Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2014-2015 round1/Amical Wikimedia/Proposal form

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Please do not edit this proposal form directly. If changes are needed, applicants can request them on the proposal form's discussion page. Thank you!

Proposal by Amical Wikimedia to support its annual plan with ~US$108,000.

Program focus: Community, GLAM, Education, Community-suggested (includes photo contests)

On 2015 we want to keep a plan focused on content and outcomes on the Wikimedia projects, and builds on past successes, by keeping our community-driven model marked by our 2014-2018 strategic plan. Our main focus of partnerships will be Educational Sector and GLAM (Specially Libraries), because we have remarked that it is the kind of partnership that is mid-term sustainable and give both sides best return of our efforts investment (new editors, specific quality content, territorial reach and increase of readers)

Amical wants to be the bridge between those cultural and social agents and Wikimedia projects by empowering key members of both communities with technical and programmatic skills. We believe in autosustenaible projects, so we help people to become autonomous and regular contributors, so they are able not only to collaborate with Wikimedia projects but also to start their own activities to engage new people. The projects, then, become viral, being replicated by different organizations with shared principles, so they are more efficient and require less Amical's resources.

We also try to keep very close to the active community of Wikimedia projects editors, so we regularly send projects calls and transform community's most voted proposals into our programmatic activities. This way we ensure good levels of volunteer participation, not only with Amical member but with the whole Catalan community of editors.

Your proposed increase/decrease

You received 74000 Euro for 2014 and now ask for 82100. This is an increase of 11%. In the propsal you state a decrease of 15%. Is this that you will get muche less in other revenues and why so in that case. Would it not be more approriate to also decrease funding from FDC if your other revenues decrease?Anders Wennersten (talk) 09:01, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Last year it was our first FDC proposal ever and we applyed for 99650€. During 2014 we have learnt how much money we need regarding our size, community and austere philosophy. Now we better know what, where and how we can better invest our efforts and which is the related budget we need to achieve our goals. Our non-FDC sources plans remain stable from 2014 to 2015 (12000€). So this is in fact a decrease of 15% of the total budget we asked last year (82100€ compared to 99650€), where NonFDC funds will represent a higher % on our total budget. We are glad to answer further questions regarding that topic.--Kippelboy (talk) 07:56, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Now you really get med confused. Are you using what you asked for in FDC funding a year ago as a comparison figure and not what you received?Anders Wennersten (talk) 11:18, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

FYI: Details on budget (2014 and 2015) are explained in more detail in further questions posted in this same page. Hope it clarifys it a little bit more. Sorry if we missexplained in our previous message. --Kippelboy (talk) 21:51, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

WMCAT questions from FDC staff

Thank you for submitting this proposal for an Annual Plan Grant to the FDC! As the FDC staff, we have enjoyed reviewing it and learning more about the work you’ve done to date, and the plans you have for 2015. At this time, we’d like to know a bit more. Some questions have come up as part of our review, and we have a few requests for clarifications. Please let us know if any of this is unclear.

Thank you for your hard work! KLove (WMF) (talk) 00:12, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Confirming your financial information

Based on your budgeted spend for 2014 your proposed growth rate is 15.00% and based on your projected spend for 2014 your growth rate is 42.94% because you expect to spend 80.46% of the total budgeted. WMCAT is requesting a 10.95% increase in FDC funding. This analysis is based on the following numbers:

• Budgeted spend 2014: €86,000
• Projected spend 2014: €69,192
• FDC funds granted 2014: €74,000
• Proposed budget 2015: €98,901
• FDC funds requested 2015: €82,101

Please clarify some inconsistencies in your financial information. Please edit these tables and correct them using strikethrough.

• In Table 3, you list projected amounts that are lower than the year-to-date amounts listed. The projected amounts should be the total you believe you will spend by the end of the year, while the year-to-date amounts are the amounts you have already spent by 1 September.
• Table 5 should include your total revenues, including your anticipated Annual Plan Grant from the FDC. Please update it to include your APG.
• In Table 6 you indicate you are adding 15,000 EUR to your reserves from non-FDC funding, but in Table 5 you only list 12,000 EUR of external funding altogether! It seems like there might be a mistake in one of these tables.
• We are not sure we are understanding your reserves correctly. Given that you project to have €6,773 in your reserves by the end of this year and you and no reserves in the year prior, how did you build up the €6,773 in your reserves during the current year?
• The information in your budget about how staff time is allocated does not match the information in the proposal, which indicates 50% of staff time spent on education and 50% on GLAM. Which is correct?

Hi Kate,

I just reviewed the numbers, and they seem ok. About the inconsistencies you mentioned:

• That was probably misread by our treasurer. Obviously the second number is to be added to the first (is not the cumulative). May I fix it?
• OK, I added the requested APG grant to table 5.
• About operating reserves: this year we received the National Prize of Culture, which came together with a 15.000 EUR prize. Our intention is to add it to our operational reserves. I will ask our treasurer to explain this better.
• It is correct. We decided to split it between 50% GLAM and 50% education just for clarity.--Arnaugir (talk) 16:09, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Kate, Sorry, I misinterpreted the table. Current operating reserves, € 6,772.71 correspond to surplus in 2013, and approved by the Assembly decision to allocate it to the establishment of our first operating reserves. We anticipate allocating the prize awarded for Amical € 15.000,00 increase existing reserves at the end of 2014 to reach a total of € 21,772.71, which will ensure our current commitments for 3 months. --Josepnogue (talk) 16:26, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Kate, I changed Table 3, updating amount of expenses projected final. Table 5 operating reserves, I think now I have interpreted correctly. Table 8, I corrected the amount to program expenses, and total expenses. Sorry the confusion.--Josepnogue (talk) 17:49, 16 October 2014 (UTC) The amount projected expenses 2014 is 78.305,77 € currently --Josepnogue (talk) 15:38, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Josep and Arnau. Thank you for these corrections and clarifications.

1. Please make all corrections to the proposal using strikethrough.
2. I think I am understanding that your detailed budget reflects the accurate allocation of your staff time. If that's the case, would you please update the information in your proposal so that it matches the information in your detailed budget? Having different information in different places can be confusing, so it would be good to use the more accurate numbers.
3. We see that you made some corrections to Table 3, but the projected amounts are still lower than the total listed. We think you are understanding correctly, Arnau, that the projected amounts should be the total amounts you place to receive or spend by the end of the year (including the actual amounts plus anything you will spend in the remainder of the year added to those amounts). Please do go ahead and correct the table using strikethrough.
4. Table 6 is now missing a total. According to the information in the rest of the table this should probably be "21,772.71 EUR" or the total amount of reserves you plan to have in 2015. Would you please add the total amount to the last line of Table 6? Other than that, the changes to Table 6 look consistent with what you've explained here.

Thank you! Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk 17:23, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Questions

1. Your annual plan links to this document, which does not appear to be complete. Would you please link to your complete annual plan here, if it is available?

   I've updated the document (I forgot before). We one have defined the main lines of actuation, during next month we will define exactly which projects will go on (we have the wikimeeting -Viquitrobada- on november). In fact, it is almost ready, but we have to have it approved by Amical's members.--Arnaugir (talk) 11:40, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

2. You explain that your education program “will increase number of active editors and content, because students will be asked to improve or create articles and upload media to fulfill the course requirements.” Do you plan on tracking the content created through this program and the number of active editors gained? If so, have you set targets in these areas?

   Everything will be available on the education wiki project page (1 page per class). You can check them here It depends on what the teacher needs are we go deeper or not on tracking stats beside number of students and articles improved, for example this one was specially cared in %of references added. We adapt our project to teacher's needs and since the project is open we can track particular stats whenever are needed (monthly reports, project reports, teacher reports...)--Kippelboy (talk) 05:05, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

3. How are you measuring the ways your community support programs are increasing volunteer motivation, or successfully encouraging volunteers to remain active? Have you set targets in these areas?

   By number of Amical members or Wikipedia editors active in every activity/program. Most activities have a project public wiki page where we track registered people to the event/project/online contest so is easy for us to do the monthly sum. Our target is that 50% of most active editors on ca.wiki projects (including sisters) are/become Amical members and that 50% of total Amical official members actively participate in -at least- 1 IRL activity per year. This is our way to facilitate cohesion among community.--Kippelboy (talk) 05:05, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

4. Do you plan to track content contributed or editors engaged through your GLAM work? If so, what are your targets?

   These stats are available in project pages and depend on the project are needed or not. For example, when working with a public library is much more important for us the mid-term commitment from the public librarian, that will become in a mix of editing and organizing wiki activities that the number of edits itself. As everything is open on wiki, whenever we have one particular need to track we just do the stat but we don't track by deffault everything because it would be too time consuming. On the other side, when we do an edita-thon or a particular one week contest or similar project, we track these metrics you mention and we publicly add it to the project page so everyone can be proud of the results and information is useful for historical records. On mid-term GLAM collaborations we also track numbers of impressions, uploaded images, and other data, creating historical series that facilitate us convincing the GLAM how our collaboration is affecting their public outreach. --Kippelboy (talk) 05:05, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

5. You share that Amical have a desire to be more involved in the technical community. Where has this desire come from, and what will this technical group do in the coming year?

   We have a powerful but a bit scattered technical group, they already expressed the desire to become more organized and community percieves it as a common need, so they can serve better the Catalan projects and the global community. We are having a specific meeting in November to fix together the goals fot the group but we plan to attend Hackathon and learn there best practices as first step--Barcelona (talk) 21:56, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

6. How do you believe online contests increase the number of readers?

   We advertise both the contest and the winners trough social media and we have realised an increase of number of visits of selected articles of the conest. Editors who participate also act as spreaders.--Barcelona (talk) 21:56, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

7. You mention that you will have “5 Museums or GLAMs using the Wikipedian in Residence model”. Would you please describe the role Amical will play in Wikipedian in Residence programs within GLAM institutions?

   Amical behaves as match maker on the Wikipedian in Residence model. Whenever A) A commited wikimedian wants to become a WIR in XYZ GLAM or B) A GLAM whants to "have" a WiR, Amical facilitates the search for the perfect matchmaking, assists the strategy meetings and facilitates the project kick off. Then we do regular meetings with both the GLAM and the Wikimedian and frequently we afford their travel/perdiems expenses if needed. WiR is the model we are planing for Museums collaborations next year, as we have seen that results are better whenever a mid-term project is done than "one-night-shot" kind of events (an isolate edit-a-thon which is not connected to a wider project, e.g.)--Kippelboy (talk) 05:05, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for answering these questions. Warm regards, KLove (WMF) (talk) 00:12, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Gender gap and diversity

Hello, and thank you for the work that you all do for the wikimedia movement. I enjoyed reading about your previous and proposed projects.

I see that in your proposal you mention that your work with GLAMs, particular librarians, and Educational institutions will most likely bring more women into your community. I agree, and think that this approach as a strategy for bridging the gender gap is good.

It would be helpful if you could state your projections about the type of results that you expect to see. Perhaps more biographies about women? Or more articles contain health information pertaining to women? Or perhaps more women will become administrators? Or more women editors state they are satisfied with editing? What is the end result that you want to have from a more gender balanced community? FloNight (talk) 21:47, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I hope we achieve them all! Women are more likely to write about female world to counterfight gender bias and we are planning some specific topics related to anniversaries or current projets where the goal will be precisely to write women biographies. On those sectors as libraries where women are a majority, it surely will increase the amount of female editors since in all our projects there is an edition time. Perhaps they become core users or admins, that cannot be predicted, but we will make all we can to make them feel comfortable inside wikis. When we have got a more balanced community we gain to aspects: less potential bias in articles and a more realistic mirror from outside world, where women and men are almost half of humanity each one.--Barcelona (talk) 08:33, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Amical?

Maybe I am not reading the proposal well, but I do not find an explanation about what Amical actually is. Somewhere in this proposal should be at least an explanation or a link to Amical Wikimedia. Maybe there is one, but I did not find it. --Gereon K. (talk) 15:33, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for mentioning it! We added some internal links to clarify it. :-)--Kippelboy (talk) 13:31, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Relevance and proportionality

While I do not dispute the benefit of keeping information about a language and/or culture alife I do question the need and even benefit of bringing all the knowledge of the world to one language. I think it is more beneficial to keep the language alife but bring external knowledge to the culture by using some lingua franca - that being most certainly English. I even think it is harmfull to keep some kind of segregation anlife. And while my opinion is formed with regards to German being German and questioning very much those who have the same goals for Germany I think my critique is even more appropriate for less frequently spoken languages. And while individuals might disaggree and wholeheartly invest their time and money I would prefer community money to be used on the main content (being the English Wikipedia) and accessibility (being access to the Wikipedia and development of the tools necessary) as well as the ongoing operations necessary to run the foundation.

Erik Itter (talk) 20:30, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Erik, first of all, thanks for your comments. Although this is a topic long debated on Wikipedia, I would like to bring up one of movements most known quote: Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. Jimmy Wales

We particullary appreciate the in their own language part. What is a less spoken language for you? Catalan is -compared to German- and German it is -compared to Chinese-. So If I understand properly, your proposal is that all world's donor's money (coming from thousands of donors from dozens of countries from people who probably don't speak english) is focused on English Wikipedia? I'm afraid that We don't share same point of view regarding wikimedia world. Multilingualism is precisely one of the strenghts of the project. Best! :-) --Kippelboy (talk) 10:00, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

I understad that everbody wish some support for their culture, like their own wikipedia, but I consider that amount of money is a lot too much. It still would be wise to give some money for every lang-based wiki. I still would like that people would make some pages for free. Maybe people are too demanding for new articles?

I read some notes about programming and so on. Thouse are supposed to support all wikis and may be hard to make by voluntary base, because those needs upkeeping. (Some bad articles do not harm others, but bad code could.) Also big Open Source projects have some paid workers, like Linus for Linux. Ilari Halminen (talk)

--Damicomat (talk) 00:17, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Focalizzare la nostra attenzione sulla Wikipedia inglese sarebbe un errore. Sicuramente è la più importante ma è sicuramente sbagliato il ragionamento di Erik. Come dice giustamente Kippelboy il multilinguismo è precisamente uno dei fini e dei pregi del progetto wikipedia. Rendere cioè accessibile a tutti la conoscenza senza però che questa sia soggetta alla comprensione o meno di una lingua particolare. Secondo me questo punto di forza del progetto deve essere difeso ad ogni costo. Niente favoritismi. Tra l'altro il progetto di Amical sembra molto interessante e consiglierei di valutarlo attentamente. Potenziare il network sulla lengua de Catalunya sembra uno scopo molto vicino agli ideali che porta avanti wikipedia. Soprattutto nei confronti di una lingua, tra virgolette, "minore", che deve essere difesa e potenziata, non tanto in un ottica anti-internazionalista ma in ottica di un patrimonio storico-culturale-linguistico che deve essere liberamente consultabile sia da chi vive nelle zone dove si parla, ma anche da chi vive dall'altro lato del mondo. Invertendo "to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language." c'è anche la necessità, credo abbastanza importante, di rendere accessibile conoscenza a chi la cerca, in più idiomi possibili, aumentando la qualità dell'informazione facendola valutare da più punti di vista e rendendo "libero" chi consulta l'enciclopedia di farsi un'idea più completa. Quindi aiutare le lingue con meno parlanti dovrebbe essere una priorità secondo me. In bocca al lupo per il progetto

Amical Wikipedia [AutheITA]

Secondo me , potete usare i soldi:

-Per Comprare nuovi Server, piu nuovi e piu potenti. -Fare la manuntenzione dei Server che ci sono adesso., perche se si verifica qualche episodio e meglio non rischiare! -Con questi soldi si potrebbe aumentare i MB a GB. -Il problema c'e con "Wikipedia Cina", qui non sarebbe meglio parlare con il governo e non censurare Wikipedia, visto che la magior parte dei siti Cinesi sono sorvegliati o sono censurati. -Io direi di mettere anche degli SPOT su Wikipedia , pero che non siano INAVSIVI, quando si legge o quando apri la pagina pricipale di Wikipedia, senno' meglio lasciare stare.

Metrics

Hello, Amical Wikimedia. Thank you for submitting this grant proposal. I am encouraged to see that your program has an emphasis on empowering your community to run projects and on building partnerships with likeminded organizations, while operating on a relatively low budget. You set a number of operating goals, e.g., have X number of partnering organizations, but I do not see any goals regarding the actual program outputs, such as number of edits or media files uploaded through GLAM partnerships. Have you been measuring these outputs? If not, would you consider starting to do so? Thanks, harej (talk) 04:08, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Harej, thanks a lot for your question. Program outputs regarding Wikimedia edits are hard to plan in advance, you can't draft expected outcomes of number of edits when doing yearly plans. What we plan/draft instead are project outputs. We plan, track and measure results project by project, and we adapt our goals to our term or quarter results, regarding always our mid-term collaboration will. For example: when investing time in convincing a University Faculty, one may spend some conversation/meeting/email months with 0 outcome results, but after this you get a convinced teacher who plan 25 new articles every semester. Once we have the project ongoing we can plan to improve "quality metrics" or even "quantity metrics" regarding the work done so far. You can see some examples of the metrics in our project pages (they use to include always a metrics/results/outcomes tab): some examples of diferent styles we do, including both GLAM and educational projects:

• Tracking and measuring results: 1, 2, 3
• Previous "audits" to plan strategies: 1, 2
• Outcome reports: 1, 2

As you can see our measurment system goes this way: First we do an "audit" to see how related content is, then we plan a strategy and draft expected outcomes, then we do the project and then we report final numbers with both the GLAM/EDU and the community. Metrics are directly linked from project pages so they are opened to everybody as a measure of transparency. This way we can all learn from each other. I'll be glad to explain you with more details of our metrics system if you want to :-)--Kippelboy (talk) 14:56, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Questions from Risker about participant metrics

I realise that the chapters and affiliates have not really been asked to produce consistent participant metrics to date, so it is understandable if you have to give estimates for some of these metrics. When responding, please identify if the data you are providing is verified (e.g., a maintained membership database) or estimated.

1. How many members do you have? If you have different categories of membership, please give subtotals for each category.
2. How many individuals volunteered for/participated in an activity sponsored by your organization so far this year, excluding special events like WMF-related conferences/Wikimania? (Please let me know what kinds of activities you're including.) Approximately what percentage of these volunteers are also chapter/affiliate members?
3. What percentage of the individuals who have volunteered for or participated in your organization's activities in the past year are also active Wikimedians, or became active Wikimedians after participation? (Activity could include content contributions or administrative contributions on any project, developer contributions, committee membership, etc.)

Thanks for any information you are able to provide. Risker (talk) 04:36, 30 October 2014 (UTC)