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_interna…
.
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*