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Grants:Project/MSIG/WMSE/Capacity building in the Content Partnerships Hub/Report

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Movement Strategy Implementation Grant Report
Under review



Outcomes

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Please respond to the following questions below:

Where have you published your draft plan? Share the link to it here:

  • We have ongoingly developed the Meta portal Content Partnerships Hub and added concept papers where we outlined detailed plans about how to further develop different aspects of the Content Partnerships Hub.

What Movement Strategy initiative is this draft plan supporting?

  • Ensure Equity in Decision-Making -> 26 Regional and thematic hubs

What activities have you completed to produce this draft plan?

As per our application we have focused on experimenting and developing our plans in the following areas:

  • Identifying material through the Helpdesk.
An overview of the proposed components of the Helpdesk.

As part of this project the Expert Committee of the Helpdesk has ongoingly led the work on developing responses for all the requests that have been received by the Helpdesk. The Expert Committee has not only prioritized what to focus on, but has suggested ways to tackle these issues for our team and the person or organization sending in the request.

The reviews done by the Expert Committee has to a large extent focused on identifying missing pieces of knowledge and information in the Wikimedia movement needed for capacity building. The idea being that the Helpdesk requests should both help the requester to handle similar issues themselves later (i.e. providing capacity building directly) but also holistically looking at what content currently exists and what new training material should be created or updated. The Expert Committee’s insights and suggestions have helped to further develop the areas receiving support both for the specific task at hand but also with complementing existing capacity building material. This work has been successful and we want to scale it by creating opportunities for more affiliates to contribute with their expert’s time to help answer the Helpdesk requests.

To support the requests directly and to develop missing capacity building material we needed to create opportunities for more experts from the Movement to engage. During the project we have developed a concept for two types of Working Groups: the Standing Working Group and the Working Group Task Forces. The current plan for the Working Groups is outlined here: Content Partnerships Hub/Helpdesk/Working Groups. We believe that we have a solid foundation here for our continued experimentation and implementation work. It is however still a working document and we will further refine it in conversations with different stakeholders when we work to establish the Working Groups during the second half of 2024 or early 2025 (depending on when we have secured funding to continue the work). We had planned to launch a first version of a Working Group but as we were running late in the project we realized that the group would not be active until the very end of this project and we had not yet secured any further funding. As WMF had indicated that further funding was uncertain we felt it was prudent not to set up a working group that we might not be able to maintain.

  • Making material about content partnership easy to find with Metabase

In preparation for this project we started experimenting with developing a Wikibase focusing on material related to the Wikimedia movement, initially targeting material connected to content partnerships. We called the platform Metabase. After this initial experimentation we are optimistic that Metabase could become a very valuable addition to the Wikimedia movement and that it deserves further investments.

This project allowed us to take Metabase from an early idea into a first version that can be showcased and discussed with the wider Wikimedia Movement. Currently the Metabase platform is up and running and during the project period we have expanded it to nearly 2,500 items. The size allows us to showcase what can be done with a structured knowledgebase, but it also allows us to better approximate the costs of scaling the initiative further and how it can be done in a viable way. Through the project we have also been able to work as a team to find ways to best structure the material at hand. This initial work is very time consuming but will provide a good foundation for further scaling the work to include data from other Movement actors, e.g. volunteers, affiliates and hubs, working with content partnerships. We were able to secure external funding to hire a staff member to add data to Metabase ongoingly during 2024, with the possibility of extending the funding also in 2025 and onwards. With this new opportunity at hand we needed to prove that Metabase would be worthwhile to continue to invest in and decided to increase the Metabase part of the project.

We have developed a White Paper outlining the steps we have taken to date through three case studies:

  1. Setting up a Wikibase from scratch.
  2. Metabase for chapter data.
  3. Metabase for the global movement.

In these case studies we present our insights and identify a number of steps we believe should be taken next.

We also developed a survey for affiliates’ needs, to start investigating what we could work on together in future projects. The survey report can be found here: Survey of capacity building material and resources.

We are also in the process of engaging other hubs in the work to both spread awareness of the Metabase initiative, help with translations and engagement. We believe that this could be an interesting area of joint activities.

  • Create a process to jointly develop key material

... using the Helpdesk

Many of the Helpdesk requests are about batch uploads. This image outlines the process of handling such a request.

During the project we have developed the process for the Expert Committee’s reviews and we have published a concept for how to organize the Working Groups and how we expect them to support the work with answering the requests, compiling existing capacity building material and developing missing material.

At this experimental stage the people involved in answering the requests to the Helpdesk have been staff members of WMSE – as noted above we are intending to extend the working Group to involve experts from across the Wikimedia movement. Based on the review of the Expert Committee we focused on developing a set of capacity building material ([1], [2], [3]) as part of the Let's Connect initiative by WMF.


A good example on how the requests to the Helpdesk leads to capacity building is the request from the international team of Wiki Loves Earth for support with implementing Wikidata in the contest. The requests focused on working with the local organizers in a number of countries in the Global South. The request was very successfully responded to. The initiative also led to a deeper discussion with the team in Ukraine about other possibilities that could be developed together connected to the Content Partnerships Hub. Wikimedia Sverige, Ukraine, Poland and Georgia and the Content Partnerships Hub and CEE Hub decided to develop a joint application for external funding from the Swedish Institute. The project is called Heritage Guard Network and its focus is on how crowdsourcing can be used to digitize cultural and natural heritage in danger from war or natural disasters such as global warming. The current pilot project lasts until the end of 2024, but we are optimistic about securing funding for a larger project for 2025 and 2026. This partnership, emerging from a Helpdesk request, has also led to another spin-off project with Wikimedia Ukraine and GLAM institutions in both countries to increase digitization of GLAM collections in danger by developing a new set of capacity building material for GLAM professionals working in high-risk situations, such as war zones.

... using the Metabase platform

We are discussing possible synergies between Metabase and the Capacity Exchange (CapX) initiative, a database of skills/services offered and sought by users and organizations. We are planning to continue the work with the CapX team in the near future to see if Metabase could be a solution for their needs to describe and categorize skills and services most common within the Wikimedia Movement. We hope that by building a bridge between the Capacity Exchange initiative and their capacity directory and Metabase our joint efforts will increase the speed of development of Metabase and create added visibility and value of the work.

... using translations

Wikimedia Sverige has established a partnership with the Institute for Interpreting and Translation Studies at Stockholm University. The Institute provides us with interns that are working full time with us for four weeks with translation work into different languages. We have multiple requests from interns and have decided to prioritize interns working on translations to or from French into Swedish or English. We decided to focus on French as we have initiated a new partnership with the WikiFranca hub initiative and will work with their volunteers to identify valuable material for translation. The WikiFranca hub will provide translations from English into French and we will focus on translations of French material into Swedish and English. This is a pilot and if it works well we will engage interns to support with translations also in other languages (translations to and from Spanish, Arabic and German being likely languages to follow).

... using the IGO partnerships

The Hub is continuing the work with intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and as part of this project we have taken important steps to increase capacity building for other affiliates and volunteers to join this work. Specifically we have developed a plan for an international training program for Wikimedians in Residence positions at IGOs. We are hopeful that this capacity building initiative will allow for scaling the number of Wikimedia–IGO partnerships, create opportunities for professional engagement with IGOs from both affiliates and volunteers and possibly increase funding opportunities for the Wikimedia movement. We have worked closely with Wikimedia UK and Wiki in Africa to develop this program as both organizations have valuable experience in the area. The plan for the WiR training program is published here: Wikimedian in Residence skills research and training programme plan.

... using the learn.wiki platform

As part of the project we have worked on the learn.wiki platform. Wikimedia Sverige has developed an overarching plan for how to utilize the learn.wiki platform within our organization and we are experimenting on how to connect the work done as part of the Hub to this structure. In 2024 we have engaged both staff and an external consultant to develop the first set of modules. We are grateful for the support we have received from the Community Development team at Wikimedia Foundation. This work will continue also in the coming years. The WiR training program outlined above is expected to have training modules added to learn.wiki that will build upon the more general modules Wikimedia Sverige is developing for the organization. We have also worked with OpenRefine and Sandra Fauconnier to develop training modules for the tool on learn.wiki. These are important to lower the threshold for users and improve capacity amongst the GLAMwiki community.

  • Sharing and reporting

The Content Partnerships Hub is still an experimental initiative and we have worked on developing a number of new resources and concept papers based on our discussions, findings and experiments.

A key piece of material is the case study developed about Metabase: Content Partnerships Hub/Metabase. This roughly 35 page document covers three case studies outlining our different activities around establishing Metabase as a resource for finding capacity building material for the Wikimedia movement.

We have published a concept paper about the work with intergovernmental organizations that the Hub would participate in and a second concept paper for the WiR Training Program that we intend to develop. The concept paper on the WiR training program provides insights on what areas of capacity building are needed to develop for the Wikimedia movement to be able to prepare Wikimedian in Residence candidates with the skills needed to work effectively and successfully at intergovernmental organizations.

We have shared the results of the project at the GLAM Wiki Conference 2023 in Uruguay through two presentations about the Helpdesk and about the IGO work. We will also present about the outcomes from this project at Wikimania 2024 (this will happen after the project has officially ended, but the idea was suggested during the project). The presentations are about the Helpdesk, Metabase and IGO partnerships.

We published two blog posts that introduced the Helpdesk by summarizing the work done with the first larger request we worked on, which had a clear capacity building component to it: 3,000 new medical illustrations on Wikimedia Commons – this is how you can contribute followed by How to carry out a batch upload of illustrations. The target group of the first post is volunteers and affiliates that might like to request help from the Helpdesk or that would like to use the material uploaded. The second post is more technical in nature and the target group are volunteers and staff of affiliates that are working on batch uploads.

As the project was extended in time it no longer made sense to develop a separate report outlining what to include in a follow-up project as we had already developed two key documents during the project time; developing a second report would just have meant a duplication of work. As part of the project we developed and submitted an application for the follow-up project – this application was the reason we had planned to develop the report in the first place. During the project time we also finalized a much larger report, which covered important aspects of capacity building, which listed insights and next steps, which was the other thing that the report we had planned for this project would have done.

SMART Goals

  1. This goal has been reached. Requests to the Helpdesk have been submitted ongoingly since late 2022 and in total 19 requests have been received of which most have been processed entirely or partly during the project time. This project focused on handling the capacity building step of the different requests, while the steps of batch uploading etc. was handled as part of the much larger project Content partnerships support 2021 that took place in parallel.
  2. We failed with reaching this goal in the project. We did the preparatory work but as we had too little funding available, and very high uncertainty of WMF funding for any continued work, we decided to not move ahead with the practical implementation.
  3. This goal has been reached. 451 capacity building resources have been documented on Metabase. Please note that this query is based on the format (all documents) of the resources added to Metabase which means that some of the items might not fall within the purest definition of capacity building resources – but it is clear that the goal has been significantly exceeded.
  4. This goal has been reached. We launched a three part Let's Connect series on using Wikidata and OpenRefine for Wiki Loves Monuments. This can be found at session 1 (Wikidata for WLM), session 2 (tools for working with Wikidata) and session 3 (OpenRefine).
  5. This goal has been reached. We have initiated a partnership with WikiFranca about translation work as the initial focus, with the possibility to explore other areas of joint interest.
  6. This goal has been reached. 390 people are estimated to have interacted with the educational material we produced for our Let's Connect series. This number is based on participants at the live event and subsequent YouTube-views of the material.
  7. This goal has been reached. Three case studies about different aspects of Metabase have been published: Content Partnerships Hub/Metabase.
  8. This goal has been reached. 112 people participated in our events related to the project. All these events had Wikimedia Community members as their target audience.

In which community channels have you announced your draft plan?

  • We have shared the project with different stakeholders in the Movement that we have had an interest to engage in the work. We have also worked on integrating project specific material to the Hub portal on Meta.

Finances

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Grant funds spent

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Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

  • Worktime (worktime costs for Research, Facilitation, Documentation, Translation and Coordination): 441,706.70 SEK[budget 1] (budgeted: 448,000 SEK [budget 2])
  • Online tools or services (subscription services for online meeting platforms, social media promotion): 0 SEK (budgeted: 0 SEK)
  • Data (internet or mobile costs for organizers or participants to access or participate in activities): 0 SEK (budgeted: 0 SEK)
  • Venue or space for meeting (costs of renting a physical meeting space): 0 SEK (budgeted: 0 SEK)
  • Transportation costs (costs of supporting organizers or participants to attend the meeting): 36,486.28 SEK[budget 1] (budgeted: 30,000 SEK)
  • Meals (costs related to refreshments, lunches, or other meals during in-person activities): 0 SEK (budgeted: 0 SEK)
  • Other (financial and administration costs incl. office costs): 52,000 SEK (budgeted: 52,000 SEK)

TOTAL AMOUNT SPENT: 530,192.98 SEK (50,320 USD)

Notes:

  1. a b Transportation costs ended up somewhat larger than estimated due to the location of the GLAM Wiki Conference 2023 (Uruguay). This increased cost was offset by a reduction in Worktime costs.
  2. The budgeted costs for Research, Facilitation, Documentation, Translation and Coordination are all jointly accounted as Worktime. This cost includes both staff costs (incl. taxes and social fees), consultants and remunerations for interview participants. While not broken down according to function we estimate that the final result corresponds well to our budgeted distribution.

Remaining funds

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Do you have any remaining grant funds?

No

Anything else

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Anything else you want to share about your project?

We believe that there is further work to be done on experimenting with capacity building for the Content Partnership Hub, the ideas for this are described in our proposed project: The Content Partnerships Hub's capacity boost initiative.
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