Hello all,

I am writing this email to let you know that the international team will be applying for a project grant to WMF in the upcoming round, to provide support for 2021's competition.

The draft of the grant proposal is at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Wiki_Loves_Monuments_international_team/2021_coordination.

While most of the plan and the content is similar to that of previous years, there are few changes/additions to the goals in general that we have put up. These include:
  • Stabilizing the team and getting the competition going: Some long-standing members of the team are going to step back from the core group this year, which will require significant transitions internally. Our goal is to make sure the international team has sufficient human resources to run the competition successfully this year. (We are also looking for volunteers to join the team :))
  • Exploring future changes:
    • Exploring rest of the world competition: The idea is to explore the possibility of organizing a competition for the rest of the world i.e. for countries not having a national competition. This has come up several times in the past, we explored the idea a bit last year, but it didn't materialise. For this year, we would like to explore the possibility and model of such a competition in detail, and hopefully get in running in 2022.
    • Research on landing page design: Landing pages are a crucial part of engaging participants. A good landing page can help to turn in more visitors to participants. There is always a scope of improvement in this area. We are planning on closely working with relevant WMF teams to research and improve the design of a generic landing page, which can be used by national competitions. This won't necessarily be ready by the start of 2021's competition, but by the end of the grand period i.e. mid-2022.
    • Developing step-by-step guide for participants: Though there are a lot of pages containing instructions for participants, there is no single guide to which the participants can refer. We are envisioning to have a graphical 1/2-pager document, with enough information for a complete outsider to Wikimedia, to participate. This can be translated and localised by national competitions.
  • Follow-up with the participants: The idea is to follow-up with participants, especially those who joined Wikimedia through the competition, at regular intervals after the competition is over. This includes a simple message on talk pages of the participants on what they can possibly do after the competition is over. This may improve retention.
The deadline to finalise the proposal is 10 Feb. Please share your thoughts/feedback by 7th, so that it will give us enough time to make changes. We will also discuss these points during the upcoming office hours on Sunday.

Regards,
Krishna Chaitanya,
on behalf of WLM International Team