2nd Waray Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

The 2nd Waray Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was a day-long wiki editing event to improve the Waray Wikipedia and served as a follow-up to the the first very first edit-a-thon event in the Eastern Visayas that was conducted last November 2014. The actual edit-a-thon was held at the Legislative Building, Tacloban City, Leyte on July 25, 2015. The edit-a-thon was organized by Wikimedia Philippines (WMPH), the Sinirangan Bisaya Wikimedia Community and the National Press Club - Tacloban in cooperation of the Office of the Vice Mayor of Tacloban City. WMPH volunteers from Manila helped in assisting the participants on wiki editing. This event was solely funded by Wikimedia Philippines. Aside from the edit-a-thon, the project team had meetings with City Government of Catbalogan, Philippine Information Agency Region 8, and Leyte Normal University.

Activities and lessons learned

Activities

Pre-event preparations

On November 21, 2014, the Sinirangan Bisaya Wikimedia Community (SBWC) and Wikimedia Philippines (WMPH) visited University of the Philippines Visayas Tacloban College (UPVTC) and had a mini-forum with the officials and students of the university. During the discussions, WMPH proposed to have an edit-a-thon at UPVTC. The officials of UPVTC were open to idea and urged WMPH to set a date and submit a request letter.

On March 28, 2015, during a WMPH Board meeting, WMPH Founding Member Jojit Ballesteros presented a proposal for the edit-a-thon at UPVTC in behalf of the SBWC. The WMPH Board approved the proposal pending final confirmation of the dates of the edit-a-thon. Unfortunately, the proposed edit-a-thon at UPVTC did not push through and Michael Ong, the SBWC coordinator and Project Lead of the Waray Edit-a-thon, tried to find other alternatives.

In June 2015, Michael met with Max Daquilanea, one of the participants of the 1st Waray Edit-a-thon in Calbayog, and they discussed the possibilities of having an edit-a-thon in Tacloban. Max connected Michael to Eileen Nazareno-Ballesteros, President of the National Press Club – Tacloban (NPC-T). The engagement was fruitful and Eileen agreed that edit-a-thon will be co-organized by NPC-T.

In the first week of July 2015, a letter was sent to Tacloban Vice Mayor Jerry Yaokasin requesting the edit-a-thon to be held at the vicinity of the City Hall. After the approval of the Vice Mayor, the 2nd Waray Wikipedia Edit-a-thon was set on July 25, 2015 at the Legislative Building of Tacloban City.

Actual events

Wikipedia Edit-a-thon in Tacloban

On July 25, 2015, Jojit and Bel Ballesteros, the volunteers from Manila, flew to Tacloban City. They were greeted by Michael at the Tacloban Airport. They arrived at around 7:30 am.

At around 1:00 pm, the project team went straight to Legislative Building of the City Hall of Tacloban, the venue of the Wikipedia Edit-a-thon.

Here are the highlights of the event:

2:00 pm - Participants started to arrive

2:50 pm - Michael Glen Ong and Eileen Nazareno-Ballesteros delivered their opening remarks

2:55 pm - Jojit Ballesteros gave his lecture about the basics of Wikipedia editing

(Note: Snacks were given while Jojit delivered his talk. Bel and Michael assisted in answering questions from the participants.)

3:55 pm - Edit-a-thon started.

(Note: Meals for dinner were given at around 6:00 pm and participants continue to edit while dinner was served. There was no formal break due to lack of time. The whole project team assisted and guided participants during the edit-a-thon.)

7:30 pm - Edit-a-thon ended and Jojit began tallying the contributions of the participants

7:55 pm - Jojit announced the top editors.

The top two editors who got the most number of characters contributed won prizes and they are Chito de la Torre and Eileen Ballesteros. They won Wikipedia t-shirts.

8:00 pm - Event ended

List of participants of the Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Tacloban City

There are total of eighteen (18) attendees and only fourteen (14) people created or had a Wikimedia account. Only ten people out of the fourteen people with user accounts actually contributed content. Out of ten people who contributed content, one person contributed a few hours after the event and the organizing team treated his contributions as part of the event. One person continued to edit even days after the event.

Name	Username	Contributions in characters	Articles added and improved^[1]	Projects contributed^[2]	Notes
Chito dela Torre	Kachito725	21,797	3	war.wp
Eileen Nazareno-Ballesteros	Eileen Nazareno	4,642	2	war.wp
Lizbeth Ann Abella	Lizbethannabella	2,321	2	war.wp, en.wikivoyage
Joshua Sevilla	Joshuasevilla	1,681	8	war.wp, en.wiktionary	Continued to edit after the event and became active. He already have 231 edits across all Wikimedia projects as of August 21, 2015.
Clarisse May Obina	Mayobina	1,172	2	war.wp
Aljohn Larido	Larido aljohn	1,072	2	commons, war.wp
Ruth Abunda	Rrabunda	978	1	en.wp, war.wp	Contributed a non-article using an Android tablet
Vicky Arnaiz	Vickyarnaiz	353	1	war.wp
Leonides Ladan	Leo Ladan	109	3	war.wp
Aaron Almadro	Aaron Almadro	9	1	war.wp	Contributed a few hours after the event because he left after Jojit's talk and had to attend another appointment.
Kenneth Alvin Cinco	Hiyom	0
Maximilian Daquilanea	Maxdaquilanea	0			Created an account before the event.
Raul Ibañez	Fssviracgc72	0
Imelda Mabutay	Imelda magbutay	0
Amado Arjay Babon		0			Unable to create an account and contribute content. He was sharing laptop with Kevin Alvin.
Jemimah Candole		0			Unable to create an account and contribute content. They left together with Aaron after Jojit's talk.
Arizza Carbonilla		0
Daphne Daño		0

Notes

^{^} Essentially the total edit count. The project team did not document the articles contributed or improved.
^{^} Legend: en.wp = English Wikipedia; war.wp = Waray Wikipedia; en.wiktionary = English Wiktionary; commons = Wikimedia Commons;

This edit-a-thon was featured twice (July 18, 2015 and August 1, 2015) in Leyte-Samar Daily Express, a daily regional newspaper in Eastern Visayas, and in The Freeman, a daily newspaper published in Cebu. The actual The Freeman article can be found here: A Virtual Pool of Free Knowledge on Eastern Visayas.

Meeting with the Mayor of Catbalogan City

On July 27, 2015, as arranged by Max Daquilanea, the project team went to Catbalogan City, the capital of Samar province for a scheduled meeting with its Mayor, Honorable Stephany Uy-Tan. The main agenda of the meeting was for future partnerships with the city government. The City Administrator, Dennis Cosmod, was also present in the meeting. The project team opened up the idea of having an edit-a-thon at the City Hall grounds. As advised by the City Administrator, the project team should submit a formal request letter for holding the edit-a-thon in Catbalogan.

Meeting at the Philippine Information Agency Regional Office

After meeting Catbalogan Mayor Uy-Tan, the project team went back to Tacloban and visited the Region 8 Office of the Philippine Information Agency (PIA). Leonilo D. Lopido, one of the staff of PIA, is a member of the Sinirangan Bisaya Wikimedia Community. The project team discussed with Leonilo the possibility of the participation of PIA on future Wikimedia events in Eastern Visayas.

Presentation of plaque of appreciation to the Vice Mayor of Tacloban

On July 28, 2015, the project team presented a plaque of appreciation to the Honorable Vice Mayor Jerry Yaokasin at his office in the Legislative Building of Tacloban City. The team acknowledged the efforts of the Vice Mayor for providing a venue for the edit-a-thon.

Meeting at Leyte Normal University

The last place that the project team visited was the Leyte Normal University (LNU) where they met with Professor Voltaire Oyzon who is also a member of Sinirangan Bisaya Wikimedia Community. Voltaire is an expert on the Waray language and has written a dictionary. They talked about the likelihood of conducting an edit-a-thon at the university that will focus on entering definitions in Wiktionary. Voltaire encouraged the team to make a formal request and agreement for the proposed edit-a-thon at LNU.

Lessons learned

What worked well?

Setting up a dialogue first to an organization, government agency or university will help establish future collaborations. The meeting with various groups also helped in gaining ideas and information.
The edit-a-thon was attended mostly by journalists that became possible due to partnership with the National Press Club. Since most journalists are prolific and very interested in writing, the edit-a-thon was able to achieve its goal of producing at least 30,000 characters of content.
This series of events helped in establishing partnership with these organizations: National Press Club Tacloban, City Government of Tacloban, City Government of Catbalogan, Philippine Information Agency and Leyte Normal University.
The project lead was determined to continue the edit-a-thon despite challenges on getting a new venue. Because of his connections with some people, this project came into fruition.
It was good to have helpful partners that provided necessary facilities and participants.
One of the participants became active after the edit-a-thon and he edits not only the Waray Wikipedia but also other Wikimedia projects such as Wiktionary and the English Wikipedia.

What didn't work?

The project team was not able to get UPVTC as the venue for the edit-a-thon that caused the delay of finalizing the date of the edit-a-thon.
Not all attendees participated in the actual edit-a-thon.
There was a problem with the Internet connection because initially, there were only one Internet router that can only accommodate five connections. This was solved when the project lead went home to get additional routers and Vice Mayor also provided an Internet router.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

If we are going to plan a similar project, the project team suggests doing the edit-a-thon at a university or any venue that has a computer laboratory with reliable internet connection and multiple IP addresses. Advising the participants to bring laptops is not 100% guaranteed that everyone will bring their own laptops and this may limit the participants to only those who can bring their own laptops.

Learning patterns

Endorsement of two existing learning patterns

Connectivity issues - During the first part of the edit-a-thon, there were connectivity issues because of insufficient broadband routers. Fortunately, the project team and the Vice Mayor of Tacloban provided additional broadband routers.
Workshop size - The event attracted eighteen attendees but only fourteen participated in the event. This was a good thing because only two veteran Wikipedians present in the edit-a-thon. Thus, the ratio of participants per experienced Wikipedian was manageable.

Outcomes and impact

Outcomes

The main goal of this project is to increase contributions to the Waray-Waray Wikipedia, which includes creating and editing articles. Aside from writing articles in the Waray-Waray Wikipedia, the participants may also add content to other Wikimedia projects such as, but not limited to, uploading pictures to Wikimedia Commons and enhancing Waray-Waray-related articles in other language versions of Wikipedia.

The first goal is to have at least fifteen (15) participants attended the event. There were eighteen (18) persons who attended the event. Thus, this part of the goal was achieved although only fourteen (14) people who actually participated in the edit-a-thon. As for the number of characters contributed by the participants, it was achieved because participants contributed a total of 34,134 characters. The second goal is to have at least 30,000 characters contributed in the Waray Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

This is how the project team knew about the number of characters contributed: Jojit Ballesteros, the facilitator of the event, has taken note of the usernames of each user. After the actual edit-a-thon, he counted all of the characters of each user through the features of MediaWiki, the software behind Wikimedia online projects. He made use of the "global edit summary" and the "recent changes" features of each project that the participants have been editing.

Progress towards targets and goals

Project metrics

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
There should be 30,000 characters or equivalent to approximately 20 pages of printed text added in the Waray Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.	There are 34,134 characters added in various Wikimedia projects.	The participants are mostly journalists that helped achieved the goal.
There should be at least 15 participants attended the event.	Eighteen (18) participants attended the event excluding the project team.	The National Press Club - Tacloban helped in bringing in participants for the edit-a-thon.

Global Metrics

For more information, see Global Metrics.

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	0	All the participants were first time to be familiar with the wiki editing process except for Maximilian Daquilanea but the project team did not consider him active. There were two active Wikipedians present during the event but they are part of the organizing team.
2. # of new editors	10	Only ten people actually contributed content.
3. # of individuals involved	18	This excludes the project team. Including them will increase the numbers of individual involved to 21.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	1	One participant uploaded a picture in Wikimedia Commons.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	40	This figure is essentially the total edit count. The project team did not document the articles contributed or improved.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	approximately 34,134 bytes	This was tallied during the event. This does not include deleted content because the organizing team did not tally it during the event.

Aside from the eagerness of participants to continue editing after the edit-a-thon, they are also requesting to have similar activities in the future. In this regard, it can be said that they were motivated. There is also one person that the project team thinks was motivated because he continues to edit even days after the event.

Impact

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic priorities?

How did you increase participation in one or more Wikimedia projects?

The mere fact that all the participants are newbies, their edits during the event can be considered as an increase participation in Wikimedia projects.

How did you improve quality on one or more Wikimedia projects?

Because they are the native Waray speakers and some of them are literary experts, they are the ones who know how to improve the quality of the Waray-Waray-Waray Wikipedia. The literary experts have suggested better wordings of the articles.

How did you increase the reach (readership) of one or more Wikimedia projects?

The Waray language is around 3.1 million speakers, which is the 5^th most spoken language in the Philippines out of more than 100 languages spoken in the Philippines. The contributions of this edit-a-thon will potentially help distribute free knowledge in the Waray language and increase the reach of the Wikimedia movement to the Waray speaking people.

External link

Meetup page of Waray Wikipedia
Nazareno, Eileen (2015-08-05). "A Virtual Pool of Free Knowledge on Eastern Visayas". The Freeman. Archived from the original on 2015-08-05 – via The Philippine Star. - (A news article about the 2nd Waray Wikipedia Edit-a-thon.)