Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2018/Survey results

A post-conference survey was organised in October 15 — November 15, 2018.

Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2018

Lviv, Ukraine, October 13-15

Feedback Survey

Total number of answers: 75 (59.5% participation rate).

Sessions (presentations & discussions)

Most useful

The most useful sessions: Up to 3 answers were possible.

Day 1	Day 2	Day 3
How can we work better together? / Julia Kirchner (52%)	After spring comes summer? CEESpring roundtable / Michał Buczyński (32.0%)	"Free" or "stable" encyclopedia? Dilemmas of Wikimedia communities in authoritarian countries / Tomasz Bladyniec (33.3%)
Lightning Talks (34.7%)	Wikimedia 2030 Come & Tell - what needs to change in our movement? / Kaarel Vaidla (29.3%)	Building an affiliate from scratch: Experiences of Wikimedia Community of the Republic of Srpska / Ljubiša Malenica (29.3%)
Why the world reads Wikipedia (CEE angle) / Diego Saez-Trumper, online (24%)	How to retain new editors / Christine Domgörgen (29.3%)	Outreach in education / Zana Strkovska (29.3%)
Enrichment of multilingual Wikipedia based on quality analysis / Włodzimierz Lewoniewski (20.0%)	What can we learn from the feminist movement? / Asaf Bartov (28.0%)	Edu Wiki camp: Interactive approach to attracting volunteers Nebojša Ratković (26.7%)

Common answers to what in the session was useful:

topic of utmost importance
new information / new perspectives
sufficient speaker performance / well prepared session / good explanation
interaction among participants through discussion and exercises
practical ideas and solutions
sense of gained awareness after the session
related to interests and needs of the audience
all views were heard

Some quotes:

I like motivational (How can we work better together?) and strictly analytical reports, as well as work in the "collective mind" mode (Lightning Talks)

For the first time through this strategy process, I felt involved.

Among suggestions to make good sessions even better: give more time per session, give more time for discussions, eliminate parallel tracks or remove overlap with the workshops.

How can we work better together is mentioned as sort of chaotic, which is explained by the fact that it is designed for much smaller number of participants than there where present.

Least useful

Up to 43% respondents answered that either all sessions had been useful for them, or they could not answer because they had not attend other sessions (24.0% & 17.3% about Day 1, 29.3% & 5.3% about Day 2, 28.0% & 17.3% about Day 3, respectively).

Among the answers given, most mentions have sessions listed below:

Day 1	Day 2	Day 3
How can we work better together? / Julia Kirchner	Wiki Loves Yerevan / Susanna Mkrtchyan	Organise a prehackaton! / Jan Groh
WikiOnTheRoad / Matej Grochal	Wikimedia 2030 Come & Tell - what needs to change in our movement? / Kaarel Vaidla	Affiliate daily toil: what works, what works not, what can be improved? / Wojciech Pędzich
Wikipedia & Research / Wojciech Pędzich (12.0%)	Open Library and Open Heritage projects / Vladimir Medeyko	, "Free" or "stable" encyclopedia? Dilemmas of Wikimedia communities in authoritarian countries / Tomasz Bladyniec

For the answers about the reasons respondents mostly chose one of three prefilled options: ...I already knew this, ...I didn't understand it, or ...it was boring/badly presented.

Workshops

Most useful

Day 1	Day 2	Day 3^{[lower-alpha 1]}
Partnerships for Wikimedians / Asaf Bartov (38.7%)	Querying Wikidata with SPARQL / Asaf Bartov (26.7%)	PetScan and other modern tools tutorial / Asaf Bartov (26.7%)
Introduction to Wikidata / Asaf Bartov (22.7%)	Wikimedia & Education: developing a framework that values our community / Nichole Saad (20.0%)	Wikidata’s Magic Button / Hanna Petruschat (24.0%)
Healthy Wikimedia Communities - what do they need? / Christel Steigenberger (21.3%)	Create your first Wikidata Lua infobox / Tobias Schönberg (20.0%)	Mission driven organisations / Michał Buczyński (18.7%)

↑ Other 30.6% did not attend any workshop on Day 3.

The reasons, why workshops were useful, are summed up in one of the answers: "Good examples and good discussions."

Least useful

Up to 69% respondents answered that either all workshops had been useful for them, or they could not answer because they had not attend them (26.7% & 30.7% about Day 1, 32.0% & 24.0% about Day 2, 20.0% & 49.3% about Day 3, respectively).

Among the answers given, most mentions have workshops listed below:

Day 1	Day 2	Day 3^{[lower-alpha 1]}
Meet the AffCom / Camelia Boban	Create your first Wikidata Lua infobox / Tobias Schönberg (20.0%)	Mission driven organisations / Michał Buczyński
Healthy Wikimedia Communities - what do they need? / Christel Steigenberger	Grant proposal workshop / Mykola Kozlenko	PetScan and other modern tools tutorial / Asaf Bartov
Lviv Then and Now: Rephotography Workshop / Heikki Kastemaa	Lexeme editing session / Tobias Schönberg	Wikidata’s Magic Button / Hanna Petruschat

↑ There were only these three workshops on Day 3.

For the answers about the reasons respondents mostly chose one of three prefilled options: ...I already knew this, ...I didn't understand it, or ...it was boring/badly presented.

General evaluation

Program

More than 86.7% are satisfied with any aspect of the program.

Criterion	Excellent	Good	Poor	Miserably	not applicable
Overall scope and selection of the conference topics	46.7%	48.0%	1.3%	2.7%	0.0%
Consistency of the program	34.7%	60.0%	2.7%	1.3%	0.0%
Speeches and talks quality	29.3%	64.0%	5.3%	0.0%	0.0%
Session moderation	38.7%	52.0%	6.7%	0.0%	1.3%
Session format	38.7%	48.0%	9.3%	1.3%	1.3%
Number of conference participants and composition of the audience	49.3%	38.7%	9.3%	1.3%	0.0%

93.3% agree and completely agree that in general the conference was useful.

I agree that the Conference	completely agree	agree in general	rather disagree	completely disagree	no answer
... was suitable for my background and experience	54.7%	34.7%	4.0%	0.0%	6.7%
... provided useful information for me	62.7%	28.0%	2.7%	0.0%	6.7%
... contributed to my understanding of the future of our movement	50.7%	37.3%	5.3%	0.0%	6.7%
... gave me the opportunity to exchange ideas with others participnts	64.0%	29.3%	0.0%	0.0%	6.7%
... led to clearly defined next steps for my further work	37.3%	44.0%	10.7%	0.0%	8.0%

During the Conference I found out... ...more about the projects I'd like to join (56.3%) ...new ideas for realisation (80.3%) ...ways to improve exiting projects (56.4%) ...how to manage projects (33.8%) ...more about Foundation (29.6%) ...community interaction (57.7%)

As a result of attending the conference, I'm going to try or learn more about (it was asked to mention two things):

new ideas for realisation (2)
how to manage projects (2)
projects evaluation (1)
analyse work of organisation / governance building (3)
people's motivation (1)
better promote the activities that we are doing (1)
handling / keeping new editors (3)
professional development of teachers and how to make them editors (1)
Strategy (4)
future of CEE Spring (1)
common CEE bots and tools (3)
how other communities organize their CEE Spring and their GLAM projects (1)
educational camps (1)
Wikidata tools / SPARQL (13)
Wiktionary (2)
Wikisource (1)
WFM statistics (1)
Ajapaik rephotography system (1)
history of the creation and development of language sections of Wikipedia in other countries (1)
partnerships (3)
how to attract more people with disabilities and how Wikipedia can be more available for such people (1)
interaction with the local institutions (1)
international cooperation (1)
Lua modules (2)

Organisation

I'm satisfied with organization and providing of...	very satisfied	satisfied	less satisfied	unsatisfied	not applicable
...hotel	58.7%	30.7%	5.3%	2.7%	2.7%
...venue	78.7%	18.7%	1.3%	0.0%	1.3%
...food	45.3%	34.7%	10.7%	6.7%	2.7%
...logistics	34.7%	32.0%	20.0%	10.7%	2.7%
...access to Internet	65.3%	28.0%	4.0%	0.0%	2.7%
...schedule	48.0%	40.0%	8.0%	1.3%	2.7%
...timing	40.0%	48.0%	8.0%	2.7%	1.3%
...breaks	46.7%	42.7%	5.3%	4.0%	1.3%
...social events	40.0%	36.0%	16.0%	6.7%	1.3%
...information before the Conference	61.3%	29.3%	4.0%	2.7%	2.7%
...information during the Conference	54.7%	33.3%	8.0%	1.3%	2.7%

90.7% were satisfied with the support from the Organisation Team; 5 people were unsatisfied (gave score 3 or 2 out of 5).

Scholarships

91.7% of the respondents who received scholarship were satisfied with the scholarship process, 6.7% found it reasonable, 1.7% (1 person) was unsatisfied.

Ideas of improvement

Program

I would have liked to hear a talk on such subject:

workshop on creating tools / more technical aspects / WikiData subjects (2)
actual research on the CEE region (1)
more ideas, on what CEE could collaborate on (1)
projects that were made between two communities (if there were any) (1)
development of the educational program (experience) (1)
introduction to Wikimedia activities offline (1)
more ways to motivate the existing (already experienced) community: contests, witty challenges, etc. (1)
Wikipedia's popularity and perception by different people from outside the community (students, old people, etc.) (1)
Medical Wikipedia (1)
Foundation: how many staff they have, what they work, how they work / economical side of WMF (financial balance report, how to foster gift economical orientation of the projects) (2)
Turkish Wikipedia: what is done in the field of removing the ban (1)
actualisation of data in Wiki overall (1)
development directions of different languages WikiProjects of the region (1)
accents and concepts of different Wikis (1)
about Wikisource (1)
new and innovative ideas (2)

Organisation

The following things should be done differently at the next Conference:

ask public help from the CEE community in shaping the conference program (1)
more workshops and group works should be organised / replace presentations with workshops (1)
more talks from CEE region representative instead of WMF representatives (1)
more time between the last session and the closing (1)
less tight rhythms / more breaks (6)
not have 4 parallel sessions, but just 2 or 3 at most (1)
identification of sessions which are not being recorded (1)
do not change the schedule on the fly (1)
to finish earlier at around 5 (2)
sightseeing in the middle (1)
more time and space to informal communication / actual social events (4)
more room, so that workshop do not become overcrowded (1)
avoid or manage better group work where all the participants are attending (1)
give attendees simple block notes with pens, because not everybody has laptops (1)
no controlling the participants (4)
invite 4 people from CEE country instead of 1 person from overseas (1)
spend less on hotel and meals (1)
decrease the number of participants (1)
clearly state about supposed invitation to preconference (1)
clearly communicate booking of the rooms (1)
have the venue closer to the accommodation site / in the same place / less transit (20)
hotel within easy reach from city center (1)
better connection to internet (1)
food selection must be based not only on national taste / more kosher & vegan / better management of food options (4)
take into consideration that people who lack social skills can't be part of organizing team (2)
less detailed form on evaluation of sessions (1)

Commitment Survey

Total number of answers: 80 (__% participation rate).

Community

We asked participants how they managed to settle communication with other community members.

43.75% respondents said they met 3 to 5 people they are going to collaborate with; 22.5% stated that they met 10 or more of such people.

Vast majority of respondents agree or completely agree that meeting with people helped them to:

...join an existing project - 77.5%
...start a new initiative - 82.5%
...share my knowledge with other participants - 95.0%
...gain knowledge from other participants - 100.0%
...learn about some useful tools - 86.25%

Common plans for the year 2019:

to promote Wikidata (7)
to learn sparql (2)
to organize an event/regional meetup (13)
to help other communities organizing CEE Spring (1)
to create (or revive) user group or chapter (7)
to implement better organisational work (4)
to improve/expand WEP (11)
to join GLAM (2)
to start WLE (1)
to restart hybernating project (2)
to edit and otherwise contribute (11)
to involve more in greeting new users (3)
to propose a change of quidelines in Wikipedia (1)
to cooperate with the new people met on the CEE Meeting (5)
to continue existing collaborations (8)
to develop partnership with the regional government-funded entity (1)

Trainings

85% of respondents attended workshops at the conference.

Most visited trainings were:

Partnerships for Wikimedians / Asaf Bartov (41.2%)
Healthy Wikimedia Communities - what do they need? / Christel Steigenberger (36.8%)
Querying Wikidata with SPARQL / Asaf Bartov (33.8%)

Popular reasons to go to specific trainings:

something completely new (9)
related to one's interests (34)
relevant for one's user group scope of work / community (17)
recommended by others (3)

Most useful training(s) features:

clear directions / relatable examples / applicable / practical (19)
inspiring (9)
a lot of new information (15)
first hand information (5)
fresh approach (5)
systematic approach (1)

Most of the answers state that there were no useless trainings. Reasons to the less useful training(s) are as follows:

too introductory / obvious / already knew the information (7)
too hard to follow (3)
different expectations (3
disorganised audience (4)
session prepared with lack of knowledge (2)
no possibility to work on the topic (2)

Planned ways to share knowledge/skills obtained with the community:

onwiki report / village pump
personal talks
a blog post
sharing on social media
organisation meet-up / presentation / workshop / local meeting
by putting new knowledge into practice

31.25% clearly mentioned two or more channels of sharing information.

Wanted skills

creating tools
more about available tools
health of Wikimedia communities / retaining / recruiting and supporting volunteers
more case studies of successful partnerships
more on governance / organizational skills/ people's motivation
strategy work on local level

12.5% could not answer the question. Some answered that they had missed certain session at the CEE Meeting and wanted to have another possibility.

Some answers to "Why this knowledge / skills matter for your community?":

not many people in my community can do it
to increase one's own capacity
it will help us hold bigger projects with higher impact.
it matters for future
for unification and better organization
because it is not easy

[1] Other 30.6% did not attend any workshop on Day 3.

[2] There were only these three workshops on Day 3.

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