Hi Sam,
The main misconception (which is understandable, but also often pointed out already) is that Wiki Loves Monuments can be fundamentally different projects from a goals-and-outcomes point of view, based on the interests and strenghts of the local organizers and the local situation. In some countries, the main outcome of the competition is that it brings together organizers for a first project, that can then move on, and leverage their collaboration in other projects. In other countries it fosters collaborations with other organizations.
In some countries, it is a very grassroots competition, with low budget and big focus on getting a lot of photos. In other countries, there is a lot of effort (and funding) going into catching editors, setting up structures or overcoming the local challenges or making concepts better aware.
Aside from the fact that many of these outcomes are qualitative, which seems to get no attention in the (summaries of the) reports, but do get described in the reports of the individual contests, the local competitions are too diverse to try and catch as one group.
This is a fundamental flaw (pointed out before) in the approach. The work is appreciated of course, the numbers can be useful - the way they are presented is however very sensitive for major misunderstandings.
Besides this, there are several very specific flaws in the number crunching that have been pointed out, which are for example messing up the numbers on editor retention.
I hope that at some point WLM organizers can be given the tools, enthusiasm and support to create their own evaluation on a larger scale. That way I hope that some of the flaws can be avoided thanks to a better understanding of the collaborations, structures and the projects in general.
All in all it is good to have something 'to shoot at' but I would prefer that these reports are produces more in concert with the stakeholders involved and affected, rather than 'announced' and 'presented' to the wide community.
Best, Lodewijk (effeietsanders) member of the international coordinating team 2011-2013
On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 4:40 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Claudia, I share your concerns about reducing subtle things to a few numbers. Data can also be used in context-sensitive ways. So I'm wondering if there are any existing quantitative summaries that you find useful? Or qualitative descriptions that draw from more than one project?
Figuring out what ideas are repeatable, scalable, or awesome but one-time only, is complex. We probably need many different approaches, not one central approach, to understand and compare.
I'm glad to see data being shared, and again it might help to have many different datasets, to limit conceptual bias in what sort of data is relevant. On May 6, 2015 9:59 AM, "Claudia Garád" claudia.garad@wikimedia.at wrote:
Hi Sam,
I am sure there are figures and stories that the various orgs collect and publish. But they are spread across different wikis and websites and/or languages. E.g. many of the FDC orgs are looking into ways to demonstrate these more qualitative aspects of our work (e.g. by storytelling) in
their
reports. But these information does not get the same attention and publicity in
the
wider community as the evaluation done by the WMF. Many WMAT volunteers
and
I myself share the concerns expressed by Romaine that these
unidimensional
numbers and lack of context foster misconceptions or even prejudices especially in the parts of the community that are not closely involved in the work of the respective groups and orgs.
Best Claudia
Am 06.05.2015 um 13:40 schrieb Sam Klein:
Hi Romaine,
Are there other evals of WLM projects that capture the complexity you want?
Perhaps single-community evaluations done by the WLM organizers there?
Sam
On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 7:21 AM, Romaine Wiki romaine.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
In the past months the Wikimedia Foundation has been writing an evaluation about Wiki Loves Monuments. [1]
At such it is fine that WMF is writing an evaluation, however they fail in actual understanding Wiki Loves Monuments, and that is shown in the evaluation report.
As a result on the Wiki Loves Monuments mailing list a discussion grows about the various problems the evaluation has.
As the Learning and Evaluation team at the Wikimedia Foundation already had released the first Programs Reports for Wiki Loves Monuments, we are
now
put as fait accompli with this evaluation report.
Therefore I am writing here so that the rest of the worldwide Wikimedia community is informed that this is not going right.
Wiki Loves Monuments is not just a bunch of uploads done in September, the report is too simplified without actual understanding how the community is doing this project.
Romaine
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Evaluation/Evaluation_reports/2015/Wi...
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe