Dear Rachit,Nice to meet you and congratulations on the new job! Good to know that there is a movement communications team.Coming back to earlier conversations - you missed the whole point about community inclusion. Communication is a two-way street, right now it is a one-way road.I can understand if the WMF team responsible fr this campaign was clueless about the community presence and interest (or "bandwidth"), but that's not the case. There was an informal request to include the community, this mail thread also exists fr more than 14+ days and you can see my request to include the community. There seems an active attempt to exclude the community consultation even after multiple requests.Your answers to other questions are also super vague, as the campaign is over now - please try to be mre specific in the report at least. Mentioning the amount spent on campaigns is most important to evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign. NDA part can be omitted but share other details. I hope you agree that wmf staff and communities must be held to the same standards. Please include the total budget allocated for this particular campaign in the report.Last simple question/request :Will you make sure that communities/usergroups/affiliates are well informed in advance and that they are included in the planning and execution of the upcoming campaigns?Thanks--On Mon, 23 May 2022 at 3:51 PM, Rachit Sharma <rasharma@wikimedia.org> wrote:Dear Jayantilal and Tito,I hope all is well. Thank you for your questions and patience, I am stepping in on behalf of the team to address your inputs. These are based on inputs collated from different teams working on this test to provide a consolidated response.Firstly, for Jayantilal who I have not had the opportunity to connect with- I have joined the Foundation in the Movement Communications team with a focus on South Asia, I am based in New Delhi, India, and here is my Meta page if you would like to know more about me. Secondly, I write this email assuming good faith and I am sure this is the same spirit you have been writing with.Thirdly, and before we move to the points, I would like to reiterate that India is a key location for the Foundation and it is important for us to understand the tactics to engage our audiences here, especially the youth. Since I have joined, I have had multiple conversations with community members and a common emerging theme is to boost our outreach and awareness activities; and another on the power of engaging young people- who as we know constitute a large part of our tech-enabled audience and are knowledge seekers. Support on better communications was also a need identified in the last Affiliates survey.The learnings from this experiment (together with the previous one in South Africa) are aimed at just that- to help us find pathways to widen our reach, improve awareness and boost engagement- which I am sure is your objective as well.Moving on to your questions. Yes, we have metrics that we have developed that will help us understand the learnings (which, to reinforce, will be shared with the community and are for our collective use). These include Engagement numbers (comments, sentiments, engagement ratios, replies, and mentions), growth mapping of our social media engagement inIndia, traffic referral on Wikipedia, sentiment analysis based on the engagement we receive and more- all of these help us understand our audience and their engagement. They are specifically designed to aid us in campaigns going forward.
For this test, we looked at our objectives, target audience and selected the profiles based on their number of followers, engagement rate, topics of interest, resonance with our target audience, and region or language they represent. But most important was their alignment with our mission and values (we had direct conversations with each of them before we finalized their engagements).
Regarding your next question about future campaigns, I assume you are referring to initiatives where we are looking at achieving certain results. As we have in the past, we will continue to inform, engage and involve the communities in ways that suit each project while being mindful of community bandwidth to engage. We welcome any suggestions you may have on the same.The data collected from the current test will help us understand the ideal tactics of communication with Indian youth, and as mentioned before- will also be beneficial for the Indian communities. We will share our learnings from this test with the community so that they can make use while planning any potential outreach activities in the country for a similar target audience. This will be shared on Meta when it is ready.
As per the previous email, “our approach is focused on people and not projects- the test is of an audience and not a project.” This test uses links to Wikipedia and the content is based on the influencers target audience. We would also be putting out a content piece that highlights information about our projects and how all of them support the Free Knowledge Movement. This answer would satisfy your other question on language as well.
@Tito: The first email to the community with the test details was sent on 28/04/2022 and the test went live on 05/05/2022. The newspaper article came as a result of our press release posted on the Foundation website and distributed to Indian media on 06/05/2022. (have provided links for your reference and verification).
On community consultation and as stated in the emails before, we remain mindful of using the community bandwidth while working on any project. Since this is not a long-term campaign, but a small three-week test on Instagram, we did not host any formal large-scale community consultation.But, as a part of our plan, post the completion of the test, we will be hosting a conversation to present our findings for both the South Africa and India tests. As an ideal place to have an open discussion on some collective next steps, I would be delighted if you both could attend the call so we could continue the conversation there.
On the budget, we are contractually obligated to follow the norms of a signed NDA. This is the only question we will not be able to answer, but I hope you appreciate and are satisfied with the answers to the other points.Finally, @Jayantilal- It would be great if you and I could have a conversation about your experience with the movement. The same way I often talk to Tito!Have a great week ahead and stay healthy!Best,RachitOn Sat, May 14, 2022 at 6:31 PM Tito Dutta <trulytito@gmail.com> wrote:Thanks a lot for the response.Indeed the questions are not answered. In addition to the questions asked and numbered above by Jayantilal sir, these were also asked,5. Is it going to be an English-Wikipedia campaign?6. If Indian language Wikipedias are included, what is the methodology?7. Where was community consultation? (links requested)8. What is the starting date? Newspapers have reported more than a week ago that it started https://theprint.in/ani-press-releases/wikimedia-foundation-launches-knowwithwiki-campaign-to-promote-access-to-and-sharing-of-free-knowledge/945652/Most definitely they were informed before that. So, things are apparently pre-decided.Thanks for the consideration.Stay safe,On Sat, 14 May 2022, 17:54 Jayantilal Kothari, <jayantilalkkd@gmail.com> wrote:Thank you so much for taking out time to explain, you have skipped most of my questions though.Your success is important for the community and movement will benefit from successful campaigns. Community is here to help and support if you are open to it.Let's go-to basics first (common sense);You yourself have pointed out that Wikipedia readership in India is high (ranked #4 as per your initial e-mail). Same referenced study shows Wikipedia and Youtube have almost the same popularity (31% know Wikipedia and 33% know Youtube - 25 to 34 age).I dont see any Wikipedia vs Instagram market research study by WMF. I do see Youtube vs Wikipedia and it makes sense to use Youtube for promotion because it is easy to do the same study and then compare results.Wikipedia are more popular and most visited site than Instagram (as per Semrush March 2022 report). Wikipedia @ number 6 whereas Instagram is @ number 12.On one hand, you say Wikipedia is most visited site and then you say it is not popular amongst youth and then you choose to use even less popular platform than Wikipedia to promote Wikipedia. The basic conclusion of all surveys says that people without the internet don't know much about Wikipedia and you have chosen an internet-based platform to educate people who don't have internet!It is quite ironic that WMF runs 'Wikipedia might die without donation' appeals in India and then decides to spend donor money on instagramers.Can we please expect some accountability and transparency here?1. How are you going to measure the impact of this campaign? Tangible outcome?2. How much money is spent on this?3. Methodology behind selecting Instagrammers and overall average budget per reel?4. How do you plan to involve wider communities in this as well as future campaigns?I have numbered the questions so it might help you to answer them in chronological order.Thanks--On Thu, 12 May 2022 at 7:14 PM, Khanyi Mpumlwana <kmpumlwana@wikimedia.org> wrote:Hi Jayantilal,
Thank you so much for your feedback and questions. I am sharing my thoughts below:
At the outset I wanted to state, on behalf of everyone at Wikimedia, that we appreciate the efforts and dedication of the entire community to promote and deliver Free Knowledge for everyone. Additionally, keeping our communities in mind, we did send out the overall test plan/objectives to the list ahead of the test going live- this email contains relevant information and links.
As mentioned before, #KnowWithWiki is a short term test campaign that is focused on engaging current and prospective young India readers while leveraging the reach of digital influencers.
I would like to stress that our campaign content is focused on readership with the youth audience and not on acquiring editors; and the influencer posts are focused on furthering their audience’s awareness levels of Wikipedia while leveraging on topics that interest them, such as cricket, body positivity, endometriosis etc. Hence, through the campaign we are not, in any manner, promoting editing.
Our purpose and aim is simple: to learn- while engaging young internet users and unaware Wikipedia readers to increase affinity and perceived value which, as you would agree, is key to the sustained growth of Wikipedia and all our projects.
On your point about community bandwidth, we remain mindful of using this for the short term test. Since this is not a long-term campaign but a three week test campaign focused on a particular reader group- the youth; and concentrated on one visual platform, Instagram- we hope to learn and share the learnings and outcomes of the test with the whole movement. We will continue to monitor reverted edits and possible vandalism.
More importantly, we feel there will be a lot to learn from the outcomes (as the previous email mentioned we did another test in South Africa) for our collective work in the future. This would be a moment for us to come together and discuss the outcomes (both the pro’s and con’s) of the test which would be current, relevant and future-focused.
As always, we thank you for your time and feedback, over and above all the work you do within the movement. Please feel free to get in touch if you have any additional questions/suggestions.
Best,
Khanyi
On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 1:15 PM Jayantilal Kothari <jayantilalkkd@gmail.com> wrote:Hi,Was there any community consultation? This has already created vandalism incidents on localWikis. If an Instagram influencer with millions of followers talks about Wikipedia, his 10% of followers start editing and 1% vandalizing pages then it becomes a huge burden on the community to clean up the paid mess. Indic communities are relatively smaller and often we see volunteer burnout. This is a recurring theme from the WMF where the burden of cleaning and maintenance is transferred to the community without consent. Wikipedia has brand value because the volunteer community keeps it alive, WMF employees take the community for granted and in the end, it harms the overall "Wikipedia"" brand.Please share any prior documentation involved in the planning and execution of this campaign (meta links, community discussions details, allocated budgets etc).Thanks--On Thu, 5 May 2022 at 4:08 PM, Khanyi Mpumlwana <kmpumlwana@wikimedia.org> wrote:Hi Tito,
Thank you so much for your feedback and questions, and thanks for your patience with our response- many of the team members, including myself, were out on leave.
I am sharing my thoughts in response to your points below:
One of the most important things to remember about this test is that it is designed to be just that- a test. While we know (consciously so) that this doesn't cover all possible grounds, it is designed to give us engagement data that will help us design our awareness tactics in the future.
For India, our focus is on engaging the youth with Wikipedia because
They are an important stakeholder in the growth and development of the Free Knowledge movement- hence our approach is focused on people and not projects- the test is of an audience and not a project.
We know from our own research (mentioned in the previous email) that in India, when it comes to the 18-24 age group only 26% know about Wikipedia.
While we will leverage Wikipedia’s identity and presence for our content, it is the audience we are hoping to engage and learn from. We asked the influencers about the topics the GenZ audience engage with; and the topics they shared with us range from cricket, to body positivity, endometriosis – and even some odd ones like the common housefly. This served as the basis of our test: showing young people that our encyclopedic content can also be useful in the everyday things they think about and engage each other in.
A very important aspect of this test is that it might not go as planned! This means our tactics, hypothesis or plan might not give us a lot of traction with the youth but that is also a win for us- we learn from both our success and failures.
Also, we will be working towards having our wider press outreach aim to highlight other Wikimedia projects and stories of Indian volunteers whose stories can shine as great contributions to our knowledge movement - #KnowWithWiki
We know about the wonderful work and effort put in by the community to build and strengthen our projects especially the work of the CIS-A2K team in providing robust support to the growth and development of our community in India. This commitment and spirit has led to over 65k active Indian editors and India being at the top of our average page views.
As you would have seen from the foundation’s draft annual plan, this coming year we are putting a focus on allocating our support and resources to other Wikimedia projects such as Wikimedia Commons.
Through #KnowWithWiki we aim to learn how, what and when to engage Indian youth who, as we know, are important stakeholders; not only for the Foundation but also for the community- the movement at large. This would help us deliver strong, clear, and impactful messages /communications in India, in the future.
Thank you for sharing the links, this is indeed some great work and learning for us, your input along with the learning from #KnowWithWiki will help us attempt to move in the right direction.
In the end, I want to thank you for your time and input. We will see the test go live soon and hope you take a look and engage with the same.
Hope I have been able to address at least some of the very pertinent points you raised.
Stay safe!
Khanyi
On Sat, Apr 30, 2022 at 12:23 PM Tito Dutta <trulytito@gmail.com> wrote:_______________________________________________Greetings,Thanks for sharing the program idea in detail. I am sharing my initial thoughts for your kind attention.
- The project appears to be a Wikipedia-centric one or possibly a Wikipedia-only campaign. It is not clear if this will be an English Wikipedia campaign, or Indian-language Wikipedia projects will be highlighted. If so, what will be the approach, methodology, and ratio?
- The Wikipedia-centric approach is sometimes problematic for various reasons. Over the years a lot of efforts have been made into strengthening other Wikimedia projects and communities in India through different initiatives such as a series of Wikidata workshops, Wikisource training, Wikimedia Commons photowalks outreach, Wiki Loves initiatives etc. This not only resulted in more active participation but brought large amount of high quality content as well. An effort that somehow highlights Wikipedia as the only knowledge source to "know your world better", possibly takes us back to square one.
- Continuing from #2, we have rich knowledge repositories on different projects. I'll give a couple of random examples. Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Azad_Hind_(newspaper) Wikisource: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Constitution_of_India_(Original_Calligraphed_and_Illuminated_Version) Similarly to know on many topics such as monuments, geography, census, railway, arts and culture etc possibly we have good content on other Wikimedia projects to refer to. So, an alternative mission-aligned approach might be "KnowWithFreeKnowledge" highlighting "free knowledge in general", rather than "KnowWithWikipedia".
Thank you for your kind attention.Stay safe,User:Titoduttaশুক্র, ২৯ এপ্রিল, ২০২২ তারিখে ১১:৫৫ PM টায় তারিখে Khanyi Mpumlwana <kmpumlwana@wikimedia.org> লিখেছেন:_______________________________________________Dear all,
Hope you are well and safe.
I am thrilled to reach out to you on behalf of the Communications Department at The Wikimedia Foundation to share information about a new short-term test campaign through which we hope to learn more about engaging Indian digital audiences, primarily the youth.
Emerging from the Medium Term Plan, this test is aimed at strengthening the awareness levels of Wikimedia, our free knowledge mission, and growing affinity with our readers in India, especially the youth.
Firstly, let us introduce ourselves- The Communications Department.
Communications is a Wikimedia Foundation department. The Communications Department performs a variety of functions for the Foundation, such as building awareness of Wikimedia and its projects, maintaining relationships with the media, producing content for the Wikimedia Foundation website, managing the community blog Diff and Wikimedia social media platforms, facilitating communications with Wikimedia communities, informing research into emerging global audiences, developing creative materials, and coordinating campaigns to engage new audiences for Wikimedia projects like Project Rewrite and Wiki Unseen.
What is #KnowWithWiki all about?
This is a truly integrated effort where members of various teams within the Foundation came together to develop a plan to engage young readers in India in a manner that demonstrates the value of Wikipedia, highlighting the role it already plays in helping them know their world better and promoting free knowledge.
The problem: Wikipedia readership in India is high. It is currently ranked #4 in website traffic in India with an average of approximately 2 pages a visit. Unfortunately, according to a market research carried out by the Wikimedia Foundation in 2020, only 31% of the Indian internet users have heard of Wikipedia, and strikingly, only 26% of internet users aged 18-24 years were aware of Wikipedia. The gap between usage and awareness indicates that there is a large number of young people who use Wikipedia and are not aware of us and therefore have no affinity or value for it.
Why India?
Engaging young internet users and unaware Wikipedia readers to increase affinity and perceived value is key to the sustained growth of Wikipedia and all our projects. The Indian youth may be viewing or using our content through different platforms e.g. seeing Wikipedia content through search engines, but there is a lack of awareness among this audience that this information comes from the efforts of our diverse volunteer community that spends time and effort in curating relevant and reliable information on Wikipedia and its sister projects.
We wish to engage with this very audience by providing them more relatable examples on how Wikipedia plays/can play an active role in their efforts to gather fact-based, researched information around worldly topics. Furthermore, by capturing and studying data emerging from this test, we will be able to learn, assess and improve our future engagements in the country
Our Plan
Starting May 2022, we will be engaging Indian influencers under a campaign #KnowWithWiki & “Know Your World Better”
For this activity, we are collaborating with selected popular GenZ influencers to showcase the relevance of Wikipedia among the younger Indian audience in their daily lives. The primary platform of activation will be on Instagram, which is a platform that has the highest number of users from India, and has emerged as the most preferred social media platform2 among Indian youth according to a 2020 study3. Instagram influencers will highlight use of Wikipedia in their posts on topical content and social awareness topics.
These influencers will release their own content on their Instagram handles covering topics relevant to our target audience, while seeding references of Wikipedia and the vast knowledge available on the online encyclopedia.
This will be complemented with our own social media channels sharing content around the experiment, focussed towards the Indian audience. The general public would be encouraged to follow and participate in the campaign online using #KnowWithWiki.
Why are we doing this?
This activity follows the the successful completion of a similar activity in South Africa- #WikipediabyUs, where we collaborated with South Africa’s young creative community by giving them a platform to create informative content based on Wikipedia articles. #WikipediabyUs, demonstrated young creatives using Wikipedia to expand a topic of interest with their audiences.
It is a part of our sustained endeavor to make deeper strides in learning from different contexts on improving understanding of the Wikimedia movement and its projects. We want to raise awareness about how Wikipedia and the free knowledge movement is present in the daily lives of Indian audiences.
This test would also enable us to tackle some of the misconceptions around Wikipedia in the Indian digital space, via explaining how the Wikipedia volunteer community creates and improves content on the platform based on up-to-date, relevant and verifiable sources.
By engaging the 18-24 age group we aim to-
GET GenZ adults aged 18-24
WHO read Wikipedia
TO see Wikipedia as relevant
BY showing them how often they call on us to know and do more
How can you get involved?
You can create your own content on social media to describe how you use Wikipedia in your everyday life to know your world and the things that interest you better. Make sure you use #KnowWithWiki and #Wikipedia to add to the campaign impact!
If you would like to know more and get involved or share any suggestions, please reach out to me by email.
Thank you warmly for your time and interest.
On behalf of the Core Team- Khanyi, Mathoto, Olga, Rachit and Vidhu.
--
Khanyi Mpumlwana (they/she)
Creative Director
*Please excuse any brevity or typos, messages are often sent in a hurry
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To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikimediaindia-l.lists.wikimedia.org/_______________________________________________Regards,JayantilalSent from my iPhone
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