User:Dr. Blofeld/Proposal
Project idea
What is the problem you're trying to solve?
Explain the problem that you are trying to solve with this project. What is the issue you want to address? You can update and add to this later.
Wikipedia is generally of poor quality, and 59% or more articles are stubs. There is a tendency for editors to neglect older articles. With 5 million articles in English alone and an editor base of 30,000 active editors, a large number of articles have remained unchanged for years. There are currently roughly 44,000 stubs for the UK and Ireland alone which urgently needs to be brought down. Currently Women in Red doesn’t see articles produced evenly from around the world or for different topics; a contest to give an incentive to produce for every country on the planet and ten fields of occupation is needed.
What is your solution?
For the problem you identified in the previous section, briefly describe your how you would like to address this problem. We recognize that there are many ways to solve a problem. We’d like to understand why you chose this particular solution, and why you think it is worth pursuing.
- Create toolkits to help people organise and run their own contests and running ready-made contests, which will both will be developed within the Wikipedia:Contests workspace. The toolkits will include a full set of instructions and work material to enable editors to custom make their own contests for a given area which needs editing. Examples: Wikipedia:Contests/Toolkits/Destubathons (stub reduction), Wikipedia:Contests/Toolkits/Debloatathons (contests which make articles more concise/improve sourcing etc).
- Develop a catalogue of “ready-made” contests which will enable editors to simply move them into the mainspace and start them with minimal input. This will encourage more editors to run their own contests for different parts of the world and topics and replicate what I have achieved to date. Examples: Wikipedia:Contests/Ideas/The National Finnish Contest, Wikipedia:Contests/Ideas/The Asian Women Contest. Both the toolkits and my own contests will target weak areas of wikipedia and give an incentive to improve content.
- Run contests for Women and UK/Europe personally to contribute to the overall quality improvement and reduction of systematic bias of wikpedia articles.
Applicant type
Is this grant being requested by an organization, a group, or an individual?
●Individual
Target project
Which existing Wikimedia projects and language versions will be better served or impacted as a result of this project?
Mainly English Wikipedia, but the women contest may involve other wikis such as French and Spanish, depending on what interest is shown.
Project goals
What are your goals for this project? Your goals should describe the top two or three benefits that will come out of your project. These should be benefits to the Wikimedia projects or Wikimedia communities. They should not be benefits to you individually.
- Develop a contest directory and toolkits for a range of different areas and topics. This will be developed gradually throughout the year, and I will invite different groups to adopt different contests to host. There is already significant interest from contributors to the Challenges I created from across the world. Those, in addition to the ones I will run personally will, judging by my past experience running very successful contests such as Awaken the Dragon and the Africa Destubathon contests, provide much improvement to the quality of wikipedia articles.
- Tackle systematic and gender bias and motivate editors to produce articles on women for every part of the world. For Women in Red, I hope a pilot contest will kick off a long-term 100,000 Challenge for women bios, a vehicle to surpass 20% women biographies on English Wikipedia within a much shorter time frame than currently projected.
How will you know if you have met your goals?
For each of your goals, we’d like you to answer the following questions:
1. During your project, what will you do to achieve this goal? (These are your outputs.)
For the toolkits and ready-made contests, I will consider it an achievement when full instructions and a few contest designs are drawn up and a few different people start to use the ideas to run their own contests. My past experience will prove valuable in designing new types of contests and encouraging development for different areas of the encyclopedia. For the contests I will run, I will consider each a success if over 1000 articles are improved for each.
2. Once your project is over, how will it continue to positively impact the Wikimedia community or projects? (These are your outcomes.) For each of your answers, think about how you will capture this information. Will you capture it with a survey? With a story? Will you measure it with a number? Remember, if you plan to measure a number, you will need to set a numeric target in your proposal. (e.g. 45 people, 10 articles, 100 scanned documents).
The toolkits and contest framework will have a long lasting impact on the site and allow editors long term to create and run a wide variety of contests to benefit content. That will be a success if people use my ideas to create contests during the year and beyond. My previous contests demonstrated that with a strong prize-based mechanism it is possible to attract people, some of whom may not usually edit that subject, to improving "stale" old content and core articles, largely untouched in years. With the larger prize funding for this, I hope to motivate a wider pool of editors and indeed provide a way to attract new editors to the project who might then contribute articles on women or UK and Europe long term. I anticipate that people will then want to re-run the contests in the future.
3. Do you have any goals around participation or content? Are any of your goals related to increasing participation within the Wikimedia movement, or increasing/improving the content on Wikimedia projects? If so, please review the link below and include any metrics that are relevant to your project. Please set a numeric target against the metrics, if applicable.
Total participants
| Total participants | 200 (across all contests) |
|---|---|
| Number of pages created or improved | Minimum 2000 |
Participation on Wikipedia is often difficult to predict, and often only 20 or 30 people can produce well over a thousand articles. In one year, I think if 5000 articles get improved as a result of my contests and toolkits I think that would be a commendable achievement. For the UK and Ireland/Europe I want to set a 2,000 article destubbing goal for these contests, which I hope will be the start of something greater long term and aim to eradicate all of our 44,000 UK stubs eventually.
Project plan
Activities
Tell us how you'll carry out your project. What will you and other organizers spend your time doing? What will you have done at the end of your project? How will you follow-up with people that are involved with your project?
My time will be spent creating the toolkits and designing contests which any editor can use to easily create a contest without having to put much time into it themselves. The making of these will be gradual throughout the year. For the contests (one about world women and two about the UK/Europe) I’m willing to take much of the responsibility for running those, checking articles and assisting contestants, though I anticipate that part of the ruling will mean that contestants also help to review articles submitted and that bots will be employed.
Budget
USD 28,850-30,850
| Item | Description | Duration | Cost GBP | Cost USD (1USD=0.81 GBP) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A pilot World Women Contest: 195 countries with a $50 prize for most articles created for each country. =$9750. Then 11 x $100 for general overall prizes for most articles by 10 different fields of women occuptions: Women in Literature, Art, Science, Engineering, Technology, Entertainment, Feminism, Leadership, Education, Healthcare, Challenging Occupations, Sport and the 11th for Most Good Articles produced. | 1 month contest | 8824.85 | 10,850 |
| 2 | Two UK/Ireland and/or wider Europe-based de-stubathons:, perhaps one of each, $5000 per contest. 134 counties with a $30 prize for most articles destubbed for each county = $4020. The remaining $980 will be split into several prizes for most articles done for a given subject such as geography, castles/houses etc, perhaps $300 allocated to three general prizes and the remaining $80 towards people who review the most articles. A European contest would be split into 47 countries and prizes given in a similar fashion to work done for given subjects. | Two 1 month contests | 8132.06 | 10,000 |
| 3 | Developing a contest directory and toolkits: For the long term development of a contest directory and making of contest toolkits. Drawing up a wide range of contest designs which can be immediately useable will require considerable ongoing effort, far beyond what I could reasonably contribute as a volunteer. I believe that it's important development work for the site, meta-wiki type development and not standard editing. I've given a range option in case $10,000 was out of the question. | Ongoing, one year (est). | 6505.65- 8132.06 | 8-10,000 |
| Total | 23,462.56 - 25,087.42 | 28,850 - 30,850 |
Community engagement plans
Community input and participation helps make projects successful. How will you let others in your community know about your project? Why are you targeting a specific audience? How will you engage the community you’re aiming to serve during your project?
As with the successful Africa Destubathon which attracted 118 contributors and produced 2041 articles, I will see to it that contests are widely publicized. I will actively approach potential contestants for contests using my toolkits, starting with the worldwide framework I’ve already set up for 10,000 Challenges for different continents.There is already interest in contests for Asia, North America, Europe and Finland.
Grantee
Please enter your username here. If your team has more than 1 grantee, you can add more people below.
James Anderson
Primary contact
Please provide an email address (or a username that can receive email) that we can use to contact you. This will be shown publicly. User:Dr. Blofeld at English Wikipedia.
Participants
Please use this section to tell us more about who is working on this project. For each member of the team, please describe any project-related skills, experience, or other background you have that might help contribute to making this idea a success.
I will take charge of developing the contests and running the ones I've proposed. I believe I have an excellent ability to attract volunteers to my contests, with 118 unique contributors to the African one alone. As people seem to enjoy participating in my contests, I often have contributors from past contests participating; for instance the Destubathon attracted an editor who normally works on Cornwall topics (and contributed to my West Country contest), contributing articles on Madagascan wildlife! I think that the toolkits and ready-made contests will make running contests more palatable and attractive for other volunteers and make it easier to join and become a part of what I’m doing.
I’m certain I will have volunteers to assist in running some of the contests (names to be confirmed) and that running the contests will be sustainable. A concern with the African Destubathon was that it was time consuming to run, but all of my contests will be designed so that participants become involved in checking other contestant’s articles to lighten the workload on the main organiser. I will actively try to get a bot designed to assist with this too. A bot to check article length and sourcing was successfully run for Asian Women Month, and I will be looking for a similar device to make running these efficient. These contests, particularly the World Women one, will certainly attract a considerable number with a larger prize fund. Given that the Destubathon produced twice the number of articles on larger funding than previously, I am very keen to see what contests on $5-10,000 funding can produce and indeed whether this will attract more active editors.
Other participants
Please indicate how many people (other than you) will be participating in your project as grantees or advisors. If you're not sure yet, just skip this question. You can always add slots for more grantees and advisors later.
Impossible to predict how many will participate, but the significant interest already being shown through the challenges and the contests I've run make me particularly confident that these projects will attract many.