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Wikimedia Polska/Reports/2018

< Wikimedia Polska | Reports

Financial report

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Structure of income

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The main source of income for Wikimedia Polska are 1% tax donations made by individuals. According to Polish law, physical persons can choose one NGO with a state-recognized tax deductible status to donate 1% of their income tax to. The deduction is made via the state tax form, which taxpayers have to fill each year between January 15 and April 30 and where they are allowed to indicate a court-approved organisation number which will receive 1% of their income tax.

Income from this main source increased by 152 621.49 PLN (+30.6%) comparing to 2017. Overall income (if the APG grant delivered in January is included) increased in PLN only by 10 350.40 PLN (1.47%) despite lack of other WMF grants (CEE Meeting 2017) which accounted for 26% of income in 2017. Income in USD decreased by $12 237.36 (-6.04%) due to a change of FX rate.

Source Amount (PLN) Amount (USD) %
1% tax deductible 651 904.68 PLN $173 392.74 91.16%
other donations 13 225.65 PLN $3 517.74 1.85%%
membership fees 2 886.33 PLN $767.70 0.40%
other income 2 865.33 PLN $762.12 0.40%
APG Grant* 44 221.59 PLN $11 762.00 6.18%
Total 715 103.58 PLN $190 202.30 100%

1 USD = 3,7597 PLN (31.12.2018)[1]
APG Grant transferred only in January 2019.

Structure of expenses

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The structure of expenses was very close to WMPL's plans. The major differences were:

  • higher operational costs (122 881,59 PLN vs 97 524,80 PLN planned) due to change of accounting company
  • WMPL Organisational Audit costs which are funded by Simple APG grant - funds received in 2019
  • unused WMF grants from previous years funds return (EthnoCarpatian and CEE Meeting projects)

In result, while the overall expenses were slightly lower than planned but due to very high income the balance in 2018 was fairly positive.

Grant expenses

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Having learned the audit proposals (cost structure, scoping etc. provided by vendors) the WMPL Board made an informed decision to enhance the scoping and provide necessary outstanding funds from own general budget.

PLANNED SPENT UTILIZATION
Description Amount (PLN) Amount (USD) Amount (PLN) Amount (USD) % (PLN) % (USD)
APG Project 41 000 PLN $11 762 46 153.60 PLN $12 275.87 112.57% 104.37%

Content creation and improvement

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Writing contests

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Free Poland - Free Knowledge was a writing contest celebrating 100 years of Polish independence

Editing contests help bring back some fun and excitement into editing Wikipedia while at the same time helping us address specific content gaps. In 2018, we continued those contests which have proven to be successful in previous years (CEE Spring, WikiChallenge, Thematic Weeks) and introduced two brand new competitions - WikiOlympics and Free Poland - Free Knowledge (contest organized in partnership with the University of Wrocław, National Museum in Warsaw, the Independence Museum, National Museum in Szczecin, National Museum in Kielce, and the National Digital Archives).

We have also continued to give prizes which either help in creating more content (access to sources) or bring high symbolic value which strenghtens the identification with the Wikimedia projects (for example medals, certificates, personalized mugs and powerbanks). We believe (and the numbers prove us right!) that Wikimedians are not motivated by the money value of the prizes but rather by things that make them feel appreciated and connected with the project.

In some of our contests, additional prizes were given to the people who created the most articles about women which brought good results - 29% of all new or improved articles in WikiOlympics and 19% of all articles created or improved in the Polish edition of CEE Spring were about women (on average, women biographies are 15% of new articles in Polish Wikipedia).

In two of our contests, we decided to give the decision to a jury - in WikiChallenge a committee of experienced Wikimedians chose a person who got the quality prize (apart from the prize for creating articles with the most interwikis), to invite users not just to create a series of any articles but to seek meaningful topics and to motivate them to aim for important topics. And in Free Poland - Free Knowledge, a contest created to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Polish independence, the winner was chosen by an outside jury of scientists, activists, and people of culture.

Although we are happy with the results of our contest we noticed that competition based model can lead to tensions between contestants. So we will try to balance it by modyfying the Thematic Weeks to check how will they work in a model in which no one has to lose in order for one to win.

General outcomes

Contest topic or goal Articles created or improved Number of participants
Wikichallenge
Creating articles with the most interwikis 690 40
CEE Spring 2018
Creating and improving articles about culture, geography, history, science, people, etc. of the CEE region 753 30
Thematic Weeks
Writing and improving articles on different topics selected by the community 3206 136
WikiOlympics
Improving Wikipedia content related to the Olympics 366 20
Free Poland - Free Knowledge
Improving articles about the most important topics related to Poland 26 22

Goals

# Goal Status and comments Result
1. organize at least 4 writing contests in 2018 (including CEE Spring, Wikichallenge) 5 writing contests organized during the year   Done 125%
2. reach at least 3000 new Wikipedia articles created from writing contests during the year 4178   Done 140%
3. show at least 5 new Good or Featured Articles from writing contests 9 GA/FA/FL (2 articles from CEE Spring, 2 articles from Free Poland - Free Knowledge and 3 articles and 2 lists from WikiOlympics)   Done 180%
4. introduce at least one new editing contest in 2018 Two new contests introduced - WikiOlympics and Free Poland - Free Knowledge   Done 200%
5. have at least 40 editors participating in writing contests held in 2018 248 editors participating in our contests (the most - in Thematic Weeks: 136 unique participants)   Done 620%

WikiVacation

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The third edition of the photo contest aimed at gathering high quality photos of Polish nature, monuments, and public art was held from early July till the end of September. Overall, it brought 3828 files (most of which were pictures of monuments). To strenghten the encyclopedic value of the contest, we decided to change the formula of the jury from last year - instead of inviting external experts and photographers as we used to do, we decided to give the roles of jury members to experienced Wikimedians known for their photographic skills (including long-time Wiki Loves Monuments participants and authors of featured media files). We decided that they will be the best people to know what kind of media would be most useful in the Wikimedia projects. And to add some expert value, they were acompanied by a representative of Polish Heritage Institute (our partner institution).

We have also added some community value to the contest and connected it with our well-working EthnoWiki projects by organizing an ethno-wiki photowalk in Wrocław. It was attended by 7 people (all new to Wikimedia projects) and resulted in 141 files of the Brochów district uploaded to the contest during a Commons upload workshop.

The contest experienced some technical difficulties - during its course there were times when the Upload Wizzard was not working which was probably the reason that while we had a good number of participants (303), the number of uploaded files was lower than last year and also lower than expected. We received some messages from frustrated users who were not able to upload their photos - and we supposed that they may have been discouraged. We also had signals that there were a couple of cases of mistakes in the monuments map which we use to upload files and which is based on data from Wikidata, which also may have resulted in fewer photos being uploaded. We will be trying to address those issues by giving more technical assistance to our users and maybe organize some live photo uploading meetings during which we could either help with the uploading or (in case of any external technical issues which we are not able to address at the spot) at least get some contact information of the participants to get back to them after the problem is solved.

Nevertheless, the contest brought great results with one of the photos becoming one of the winners of the international Wiki Loves Monuments Final!

# Goal Status and comments Result
1. have at least 5000 photos submitted to the WikiVacation contest 3828 files uploaded. Lower number may have been a result of the technical issues   Done 76%
2. reach at least 200 participants in WikiVacation contest 303 participants   Done 150%
3. reach at least 30 new registered users in the contest 195 partcipants are newly registered   Done 650%

GLAM Activities

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The National Digital Archives
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Narcyz Witczak-Witaczyński - Cavalry officer run, 1933, National Digital Archives
  • The collaboration with the National Digital Archives (NAC) brought around 5000 files from the Narcyz Witczak-Witaczyński collection and 1700 files from 2 other collections of historic images by Polish photographers. The upload began in early 2018 and new files were gradually added to the category. See the collaboration description on Polish Wikipedia.
  • After consulting with Wikimedia Polska, the National Digital Archives have added a Public Domain statement concerning rights to images on their digital collection public page, which enables individual wikimedians and other interested people to download and reuse the images.
  • Since January 2018, when first uploads took place, altogether approximately 6400 files have beeen uploaded to Commons via the Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe upload. All files can be found in the Images from Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe category (alongside other 2000+ files uploaded by volunteer Wikimedians).
  • Usage statistics: In November 2018, due to the celebrations of the Centenary of Polish Independence, the NAC files have been viewed in Wikipedia 9,105,255 times (and an average of around 4 million views per month). They illustrate 3,087 pages on 92 wikis.
The National Library of Poland
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Irena Krzywicka, writer
  • A team of 15 employees of the National Library have participated in 3 editing trainings and meetups in order to add content, references, and links to Polish Wikipedia, and illustrations and PDF files from the library to Wikimedia Commons. The files uploaded by the team are mainly portraits of important Polish writers, poets, journalists, actors, and politicians, and covers or illustrations of literary works, and are used widely in Wikipedia. Plans were made at the end of 2018 to carry out a mass upload (several thousand images) of National Library images to Wikimedia Commons.
  • The National Library contributed 700 images. All image files can be found in the Images contributed by the National Library in Warsaw category.
  • Outreach dashboard for work done
  • Usage statistics
Goethe-Institut
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The project took place between September and November 2018. Students of the University of Łódź learned the basics of editing over several workshop sessions concluded by an editathon at the Goethe Institut in Warsaw. Altogether the project participants have written 16 new articles, extended or edited over 50 articles, made close to 400 edits, and added over 15,000 words to Wikipedia. The project was one of the first Wikimedia Polska successful attempts to combine a collaboration with GLAM and an educational institution.

WikiFridays at the Regional Institute of Culture in Katowice
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WikiFridays are organised by the Regional Institute of Culture, a regional GLAM partner from Silesia, every month of the year (see list of meetups in 2018). They are informal meetings of both cultural institution employees and the public during which participants edit articles, publish new ones, upload images to Wikimedia Commons and learn new skills from each other. Some new CC licensed images were acquired from small regional museums thanks to this collaboration.

Other GLAM materials
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  • The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw contributed 100 CC-BY-SA licensed images of contemporary Polish art.
  • The Regional Institute of Culture in Katowice also contributed a number of photographs from their archive.


New GLAM files and their use

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Institution 2018
Number of files Usage in articles File views
Biblioteka Narodowa w Warszawie 673 1,077 1,085,009
Regionalny Instytut Kultury w Katowicach 50 81 109,549

(value for all 170 images)

Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe 6400 4357

(value for all images from NAC)

4,205,051

(median monthly value for all images)

Mazovian Digital Library 1395 - (uploaded at the end of 2018, no data available as yet)
Museum of Contemporary Art in Warsaw 100 51 165,417
Museum of Warsaw 31 1 -
National Museum in Warsaw 10 - -
Goethe Institut 35 10 5,757
Paderewski Secondary School in Katowice 200 55 37,072
Total 8984 5632 5,607,945


Workshops

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Within GLAM programs we conducted:

 
New editors, Goethe Institut workshop

TOTAL: We conducted 14 GLAM-Wiki workshops.

New registered users / editors

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Heirlooms editathon, 2018

As a result of our GLAM workshops, we gained a number of new editors and exceeded the expected number of 40 new users. Many of these users continue editing as part of longer-term collaborations, for example, the National Library of Poland team.

Goals and outcomes

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Goal Status and description Progress
Minimum 10 000 files from across all GLAM partnerships to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by the end of 2018 Large uploads from the National Archives, The National Library of Poland. Other uploads are conducted by smaller institutions (mainly museums) in a variety of regions. Approximately 9100 files from GLAM collections were uploaded since January 2018. 90%
At least 10 GLAM workshops in 2018 We conducted 14 GLAM workshops in different locations across the country.   Done140%
At least 40 registered users 75 users have registered.   Done187%
At least 100 new Wikipedia articles written within GLAM projects 40 new articles were written and around 30 extended by 100 percent of their original length or considerably more. Additionally, several hundred articles had references, illustrations, and external links added through the National Library effort. Around 60%

Audio recordings for Wikimedia Commons

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Actor Adrian Wiśniewski preparing for recording Baczyński's short stories

Wikimedia Polska continues to support audio recordings of important Polish literary works read by professional actors in a recording studio. This kind of content is useful for making Wikipedia articles more interesting, promoting content from Wikisource, but can also be used in education. It is at the same time a good step to showing that knowledge can be presented also in alternative forms.

In 2018 we have continued to support the recording of the poems of one of the most important Polish romantic poets Cyprian Kamil Norwid and short stories by Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, an important Polish writer of the World War II period.

# Goal Status and comments Result
1. record 17 poems by Cyprian Kamil Norwid and upload them to Wikimedia Commons 14 poems by Cyprian Kamil Norwid have been recorded and uploaded. It was fewer than planned but in addition we have recorded 12 short stories by Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński 82%
2. all files from the project to be used in Wikipedia articles or/and in Wikisource All poems by Cyprian Kamil Norwid are used in Polish Wikisource   Done 100%

Lighthouses in Poland

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The operational optical setup of the lightouse in Jarosławiec

Lighthouses in Poland was a wiki-expedition to 17 Polish lighthouses. Those are unique objects with interesting history but often lacking good documentation on Wikimedia Commons. The team of two volunteers recorded audio interviews with the buildings' keepers and took videos and photos of the lighthouses' interiors and exteriors. They have also taken some unplanned (but welcomed) pictures from the Volkswagen museum in Pępowo which they were close to during the trip.

# Goal Status and comments Result
1. at least 80 pictures of lighthouses uploaded to Wikmedia Commons 132 lighthouses pictures + 33 from the Volkswagen Museum in Pępowo   Done 206%
2. at least 17 videos from the lighthouses uploaded to Wikimedia Commons 11 videos uploaded 65%
3. 17 podcasts about lighthouses uploaded to Wikimedia Commons 21 podcasts about lighthouses + an additional podcast about the Volkswagen museum in Pępowo   Done 123%

Community

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Celebrating Polish Wikipedia birthday with a wikiwuzetka - a traditional Polish wuzetka cake with a Wikipedia twist!

Acts of appreciation

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Our volunteers do an amazing job - they are engaged event organizers, inspiring trainers, and technical experts. They offer us their skills, time, and ideas. And we want to know how much we value their help. This year over 40 volunteers who worked with Wikimedia Polska have received personalized thank-you letters in which we let them know what we especially appreciate (because a true thank-you should be personalized and specific) and certificates.

Initially, we have also planned to support our volunteers by contacting the ones that showed a strongly decreasing performance in the projects and asking them if there is something we can help them with. We meant it is a way to show that their work is noticed, valued, and missed. We have developed a technical solution to receive this kind of data but we froze the project due to some questions (raised even by the APG Committee) and concerns about how the users would have felt about being tracked that way. We will be disussing this project with the commmunity itself and see if this kind of support is welcome.

# Goal Status and comments Results
1. 25 volunteers engaged in organizing WMPL projects 41 unique volunteers engaged in different projects 164%
2. 25 volunteers receiving personalized thank-you letters 41 volunteers received personalized thank-you letters 164%
3. creating a bot to track the decrease of user performance bot has been created and tested 100%
4. at least 5 users with signs of decreasing activity contacted by WMPL to avoid burnouts no people contacted - the project has been frozen, see the explanation above 0%

Microgrants

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The Microgrants program is a longtime and successful form of volunteer support in Wikimedia Polska. The application process is straightforward and quick (the decision is made in 24-72 hours) and based on the community - the applications are reviewed by a committee of Wikimedia editors. The participants can apply for Small Grants (up to 250 PLN/65 USD) or Large Grants (from 250 to 1500 PLN/65 to 395 USD).

This year, community members applied for 40 grants, 38 of which were funded and two were rejected by the committee - one was moved to be decided by the Board (its character did not fit the Microgrant format). The program resulted in 3032 new or improved pages in different Wikimedia projects. The amount of grants varied from 13 PLN (4 USD) to 1300 PLN (364 USD) (with an average grant amount of 187 PLN/52 USD). This means that our applicants prefer rather small amounts (31 of the 38 funded grants were Small Grants) so in the future we would like to remind our community that the grants program has resources to also support larger projects.

Most of the applications were related to Polish Wikipedia (17 applications) and Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons (gathering media and using it to improve articles - 15 applications). Other supported projects were Polish Wikisource, Wiktionary, and Wikiquote.

It is worth mentioning that 8 out of the all new and improved articles have been voted GA or FA which is 4,5% of all Good and Featured Articles in Polish Wikipedia in 2018 (and if we add FA/GA/FL received due to our writing contests we would see that about 10% of Polish Wikipedia featured content last year was a result of support from Wikimedia Polska).

Goals and outcomes

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Wikipedia articles Wikimedia Commons media Wiktionary entries Wikisource

(book pages scanned/books)

Wikiqote pages
New Improved Photos Audio files New Improved
117 750 2028 12 21 92 pages/3 books 9 3
# Goal Status and comments Results
1. at least 40 microgrants funded in 2018 40 applications made, 38 micgrogrants funded 95%
2. at least 1000 new pages in Wikimedia projects created with the help of the grants 2279 new pages   Done 227%
3. at least 20 participants involved 22 participants (7 voluteers applied for more than one grant throught the year)   Done 110%

A fun Wikimedia experience!

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Wikimonopoly!

I'm buying the Village Pump!, You need to pay me 2500 for stepping on my [[Henryk Batuta]] because it it Featured!, ... - those were the statements you could hear during our 2018 Winter Retreat. A Wikimedia board game based on the mechanics of Monopoly brought so much fun that it was played on for hours. Maybe not an impressive project and surely not a content-bringer but it was an effective ice-breaker and a good way to bring back some stories from the history of Polish Wikipedia.

But our games also brought some content - in the Wikipedia Editing Game editors received 15 fun editing tasks. Write an article with a coulour name in a title? Create a Wikipedia entry with even consonants in the title? Or maybe an article with a name of a season in it? And those who finished 12 of the tasks (a nice printable checklist made it easy to see the progress) entered the Masters' Matrix and could introduce editing challenges for all the other participants who reached this level. There were no prizes and our only goal was to use challenge as a motivater. But the results were suprisingly good - the game engaged 41 editors who wrote or improved 462 articles. Also, 13 participants created additional tasks for others!

# Goal Status and comments Result
1. at least 200 new pages created in online games and challenges 310 new articles have been created thanks to the Editing Game (and 152 to more improved)   Done 150%
2. at least 20 participants' of online games and challenges 41 editors have participated in the Editing Game   Done205%
3. at least 60% participants of our meetings rate games and fun activities organized during the events as good or very good 90% for Winter Retreat, 80% for Wikimedia Polska Conference, 85% for Źródłosłów - based on postconference surveys   Done


Internal communication

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This year we introduced some changes into our newsletter, based on the feedback we got from the community. We have moved it from the mailing list to the wiki with an option of subscribing it to one's discussion page and we added some other changes. Next steps (based on the community voices) would be making it a monthly newsletter with more news and information partially written by the community.

Although we planned to make some changes to our wiki to make it easier to navigate, we did not have tha capacity to do it (especially to gather more community voices about what they need and what it should look like) due to our work with the organizational audit. We also wanted to include the feedback from the audit in the changes.


# Goal Status and comments Result
1. sending out at least 24 issues of our community newsletter in 2018 20 issues sent (there was some time when we did not send the newsletter - we have received feedback that the format was not suitable for everyone so we were thinking about implementing some changes and thus the issues were halted)
2. new, easy-to-navigate pages for volunteers on our wiki Goal moved to next year - see above

Scholarship program

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Wikimedia Polska stand at Wikimania 2018

To support learning within our community, we sent delegates to international conferences, including: Wikimedia Hackathon, GLAM Wiki Conference, Wikimania, and CEE Meeting.

  • 4 people sent to Wikimania
  • 7 people sent to CEE Meeting 2018 (5 - including one staff member - paid from Wikimedia Polska resources, 2 from the conference grant)
  • 1 person sent to Wikimedia Hackathon
  • 2 people (including one staff member) sent to GLAMWiki conference


# Goal Status and comments Results
1. open a scholarship program for Wikimania 2018 Scholarship committee consisting of board representatives and community members opened in April   Done
2. give at least 2 volunteer scholarships for Wikimania 2018 2 community scholarships given by the committee   Done
3. open a scholarship program for CEE Meeting 2018 a scholarship program opened   Done
4. give at least 2 volunteer scholarship for CEE Meeting 2018 2 volunteers sent from the conference grant, 4 volunteers + 1 staff member sent from WMPL resources   Done
5. attract and send at least 1 volunteer contributing to a specialized event (e.g. Hackathon, GLAM conference) 1 volunteer sent to Wikimedia Hackathon, 1 to GLAMwiki conference   Done

Conferences and meet-ups

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Meetups are important to support the transfer of knowledge and experience between the wikimeda editors but also to strengthen the connections and networking which helps in building a healthy and cooperating community. In 2018 we have organized both local meetups and national conferences.

Local meetups

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We have organized local meetups for Wikipedians in 4 Polish cities which created an opportunity for people from different regions to join. Overall in 2018, we have organized 5 local meetups attended by 56 people in total. It is worth mentioning that while Poznań and Warsaw have been organizing local meetups regularly for a long time, the meetup in Wrocław was the first one after a very long break. We are glad to see another city on the map of places with Wikimedia community meeting in real-life! If we add Katowice with their WikiFridays (for more info check the GLAM section) we would see that our decentralized structure enables us to be present in many places in Poland and support community building there. In a country like Poland, populated rather evenly in all regions it is important to support not only the capital and the center but to reach other areas as well.

Local community meetings in 2018:

Conferences

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In 2018, we have organized 3 Wikipedia conferences - Winter Retreat (a learning conference for Wikimedians), Wikimedia Polska Conference (combined with our General Assembly), and Źródłosłów (a joint conference for Polish Wikisource and Polish Wiktionary).

Winter Retreat
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The Winter Retreat was a meeting aimed to create a space for the Polish Wikimedia community for sharing ideas, learning, and discussing future projects. It took place from January 12 till January 14 in Rochna. It was attended by 52 people (17 of which took part in a pre-conference Wikidata traning for beginners). The program included 18 activities (workshops, discussions, presentations, etc.).

Wikimedia Polska Conference
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Every year we organize our General Assembly during our annual conference, thus connecting chapter activities with a learning opportunity for attendees. In 2018, the conference took place 8-10 June. 77 people participated. The program consisted of 16 activities (workshops, discussions, presentations etc.) and the General Assembly (which lasted about 6 hours, thus taking a big part of the event). During the General Assembly the new Board was elected.

Źródłosłów

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For the second time, the editors of Polish Wiktionary and Wikisource held a small joint conference. This time, the event took place in Łódź on 26-28 October gathering 18 people. Most participants were related to Wikisource (9 people), fewer to Wiktionary (5 people) and some to both projects. The meeting was both focused on improving the projects and on the ways Wikimedia Polska can support the sister projects better. Some part of the program was dedicated to both communities and some was held separately. This made sure that the attendees could both connect, see similiarities, and show the chapter how it should work with projects which need more promotional and (as it occured during the conference) technical support than Wikipedia and concentrate on specific issues related to their projects. We are happy to see that this - rather new - meeting has proven to be something our volunteers appreciate - in the post-conference survey 92% people stated that they want to have this kind of event organized again in 2019.

Goals and outcomes

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Conference impact
Goal Winter Retreat Wikimedia Polska Conference Źródłosłów
At least 60% will state that the event helped them feel stronger connection with the community 94% agrees (72% strongly agrees, 22% agrees) 89% agrees (60% strongly agrees, 29% agrees) 100% agrees (69% strongly agrees, 31% agrees)
At least 60% will state that the event helped them gain more knowledge about Wikimedia projects 87% agrees (47% strongly agrees, 40% agrees) 56% agrees (31% strongly agrees, 25% agrees) the result is lower than expected probably becasue the General Assembly was unusally long due to the board elections 92% agrees (54% strongly agrees, 38% agrees)
At least 50% will state that they will use the knowledge gained during the event in their work in the projects 84% agrees (30% strongly agrees, 50% agrees) 66% agrees (29% strongly agrees, 37% agrees) 85% agrees (38%strongly agrees, 47% agrees)
At least 50% will state that the event made them more motivated to contribute 90% agrees (37% strongly agrees, 53% agrees) 74% agrees (21% strongly agrees, 53% agrees) 85% agrees (54% strongly agrees, 31% agrees)


GENERAL GOALS
Goal Status and comments Result
organize 3 major meetups in 2018 - Winter Retreat 2018, Wikimedia Polska Conference 2018, and Źródłosłów 2018 All three conferences organized   Done
at least 3 local community meetups throught the year 5 local community meetups organized   Done
at least 150 participants of our meetings and conferences 205 participants (Winter retreat: 54, WMPL Conference 77, Źródłosłów 18, local meetups - 56) 136%   Done
at least 20 volunteers engaged in organizing and shaping the meetings 23 volunteers engaged in different organizational tasks 115%   Done

Outreach

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Workshops, trainings, and edit-a-thons

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Participants of Polish WikiGap edit-a-thon - a group photo with the Ambassador of Sweden Stefan Gullgren

In 2018 we have organized a number of workshops, presentations, and edit-a-thons (not counting the ones which were part of our GLAM projects). They were organized in cooperation with various institutions and partners. Some of those events were:

Overall, the above were attended by more than 250 people (about 200 of them new to Wikipedia projects!). Those events brought almost 300 new or improved pages to Wikipedia. It is worth mentioning that almost all of the trainings at the events were provided by or with the volunteers which shows that this part of Wikimedia Polska activities plays an important role in engaging volunteers with the chapter. At the same time, wikimedians providing trainings for new users can understand better what the challenges faced by people starting their work with Wikipedia are and can be more kind and helpful to them.

Ethnology Without Borders

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On November 16-17, 2018, we co-organized an international scientific conference. The conference took place with the title Ethnology Without Borders – Field(s) without borders: anthropological reflections on the nature of contemporary world. The conference topics were "focused on the digital aspects of reality" (see the abstracts). The keynote of the event was how to use Wikipedia as an anthropological tool. The conference was addressed to all academic units, institutes, and departments of ethnology from the countries of the Visegrád Group. The conference was an opportunity to develop relations and contacts with academic anthropological units of Central and Eastern Europe. Thanks to our long-term cooperation with ethnologists, we have created a recognizable brand of WMPL in the academic community.

The huge financial and organizational contribution from the other conference co-organizers (Ethnological Association of Wrocław and Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Univeristy of Wrocław) allowed Wikimedia Polska to fully engage in the preparation of workshop and lectures. For an expert lecture titled "We have knowledge, there are tools - let's make Wikipedia more ethno! EthnoWiki projects as an example of creative and needed work", we invited our GLAM’s partner – former employee of the National Museum of Ethnography with whom WMPL ran two GLAM projects in the past years. During a separate lecture, our partner - the National Library - presented Polona – a repository of digital files. The longest part of the conference was a wikiworkshop. A dozen or so students and PhD candidates from the Visegrad countries have set up their accounts on Wikipedia and have been trained in editing articles.

By organizing workshops as part of the Ethnology Without Borders conference, Wikimedia met the needs of young researchers who are looking for new forms of presenting their knowledge. The conference is part of a larger project called EtnoWiki, which for many years has been a community of ethnologists in Poland undertaking various Wikimedia initiatives.


# Goal Status and comments Result
1. 200 newly registered users 206 new users 103% done
2. 15 workshops conducted 15 workshops conducted 100% done
3. 50 new Wikipedia pages created 89 new Wikipedia articles 178% done
4. 10 volunteers involved 18 volunteers involved 180% done

1Lib1Ref

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1Lib1Ref is a great proof that wikimedians and librarians work great together. Working with the Librarians of Poland Association and the Faculty of Journalism Information and Book Studies of the University of Warsaw we worked to encourage librarians to add citations to Wikipedia. We organized two meetings: one in January and antoher in May - both at the Public Library of Ochota District in Warsaw. Also, we had a group of students of the University of Warsaw working with their professor during classes and a Wikipedia introductory lecture at The Scientific Information Centre and Academic Library in Katowice.

# Goal Status and comments Result
1. organize 3 #1Lib1Ref events 4 events organized (see above)   Done
2. at least 30 new registered users 26 new users registered 86%
3. sources added in at least 20 Wikipedia articles 133 articles with sources   Done 665%
 
Wikipedian giving a press interview during the "Popularizer of Science" award gala

Telling the Wikimedia story

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We have continued to work with the media to inform about our movement and mission, and our projects. There were some challenges including the EU copyright reform and the Polish Wikipedia blackout which brought massive media interest (see the Advocacy section). But there were also great stories to share - the creators of Polish Wikipedia were nominated (and made it to the final) for the "Popularizer of Science" award by the Polish Press Agency and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. You can see all media appreances of Wikipedia in Polish media here.

We have also worked to make our blog more active and to become a place where one can find all the interesting news about Wikimedia projects - we have published 52 stories on the blog (in comparison to 13 stories in 2017).

# Goal Status and comments Results
1. reporting at least 10 success stories - major partnerships, conference participations, awards - on our blog in 2018 out of 52 stories on our blog 15 are definitely success stories   Done
2. appearing (press officer personally or delegated Wikimedians) in 10 national-scale press articles, TV shows or radio programs 10 interviews with wikimedians in national scale media   Done
3. at least 3 Wikimedia project descriptions in national-scale media about 64 national-scale media articles about Wikimedia projects in Poland   Done

Advocacy

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Wikimedia Polska was active in the area of advocacy.

As each year, we have been supporting the working of the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU by providing our share of the expected financial support.

We have been observing the current developments around the new EU copyright directive. One of our Board members provided a video for Centrum Cyfrowe, our partner organization, in which he explained the possible dangers to free culture that the new directive (especially Article 13) brought. Our staff and functionaries also reacted and provided media support during the July 24-hour blackout of Polish WIkipedia. In September, we provided media commentary on the directive just before the final vote, and in December we took part in a debate on the profits and dangers of the directive in one of the major Polish cities.

As part of our cooperation with Centrum Cyfrowe, we also co-signed a letter to the Minister of Culture and National Heritage on the dangers of the recommercialization of public domain. Centrum Cyfrowe's "Internet is for the people" information campaign was also supported by a contest organized by Wikimedia Polska, in which participants wrote Wikipedia articles focusing on copyright law.

Governance and organizational audit

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Background

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2018 was a time of transition for Wikimedia Poland in several dimensions. Numerous changes in the organization involved:

  • Staff composition:
    • In the very beginning of the year our team lost a dedicated Wikimedian and our Public Relations & trainings officer, User:Halibutt. This led us to seek for a replacement, as both explaining Wikimedia and public image / trademark protection are traditionally seen as some of our core activities and part of the raison d'être of our organization. The position has been only partially filled with a 0.5 FTE communications position starting in May, and the trainings were reassigned (to other staff and volunteers) and reduced in number.
    • Due to the number of GLAM projects and a big pool of potential or waiting partnerships, an additional 0.5 FTE for GLAM was recruited in April.
  • Board and Chair transition: in early June, the General Assembly elected the new Chair and Board. The incumbent chair did not seek re-election, similarly to two other Board members. The GA elected the former Vice-Chair as the new Chair, re-elected three other incumbent board members (including the Treasurer and the Secretary), and elected three new persons, making it the biggest change in years.
  • Simple APG grant

We have strongly felt that as our organization has been growing, our processes and governance methods should have been growing as well. What is more, we have also felt we haven't reached our full potential yet, and increasing our capacity to perform our mission better would require deeper changes in our structures and patterns of behaviour. Seeing room for improvement, we have decided to undertake new measures and support our professionalization with some professional help. SAPG process with external assessment has been a part of our process of learning, validating ourselves and gaining maturity as an organization.

Setting up, running and reporting Our Board is now composed of people with valuable and diversed skills - how can we best benefit from that? We have 5 experienced and enthusiastic staff members - how can we create working conditions that would support their work in the best possible way? We have a great and engaged community but are the ways we communicate with them good enough? Also how can we best use the fact that we are a decentralized organization with staff members across the country and tackle all the difficulties that this situation brings? Those - and many more questions - were important to answer if we wanted to keep growing.

The process and what we have learned from it

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It is important to include the community in the process

We wanted the process to be transparent and to involve our community in as many ways as possible. This is why 15 from the 84 hours of interviews were conducted with the community members engaged in the chapter's work but not serving in any of WMPL's statutory bodies. Participants were chosen by the Board with great care to include people interested in different areas (from GLAM to strategy) and different Wikimedia projects (so not only Wikipedians but also contributors to Commons, Wikisource and Wiktionary could voice their opinions). The invitations brought positive reactions from the volunteers - they expressed how glad they are that their voices could be heard.

The new Board decided that we want to include the community in a bit wider range than the previous Board planned. We split the planned Board-staff SWOT/TOWS workshop into two separate workshops: one for the Board and the Review Committee and the second - for the volunteers and staff members.

We created a special page with up-to date information about the process. After receiving the report document we invited the community to discuss it.

The more you give the more you get

We wanted to have a detailed and insightful report so we made sure that we approach the process with engagement and honesty. We provided the expert with full assistance from one member of the staff who was responsible for giving her access to all the documents, reports, minutes, important discussions, and who connected her with the people the expert needed to talk with. The Board members and the new Chair were also available for any questions. We also made sure that all the interviewed people knew that all conversations are confidential and that they may (and should) honestly and openly talk about things that need improvement or make their work with the chapter challenging. We included not only the people who were active in the chapter in 2018 but also the former Board members who served in the 2016-2018 term.

It is a A LOT of work (but worth it)

In an organization such as ours which is spread across the whole country (both when it comes to the staff members and the Board) scheduling the audit was not an easy task. And we can admit that initially we underestimated how time consuming this will be for the steering committee (mostly for the delegated staff member). Having the logistics and communication around the audit made the way we wanted while performing our regular activities was not an easy task and in some cases we needed to pause or postpone some activities. But taking the time now to reflect on ourselves will help us go in a better direction.

It matters who you work with

We put a lot of time and effort in constructing our inquiry and find the right expert, which included a second round of inquiries as the first one did not result with a competitive enough set of offers. The extra effort paid off with a better choice of possible solutions and partners, and in finding a person who was able not only to understand our organization (both as a part of a larger movement and as a local NGO) but also to build an atmosphere of trust in which all people engaged in the audit could talk openly about what they like and what they find difficult.

Sometimes changes need to be made

Between the decision to comission an audit and putting the process into motion significant changes of the Board happened (see: Background). The new Board decided (after consulting the expert) to make some changes in the initial plan and widen the scope of the audit.

Changes we made:

  • one Board-staff SWOT workshop was divided into two separate workshops to compare results afterwards;
  • Board with and Review Committee worked in group 1, volunteers were invited to join the staff workshop in group 2;
  • an Ashridge Mission workshop for the Board and Review Committee was added to the process - as a tool for building our mission statement and as the first step towards having a satisfying strategy

We understood that widening the process will make it more expensive (especially in terms of travel costs of volunteers and Board members) so we decided to add some of WMPL's own financial resources to cover the difference.

Contents of the audit

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Audit contents
Content Time Additional information
28 structured interviews + input analysis and structurization 84 hours 15 interviews with chapter statutory body members (Board members from the current and previous term, Peer Tribunal and Review Committee), 5 staff members, 8 community representatives
Document, process, and policy analysis 26 hours
SWOT workshops 16 hours One 8-hour workshop for the staff and the volunteers and one 8-hour workshop for the Board and the Review Committee
Ashridge mission model workshop 8 hours For the Board and the Review Committee members
Report drawing-up 24 hours Based on the result of the analysis of the documents and processes and the input gathered during the interviews and the workshops

Results

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The report and the recomendations were passed to the board on December 15th, then after receiving the board's feedback the final version was published on our wiki and announced to the community. English version of the audit can be found here.

We are now in the process of consulting the results and recommendations with our members and community and estabilishing next steps:

  • The outcome was communicated in several places (newsletter, social media etc.);
  • An inquiry regarding next steps and a general offer for the stage 2 was obtained from the vendor; subject to further arrangements;
  • The recommendations and next steps were discussed during the winter meeting on 26th of January.

First recommendations are meant to be implemented in 2019 H1. Second stage of the work with the external consultant could start in July.

  1. ↑ Average exchange rate as announced by the National Bank of Poland
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