Project grants/The West Country Challenge

The West Country Challenge
a contest/editathon for August 8-28 2016....

Basic information Area covered by the contest Project Title (If applicable) Prize fund for an article contest for the West Country for August 2016 Proposed by Dr. Blofeld. Are you currently a member of Wikimedia UK? Yes Project description Briefly describe the issue or problem that motivates this application. What needs are you meeting? The number of quality articles wikipedia has for the West Country as most other places is relatively low, despite the valiant efforts of editors like Rodw. There's many important stale articles and stubs needing improving. Currently 21 people have signed up for this contest/editathon, so hopwfully we'll some improvements. The idea is to hold a 21 day contest, with three days allocated to each county: Day 1-3: Bristol Day 4-6: Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly Day 7-9: Devon Day 10-12: Dorset Day 13-15: Gloucestershire Day 16-18: Somerset Day 19-21: Wiltshire The contest/editathon will be run from August 8-28. Describe project activities. What will you use the funding to do? Requesting £250 in Amazon vouchers to cover the giving out of the prizes for the contest. Roughly £30 for each county, so £10 available to win each day for whoever does the most work. £210 in total for that and then £40 either for myself for sacrifricing part of my summer to constantly monitor it ;-) or as an end prize for somebody. For this, unlike Dragon, it will be a simple points system or daily article count. The bulk of the work on this should be aimed at reducing our number of stubs, but I'm hoping to see some of the core articles given improved too. As it's only a three day contest for each county, the focus of this won't be good articles, but general raw content improvement. Describe your plan for evaluating this project. How will you measure success? What types of things will you measure (e.g. content, participants)? At the end of each set of three days I will assess the articles and pick the county winner. The success of the project will be assessed by the number of articles which improve during the three, and by the number of participants who produce articles for this area of England who might otherwise not bother. Identify key people involved in this project. How will or could the wider Wikimedian community be involved? Dr. Blofeld will be given the responsibility for running and judging it, though this is very much a project run with Rodw, but who I gather will be editing himself. If applicable, identify partnering organisations for this project (not essential) NA at present What targets have you set? What will you measure? Ideally to improve the general standards of stale old articles and reduce our number of stubs. What contribution will the project make to our strategic goals? As above, improving the quality and bulk of content all around, a central mission of Wikimedia. Who will be recording/measuring the project metrics, and writing up a project report? I will judge the contest and survey progress but I may need assistance from WMUK members to reduce metrics and a report What staff support is being requested? None, only a pat on the back. ;-) How can you get other volunteers involved? What roles could they have? We might be able to get some assistance in publicizing it through social media. I doubt it would make much difference in all honesty though, it made no difference to the partipcation in the Dragon contest. What meeting or other space is needed? NA Are other resources needed (such as computers, books, camera equipment, food, contacts, infrastructure)? How will they be sourced? No, just the prize fund for this, though it's possible an editor or two might apply for a small grant for a few books, I'll put up a notice on that. I doubt many would be requesting any though. If any partner organisations have been identified, have they been contacted and are they committed? NA Does this project require more extensive funding? What would any WMUK funds be used for? Nothing other than the prizes and possible books which may be requested for use by editors. Are external funds needed that we can apply for? If so where will they be sought? NA Are there any resources that you can contribute? Such as equipment. I will contribute my own article assessing expertise and experience in running the contest but can't see how I could help with books or equipment. Results The Challenge was a considerable success, with 514 article improvements, some 120 odd core aritcle improvements and nearly 20 GAs. Thankyou for your support, it's made a big difference. With Awaken the Dragon and that you can see what we've achieved to date at [1], part of an overall goal to reach 10,000 article improvements for the UK. So far including the Dragon stubs we have about 1800 articles in just a few months!