Microgrants/Core Contest (prizes)/Report 2

Completion

Is your project completed?

As previously - part open-ended, part done. The idea is a contest that can be run and completed over a two month period (including lead-up and judging afterwards). It has been run four times to date (March 10 to March 31 2012, August 1 to August 31 2012, April 15 to May 12 2013 and February 10 to March 9 2014) and will likely next be run in late 2014 or sometime in 2015.

Have you submitted all receipts for any expenses paid?

N/A - all fiscal items were directly handled by WMUK.

Activities and lessons learned

This section describes what the grantee did, and what the grantee learned from implementing the project. This section should be useful to others implementing similar projects and is an opportunity for the grantee to reflect on the project's performance.

Activities

Provide a brief list of activities performed to complete this project, and descriptions of these activities. This section should also include links to pictures, blog posts, or videos from the project or event if appropriate.

The Core Contest was an editing contest run over four weeks in which editors competed to improve core content. Articles were selected from the list of Vital Articles or a list of key articles identified by Danny some years ago. The best improvements of the worst/broadest core articles won prizes, consisting of Amazon vouchers of varying amounts. The rationale was that much core content had seen little improvement for some years and we should be looking at ways of improving our core portfolio, as it were. The thoroughness of wikipedia's auditing processes (GAN and FAC) has meant that it is much easier and more rewarding to focus on narrow rather than broad articles.

Lessons learned

What lessons were learned that may help others succeed in similar projects? Consider the following questions and respond with 1 - 2 sentences.

What went well?

People seemed to enjoy the contest and as always it is good to see some core material improved. Notably, more food/drink articles were improved, such as poultry and drink, and some core articles such as Philosophy of science and literature. There were fourteen entries overall, though several were not as worked on as much as hoped (which happens each time).

What did not go well?

We had five judges this time round, and there was a divergence of opinion in how entries should be weighted. Discussion remained amicable but I was left wondering about it, and glad that the prizes were relatively modest. Essentially the issue was about "coreness" of article versus magnitude of improvement.

What would you do differently if you plan a similar project in the future?

The contest itself? Not sure. I do think it fulfilled what it intended to do, which is improve core content. I do wonder whether we've hit a ceiling of participation, and maybe resting it a while would be good - not sure. Just beforehand we did run the Stub contest, which did (as expected) attract a wider range of editors. That had an unexpected outcome but still (I think) was a good complement to the Core Contest. I think I'd like to run the Stub Contest again before the next Core Contest.

Expected outcomes

This section should reference the expected outcomes and measures of success described in the approved grant submission.

Provide the expected outcomes here.

Bit by bit, improving the quality of wikipedia's portfolio of core articles (hopefully) on a path to some audited level (GA or FA). Audited articles are beneficial in that they have a set point of review that can be referred to in cases of future article degradation. Also, by providing impetus to shove towards FA status, broaden our readership and exposure by having broad articles on the mainpage

Did you achieve the expected outcomes? How do you know the outcome was achieved?

As previously, linking to content made and looking at pageviews

Impact

This section ties this project to Wikimedia UK's broader goals, and shows what the project accomplished.

What impact did this project have on WMUK's mission and the strategic goals?

presumably improving wikipedia's content is one of the goals....?

Reporting and documentation of expenditures

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to the office? Answer "Yes" or "No".

N/A - not handled by me

Final comments

Include any final comments you may have.

Hopefully the contest improves editing environment and camaraderie by promoting collaborative editing. It was fun to run.