Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos International Team/2023 coordination

Feedback from the Middle East and Africa Regional Funding Committee on your proposal

Hello , WPWP Organizing Team,

Thank you for applying for your first annual plan. We continue to see the significance of the campaign in supporting the re-use of the pictures from other efforts which is important in strengthening existing Wikipedia (s). We also see the value of organizing and coordinating from the core team level and the clear plan to support participating communities. We recognize that this is a major international campaign with a lot of participation from Global South including in Africa.

To support us with the next stages of the review process, please see our comments, questions and observations;

• We are keen to understand what aspects of past WPWP implementation are informing the fourth version of the campaign? Are there key insights that inform this edition?
• The 2021 report mentions that over 1000 participants added images to over 265,000 articles. This year's goal is for 150 people to add images to 30,000 articles. We are curious to know what informs this goal? Especially with an expanded budget, we are of the opinion that the goals would be higher than what has been indicated? Please advise.
• Would you speak to the risk you envision and the plan to mitigate them?
• We find the indicated personnel required engagement not necessarily commensurate with the scope of the campaign . We see for instance the coordinators will be working on the project for 8 months? Would you share more on this including letting  us know what we might be missing.
• Would you share how many plaques/awards are to be sent? 3000 USD is budgeted for shipping these and we are wondering if maybe you can coordinate with the local teams on the awards?
• We remain unclear and need your support in helping us understand what the limitations are with continuing accessing resources from the rapid funds program. Please let us know the limitations with the fund and also what your views are with you working with a rapid fund instead. This comment is also informed with our understanding that the fund has been run before on a much smaller budget and we remain curious on the justification for an increased budget.

As always we recommend meeting with the regional program officer to support you in providing any clarity needed with the feedback shared here. The committee is also available to meet and join the call if that would be meaningful for you - just let the program officer know.

Thank you so much and we continue to appreciate your work and role in advancing the mission of the movement.

On behalf of the MEA Regional Committee and Staff , VThamaini (WMF) (talk) 07:09, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Hello VThamaini (WMF), please find our responses to the questions below:

• Yes, there are different aspects of past WPWP implementations that inform the fourth version. They are outlined below.

African community engagement: This campaign promotes the engagement of the African community. It’s one of the few international campaigns conceptualized by members of the African community that has recorded the most participation from the community in Africa. In 2021, a total of 60 Wikimedia affiliates organized the campaign locally, and about 20 of the participating communities were African communities, which accounts for more than 80% of all the Wikimedia affiliates in Africa. We want to continue this engagement and sustain African-led initiatives in the global community. This is a region that is underrepresented in the Wikimedia movement. We want to continue to give this campaign all the necessary support it needs to thrive.

Participation of new editors: In the past, there had been concerns about the participation of brand new editors in the campaign. The concerns were based on whether brand new editors have the competency to constructively participate in the campaign without being disruptive. The campaign was evaluated, and the findings show that most of the disruptions recorded were from brand new editors. The report suggested that participation be restricted to only participants who had registered an account at least one year before the campaign. This recommendation was implemented last year, and it was successful as predicted with extremely low bad contributions. Although the total number of articles improved with photos was reduced from 265,000 recorded in 2021 to 40,000, We were satisfied with this result since these are high-quality contributions from experienced contributors. This year, we are restricting participation to participants with at least 2 years of editing experience and at least 1000 mainspace contributions. This is to further ensure the quality of contributions from participants

Prizes: In 2020 and 2021, there were concerns about cash prizes. Although we had awarded Amazon gift cards as vouchers, some members of the English Wikipedia believe that Amazon vouchers are still cash prizes, and in 2022, we canceled Amazon gift cards as prizes based on the concerns and issued a plaque award. This is the same as a barnstar, which is awarded to community members in recognition of their contributions. Only that we send a physical version as we believe that the recipients will find it more valuable. The feedback we received from the recipients was generally thrilling, as they found it very useful.

Improved rules of participation: The campaign rules have been revised and improved with more clarity on how to participate, and participants are now mostly experienced editors who are more likely to abide by the campaign rules and the relevant local wiki policies while participating in the campaign.

• As explained in our response to the first question above, in the past, there had been concerns about the participation of brand new editors in the campaign. The concerns were based on whether brand new editors have the competency to constructively participate in the campaign without being disruptive. The campaign was evaluated, and the findings show that most of the disruptions recorded were from brand new editors. These brand new editors make up more than 55% of the total participation pool. The report suggested that participation be restricted to only participants who had registered an account at least one year before the campaign. This recommendation was implemented last year, and it was successful as predicted with extremely low bad contributions. Although the total number of articles improved with photos was reduced from 265,000 recorded in 2021 to 40,000, and participants dropped from more than 1,000 to less than 400, We were satisfied with this result since these are high-quality contributions from experienced contributors. To further ensure the quality of contributions, this year we are restricting participation to participants with at least 2 years of editing experience and at least 1000 mainspace contributions. We believe that these changes have the potential to further reduce the number of participants and contributions. Based on the above, we are however open to increasing these metrics if the MEA committee recommends that they be increased.
• We currently do not envisage any further risks to this campaign. The identified risks, such as poor contributions and throttling of contributions by new editors, a lack of unclear rules, or their misapplication, to mention a few, have been addressed based on recommendations from our evaluation report, as explained in our responses to your questions 1 and 2 above.
• Thank you for spotting this error. This was not what we intended to communicate. The project coordinator will be working on the project for 8 weeks, not 8 months. This has been corrected.
• Thank you. The plaque awards and souvenirs are international prizes and different from local awards given by local organizers. We do not coordinate local awards; these are coordinated by local organizers themselves, who determine what works well as prizes for their communities. There are specific instances where we coordinated international prize awards with a local community, in this case Wikimedia Turkey, where it was difficult to purchase Amazon gift cards for a top contributor from that community. We incurred additional expenses in the process, so sending the plaques and souvenirs directly is better. In addition, there are participants who are not affiliated with any Wikimedia community, and even the Wikimedia community in their country is not participating in the campaign, so coordinating prizes with the local community in that case would be difficult or impossible. We are sending a total of 7 plaque awards and other souvenirs.
• The WPWP is a large international campaign (for instance, 2021 and 2022 participation data shows participation from over 20 distinct countries; and that needs elaborate central coordination and dedicated support before, during and after the campaign. Also prizes may potentially need to be sent to any of these countries.) This campaign was formerly funded through the defunct Project Grants program, and the approved fund for the project in 2021 was USD 18,100. (See the final report.) Last year (2022), we missed the deadline for submission through the General Support Fund due to the general changes to the WMF grant process and met with the regional program officer, Veronica who advised that we can access USD 10,000 through a rapid grant if we have the project coordinator submit an application for a rapid grant for the coordination (USD 5,000) and another member of the organizing team submit another application (USD 5,000) for prizes, shipping, plaque awards, souvenirs, internet, graphics design, and social media supports. This was only an adhoc arrangement to ensure continuity of the project without skipping a year, which may affect the project's sustainability and appeal. The program officer, however, advised that we submit our application for the General Support Fund early enough this year to avoid the prolems encountered last year. Here are the two Rapid Fund projects from last year (totaling USD 10,000) that were used to run the campaign; (rapid 1 and rapid 2)

Thank you for the questions. We hope that you find our responses helpful to better understand the application. Regards. – Ammarpad (talk) 00:42, 9 May 2023 (UTC) (for WPWP Organizing Team)

Wikimedia Community Fund Approved in the amount of 22,660 USD

Dear, Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos Organizing team,

Thank you for submitting your application seeking General Support Funds - Wikimedia Community Fund. The Middle East and Africa Regional Committee and Staff have reviewed your application and recommended funding in the amount of $22,660 for the period of July 2023 - December 2023.

We found the responses shared to be useful in our review and discussions and we agreed to provide full funding to the project. We agree that the project is of significant value to the community and has been useful in promoting the re-use of outcomes from other linked projects - especially photo based campaigns.

We recommend that in your implementation plan you create space to share the successes and learnings from the project with the wider community including from the perspective of organizing a campaign. We believe you hold substantial experience and expertise in campaign organizing that could be beneficial to other emerging groups who are implementing similar projects.

Thank you for your contribution to the movement ; we value you as a community and partner in the movement and remain committed to ensuring you are supported in your work.

On behalf of the MEA Regional Committee and staff , Kaizenify (talk) 20:09, 29 May 2023 (UTC)