Here's a good preliminary recap, from @holden, of the Newspapers on Wikipedia project he started last May. But I strenuously object to even a hint of disappointment in the outcomes! Several reasons...I'll make my own short thread to outline them.
1. The hint of disappointment comes from the goal of doing 1,000 papers. But that goal was totally arbitrary! What funding this project had (which was highly significant, but also -- as a testament to the project's design -- tiny, in terms of the work produced) was proportional.
...That is, hitting only 25% of the goal means that our funder made only 25% of anticipated expenditures. It's entirely unlike most funded projects, in which "falling short of the goal" implies that a funder's money was wasted. That simply wasn't the case here.
2. This one may be more important! The fact that the initial goal was arbitrary, I think, resulted from the fact that *we had no way of knowing* what was possible, or reasonable to expect. The project is in pretty uncharted territory. So even if it wasn't explicit at the outset,
...an important outcome was *figuring out* what was possible in this realm & what approaches are most effective. Of course, this part won't be very visible (even to us) until we compile a good report. This is a side project for all of us; we see different parts of the elephant.
3. There is, of course, the stuff in @holden's thread: Specific examples of the work we *did* accomplish, that was explicitly in our goal. We wrote a whole bunch of new articles and improved a whole bunch more.
4. In doing that, we brought a bunch of Wikipedians into the mix - some brand new editors, and some who had dabbled, but benefited from a focused project to "get their sea legs." Having worked in this field for over a decade, I promise you, this is a major accomplishment.
5. Finally, partly because we lacked a strong commitment to a rigid project plan pre-negotiated with a funder, we were able to continually explore "what is the best use of our time in this area," both as individuals and as a group. We stayed true to the goal of writting articles,
... but we also worked on stuff we had not anticipated at all, but was clearly important. Like, as you pointed out, improving the @wikidata records related to our content; like creating lists of worthwhile source materials, state-by-state and nationwide.
...One thing I worked on was transcribing books like "History of Oregon Newspapers" and "History of American Journalism"; this will ease any future work in this area, whether by our project or by others. I also started a draft overview article, "Journalism in Oregon".
...And we haven't even mentioned PaceTrack, which (though not quite ready for primetime) promises to make projects like ours, but in all kinds of topic areas, easier to manage and assess in the future.
Overall, we have made tremendous strides in making sense of the project of covering American newspapers in Wikipedia and Wikimedia. Any next step we take will be easier due to the foundation we have built.
And as a side benefit, other content generation projects, AND other editor training projects, stand to benefit from our work. Whether or not we ourselves stick with this work, readers, editors, and project managers alike will benefit from our having done it.
