the event. The said account creator, Jojit Ballesteros, is a local administrator of the Tagalog Wikipedia and the facilitator of the event.
Mix newcomers and veterans - This event proved that the collaboration of newcomers (the participants) and the veterans (the organizing team) helped in achieving the goals of the project. The event would have not exceeded the goals if not for the rapport between newcomers and veterans.

Outcomes and impact

Outcomes

The main goal of this project is to increase contributions to the Pangasinan Wikipedia, which includes creating and editing articles and the localization of the interface. Aside from writing articles in the Pangasinan Wikipidia, the participants may also add content to other Wikimedia projects such as, but not limited to; uploading pictures to Wikimedia Commons and enhancing Pangasinan-related articles in other language versions of Wikipedia. The project also aims to better the editing skills of the Pangasinan Wikipedia community.

Although the localization of the Pangasinan Wikipedia interface was not carried out, the goals for this project were achieved remarkably. There are twenty-five (25) persons attended the event and the top 10 contributors had more than 41,000 characters worth of text added to the Wikimedia projects exceeding the goals that were set. All of the participants registered and they were asked to write down their Wikimedia username. Most of them are newbies and they already chosen their username during the registration.

Jojit Ballesteros, the facilitator of the event, has taken note of the usernames of each participant. After the actual edit-a-thon, he counted all of the characters of each participant through the “global edit summary” and the “recent changes” of each project that the participants have been through. After tallying all of the contributions by the facilitator, it was known that the total contributions of the top 10 contributors are over 41,000 characters. The total characters contributed by the participants is 63,381 characters.

Progress towards targets and goals

Project metrics

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
There are 24,000 characters or equivalent to approximately 16 pages of printed text added in the Pangasinan Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.	There are more than 63,381 characters added in various Wikimedia projects.	This goal was achieved because the whole organizing team encouraged the participants to exceed the goal of the project. They also announced that the top three editors have prices.
There should be at least 15 participants attended the event.	There were 25 participants attended the event excluding the organizing team.	The Pangasinan Wikipedia community are adept in organizing events and they were able to assemble the participants thus this goal was achieved.

Global Metrics

See Global Metrics for more details on measurement of projects by the WMF's Grantmaking team.

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	3	There are four participants who registered their usernames a long time ago but they are not necessarily active. This figure does not include the four people from the organizing team.
2. # of new editors	22	Only few participants already have an account.
3. # of individuals involved	25	This excludes the organizing team. Including them will increase the numbers of individual involved to 29.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	37	All of these images where uploaded in Wikimedia Commons.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	186	This figure is essentially the total edit count. The project team did not document the articles contributed or improved.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	approximately 63381 bytes	This was tallied during the event. This does not include deleted content because the organizing team did not tallied it during the event.

Aside from the eagerness of participants to continue editing after the edit-a-thon, they are also requesting to have similar activities in the future. In this regard, it can be said that they were motivated.

Impact

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic priorities?

How did you increase participation in one or more Wikimedia projects?

The mere fact that most of the participants are newbies, their edits during the event can be considered as an increase participation in Wikimedia projects.

How did you improve quality on one or more Wikimedia projects?

Because they are the native Pangasinan speakers, they are the ones who know how to improve the quality of the Pangasinan Wikipedia. Many have suggested better wordings of the articles.

How did you increase the reach (readership) of one or more Wikimedia projects?

The Pangasinan language is around 2.4 million speakers, which is the 8^th most spoken language in the Philippines out of more than 100 languages spoken in the Philippines. The contributions of this edit-a-thon will potentially help distribute free knowledge in the Pangasinan language and increase the reach of the Wikimedia movement to the Pangasinan speaking people.