Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello, Amical team! Thank you for submitting your complete application on time. We look forward to reviewing it in the coming weeks, and will contact you if we have questions or need more information. If any questions or concerns arise on your end, please do let us know so we can help. Best, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer)talk11:08, 2 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for this application Amical! Always a pleasure to read about your innovative ideas and community-focused activities. I've got a couple of questions about it.
The grantee-defined metric of "repetition" seems interesting, but confusing. Are you saying you would like to have an eventual outcome that is as close as possible to the number you state? So, for example, the community program calls for 75% repetition as a target, meaning that 90% or 60% are both imperfect results by the same proportion but in different directions? Wittylama (talk) 19:42, 13 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
No, is not really a numeric metric. It is a quality metric. Repetition can be a yes/no answer. If a project gets assumed as own by a partner institution and they one to organize it on a regular base (trimestre, yearly, monthly) for us is considered as a measure of success, because it means partners believe in the project and the efforts in organizing it decrease. --Kippelboy (talk) 09:01, 18 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
I note that you have decreased your budget, and your FDC requested about from last year (as you did the year before). That is certainly laudable in terms of frugality! Not growing in size simply because you could is a virtue. However, I would like to point to the final paragraph of last year's recommendations from the FDC to Amical which spoke about a concern on the topic of long-term sustainability and capacity development. Given the reduced size of the program this year, how do you intend to address that concern from last year? Wittylama (talk) 19:42, 13 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
This is a concern we disagree with Our volunteers community is limited in size and available time. We are optimizing our resources yearly due to several reasons: we know how to better spend money, we've already done our "basic outreach period", and we are developing almost zero-cost programmes with a large amount of partners. As said before, we think about money just as a tool to get to places volunteers can, but in our dream scenario, we would like not to have not even an employee (in the long term view) and become a truly volunteer led organization. We always keep in mind that money come from donors and take it very seriously. Actually, we could think about FDC concerns the other way around: How could money-based projects be sustainable once money is out of the table? This has happened several times around the Wikimedia verse. On the other hand, program is not reduced ad all. You can look at the number of projects and activities in our monthly reports. I thinking we could even affirm that our "project done/euro invested" ratio is among the best ones of all the affiliates.--Kippelboy (talk) 09:01, 18 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
In the recommendation comments from last year the FDC expressed support for, and interest in, the community health aspect of your programs. But, we also said that "..the FDC believes that it will be very challenging for Amical to measure and evaluate the results of its activities on community conflict resolution with the metrics Amical has presented." In your progress report this year you state that: "We keep taking care of the community mood. The Number of conflicts on Catalan Wikis is almost null. This is due to a 1:1 relationship and listening to community members needs". While this is great news to hear, the questions remain: how are you identifying, measuring, and defining 'conflict'? In this year's application the measurement for the "internal wikilove" program appears again: "Number of conflicts on Catalan Wikis", so this topic remains of interest to the Chapter (which is great!). If you've managed to create a harmonious wiki-environment while the broader wiki-verse has somewhat of a reputation for being hostile, the rest of us REALLY want to know how you did it! Wittylama (talk) 20:00, 13 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
How do we measure conflict and how do we deal with it? Community care is one of our 5 tracks in our 2014-2018 strategic plan and one of our 3 main tracks in our yearly activity plan. Some basic tips: mapping our community, knowing who is who and the assumption and expectactions of our members. We align our projects to our community wills. e.g: If a wikiquote member wants to do an editathon on cars but have social gap, we organize it with him/her. We have regular onsite/online follow up with community members to listen them. We keep track on frequent users so if they stop editing we can email/whatsapp them with a "everything is all right? message. People see we care and they feel confortable. Also, we take very serious the five pillars nettiquete assumption. We don't like trolls in our community. I asume this is a combination on how we deal with community but also an affordable community size (100 heavy editors, 1500 active editors). Also during our AGM we create a space where people claim for online help and other people offer help (everyone must help someone else and ask for help to someone else) > this way we promote long term collaborations between members. --Kippelboy (talk) 09:01, 18 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
For the education program - because this is the most expensive portion of your plan (the only one that has staff time specifically allocated to it for example), and fastest growing program - could you please provide a link to a report/explanation of what it is that Amical specifically does with the educational institutions? The Annual Plan links to the Portal:Educació page, and the 2015-16 progress report form links to this category of pages [note: the document actually links here which is a broken link, same for the 2016-17 pages - looks like someone moved the category without making a redirect?]. But is there a place which describes what assistance Amical specifically provides? I don't mean to ask you to write new/extra documentation (or translate it), linking to existing documentation/description is fine! :-) Wittylama (talk) 20:37, 13 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Basically, we promote that students write wikipedia articles as an assignment. For this to happen, we spend time convincing university teachers and professors (50-60 per year)> this way we get hundreds of new articles of a big variety of topics each semester. In this project we are still in our growing period (teachers need assistance the first & second semester they do wiki things) but our model is planned so teachers are self sustainable and Amical won't need to asume the organization part of each classrrom. It is already happening with teachers who are doing wiki things for years. Actually we are copying the succesful models we already used with museums and libraries: Investing FTE time to convince them and kick off and then letting community to do the follow up and to start new projects.--Kippelboy (talk) 09:01, 18 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Also for the education section: what does "Number of papers published" refer to as a measurement? Do you mean academic journal articles? Or articles in university student newspapers? Or something else? Equally - for the measurement "Number of attendees to conferences" (which refers to the target of "Increasing our presence in higher educational conferences and debates"), does this mean that the measure of success is for members of Amical to attend education-sector conferences - or to present or host a stall/booth AT those conferences? Wittylama (talk) 20:44, 13 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Kind of. We mean academic papers, blog post in influence educational media. We think that if we help to change the mindset of teachers and professors it will be easier for us to start eduwiki projects with them. Some teachers like to be convinced in real life conferences, but some other need papers, blogposts, traditional media...giving as credit for it. We spend time arranging interviews or post with key agents. Regarding the "Number of attendees to conferences" it is pure a formality metric. We don't really care if the conference has 20 or 200 people, but more if the key people has listened or if they start an eduwiki project.--Kippelboy (talk) 09:01, 18 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
For the "Core projects" program areas, it really would be useful if you could at least briefly describe, or better-yet link to, the project description for each of the activities you mentioned. I realise that these don't have line-items of their own in the budget so I don't mean to be picky, but - what is "Wikiars", "ephemerides", or "PESCAR"? Bibliowiki was discussed (and praised by the FDC) last year [p.s. the "case study" in the "further info" column isn't linked - I assume it was going to be?]. The whole "core projects" section, budgeted to 27.5k euro, doesn't refer to any details for documentation of these projects (although I do acknowledge that the projects could emerge during the year e.g. 'international writing competitions'). Wittylama (talk) 21:03, 13 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
OK you are right. Sorry about it: Here you have some links: Wikiars, bibliowikis case study. Part of the budget of Core projects include a % of FTE cost, as organizer and facilitator of some of theses projects. Regarding ephemerides, we regularly organise online challenges related to ephemerides (last month: Roald Dahl 100 and now ongoing Women writers on Catalan wikiquote. These kind of one/two week projects are proposed by the community in our village pump or mailing list, sometimes one or two weeks before the day of start. We, as a community led org, like it a lot, and we facilitate templates, social media, scoring and some awards (almost always 3 o 5 books) This is the reason why they are not detailed. We can organize more than 20 per year. As you can see in our monthly reports. Regarding PESCAR it is a transversal project that is being drafted right now but will act as year project for next year, dealing with historical and geographical diversity. It is inspired by other wiki's wikicup. It will be presented in our AGM at the end of november and we expect hundreds (or even thousands) of articles to come out of it. --Kippelboy (talk) 09:01, 18 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Your description of staffing states that you have 1 employee, and the two items in the Education program are budgeted to have .6 and .4 of that employee's time. In short: Your employee time is fully allocated to the Education program. However, the core projects section also calls for staff involvement in two of the items and the budget allocates 20k Euros to "Staff (proportional costs)" for that program area. Where is the extra staff time coming from? Wittylama (talk) 21:03, 13 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Probably there is a typo on it: our employee's time (actually myself) is spent in 0.6 Education and knowledge and 0.4 in Core projects.--Kippelboy (talk) 09:01, 18 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Thanks a lot for your questions we really appreciate the level of detail and we apologize in advance if our APG wasn't clear enough. We keep on improving our way of documenting our efforts and programs. Best.--Kippelboy (talk) 09:01, 18 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for your proposal. It's great to see your continuous efforts to support the Wikimedia projects - including setting targets directly related to their general health, which is something few organizations attempts - and you commitment to frugality and to be a community-led organization.
A few questions:
Amical has a unique organizational model in the Wikimedia movement and a very successful one. However, like Liam, and as expressed in last year recommendation, I'm worried about the long-term sustainability of this approach, and I'd like to hear your thoughts about this.
Please read our answer to Liam question. Would be happy to further comment if needed.
One of the two metrics you defined is members engagement. But how much members to you have? How that number is changing over time? (On the meta page Amical Wikimedia I see a number of 101 members, but it has not been updated for years)
Amical membership remains 101. One of our quality measure is that they commit to the project. So if most of them organize/lead/participate in one or more of our activities, we consider it as a success. For example (guessing numbers) If 30 different volunteers have run a workshop during the year, 10 have led an edithathon, 5 have led an online challenge and 15 of them have attended real life events as editors, we are happy about it. It is a measure that shows that is not about the 1 FTE, but about the 100 volunteer members. The employee is only a facilitator.--Kippelboy (talk) 09:10, 18 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Looking at table 3, it's not clear to me how this metric is computed for each program. I assume that the total number is (number of members who participated in at least one activity) / (total number of members), but what about the program-specific metric? is it (number of members who participated in at least one activity included in program X) / (total number of members)? in that case, the total value should be greater or equal to any program-specific value, but in table 3 the total is a middle value (more or less the average).
As Liam points out, the repetition metric might be confusing in the way it is stated. The point is clear: a repeated project builds on experience and is a sign of success, but on the other hand new projects are needed to keep innovating and improving. However, this tradeoff means that it's a metric of a different kind: while in most cases targets are "get at least X" (e.g., targets on participation, or content created), or more rarely "get no more than X" (e.g., server downtime, or number of complaints), in this case it's a "get more or less X", or "stay within the X-Y range". But, as asked by Liam, if the target is 75% and you get 60% or 90%, is it good or bad? Maybe a range would better fit this situation (e.g., setting a target like "between 65% and 80%").
In the targets for program 2 (education and knowledge), you say that increasing the number of collaboration in the university you can cover the biggest holes in information. Are you targeting specific fields?
We have a map of identified information holes on cawiki. And is there where we put our efforts (sciences, e.g) in reaching new teachers. By the way, it doesn't mean that deny collaboration in topics we are good at. But, for example, part of FTE time goes to investing in improving our relationships with the science teachers ecosystem. We take it as a long term invest. We did it with humanities (Museum, libraries, historians...) and we hope we'll do the same with scientist--Kippelboy (talk) 09:10, 18 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Thanks very much for your submission. I think Laurentius's suggestion of a range for the "repetition" metric would be a good idea, but I really do like the fact that you are open about the value of continuity in programs. I have only a few questions.
Please confirm that the "own resources" you refer to in Table 5 is from your reserve funds.
The follow-up questions for Table 4 (staffing) indicate that you plan to spend the same amount as last year on staff salaries, but also notes that there may be legislated increases to that salary which are not included in this submission. When do you anticipate finding out what that legislated increase will be? How will a significant legislated increase affect the rest of your budget? (e.g., will you have to make cuts elsewhere, dip into reserves, reduce staffing hours?) Risker (talk) 17:51, 16 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for this consideration. Every year government publishes the increase of cost of life in the country (it can be in november or March, we don't know exact date this is why we don't mention it). Usually moves from 0,5% to 1,5% more or less, so we can say that this won't affect the programmes. Sometimes we take if for granted cultural/economy realities that are not a global standard. So thank for pointing this out and giving us the opportunity for clarifying it. --Kippelboy (talk) 09:14, 18 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Hi Amical! thanks very much for your application. I have only one question.
Reading your proposal, I realised that the proposed targets are associated to a whole programme, but I can't identify how that target is opened in each of the specific activities. So, how are you going to analyse or define the success or not of each activity? Thanks very much. --Chandice (talk)
Hi Chandice thank you for your comment. We do evaluation meetings and chats with every activity organizer. We evaluate metric results (attendees, content... but we give much more importance on how activity A is related to help us with our mid-term strategy B goals. We care about shor-term results, but much more about our mid-term goals. How do you define success? What does success mean in a Wikimedia affiliate environment. For us, is anything that helps as to achieve our 2014-2018 strategy goals. We care much more on the big picture that on the results of a single editathon. Actually, in some of our best editathons less important thing is number of written articles. I'm happy to discuss it furtherly if my explanation didn't clarify your question. Best --Kippelboy (talk) 09:40, 24 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 8 years ago14 comments4 people in discussion
Hi Amical! Lots of interesting thigns in your proposal, thank you very much. I have a few questions for you as well!
Member engagement metric. I agree this is a good thing to track but I don't really understand how you calculate it. Does the total figure of 60% mean that 60% of Amical members will be involved in one or more activities in the year? If so, what do the numbers against each programme mean? If 80% of Amical members are engaged in the Community programme then there is no sense in saying that 60% of Amical members will be involved in any part of the programme - so I am confused. :) (After typing this I see Laurentius also asked this question).
Hi Chris/The Land! I'll try to clarify it a little bit more. As a volunteer driven affiliate, we think that when our members are active in projects/events (attending, organising, leading) is because they like it, they are engaged with it. As said to Laurentius, we are considerating including ranges for better tracking it.--Kippelboy (talk) 10:15, 24 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Community conflict. I see Liam asked about this as well. Do you measure "community conflict" - if so, how? How many 'conflicts' have there been in 2016, for instance?
In 2016 there we didn't had any big conflict among our members, nor onwiki. Not a conflict, but there is an ongoing discussion on how should we deal with gender in categorization (we only categorize by profession and origing, not for beliefs, race, gender...)> our key role for avoiding it to become a conflict is talking with everybody, listening to arguments, creating talking spaces in our annual meetings, planning special events for gender topics, and looking for related bibliography for eveyrone to better discuss with knowledge. This is what we mean when we say we try to keep a good mood both offline and online. When we see there is a hot topic, we try to create spaces for talking and for dealing with different points of view. Sometimes (frequently) they exceed the talk pages. I asume this is a particularity of our community (in size and proximity) that probably couldn't be scaled to bigger wikis but, IMHO, could be used in mid-size wikis.--Kippelboy (talk) 10:15, 24 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Internal training. Do you intend to gather feedback from participants, and/or measure how often the skills that are trained are used?
This is a good point. When we do internal training, usually our attendees get committed to implement results. e.g. if you do a "how to do a Wikipedia workshop training", all attendees know that they should do a wiki workshop in the near future. If the attendee feels confortable enough, he/she goes alone and if he/she need more time, they go with a senior volunteer until they are prepared. We ask for a commitment. In tech workshops, usually a working group is formed after it, because they don't finish the task they started so they keep doing it online. In Amical we have kind of "levels of engagement" pyramid. When people attend a training, is because we believe they could "do a step forward" in commitment with the org. And we keep tracking it after the workshop.
Thanks! That all makes sense. Do you use surveys after workshops to gather feedback on the session and check that participants feel they have learned what they set out to? If not, I would suggest adding that as an additional tool. Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 20:25, 26 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Hi we don't -yet- run these kind of surveys, but we do face-to-face interviews with the attendees. It's a good idea and we will try to start using them. Thanks! --Kippelboy (talk) 05:15, 3 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
Libraries. What kind of libraries are you talking about in Programme 3? Neighbourhood libraries or big regional libraries? How many are you currently working with? What means a library counts as an "active library"?
First of all, I recommend you to read our case study on our project with libraries. That said, we work with both neighborhood libraries and big regional ones. Also with museum libraries and university libraries. List can be found here. What it means to be active? That -at least- they do one wiki thing per year. But our membership fee is quite low. We preffer to have them all on board, regardless that their commitment is higher or lower. Some of them organized monthly workshops, others write wikipedia articles, other organizes wiki takes events, others organize one editathon, and some other just collaborate with our online challenges. But as far as they are proud of it and share it with their community, we are happy with it. As they are all trained in wikipedia editing, we also use them as a "real life entry point". e.g imagine we receive an email from Xlandtown where someone wants to do a wiki thing. We don't have any volunteer there, so we tell them to go to Xlandtown public library, where local librarian will introduce him/her to the wiki world and start collaborating. This works VERY well for us, acting as our territorial branches, actually. Thanks a lot for taking time in reading our proposal and even more for posting your questions. We will be happy to talk further about it. --Kippelboy (talk) 10:15, 24 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
First of all, I love the optimistic, community-focused, empowering spirit of Amical Wikimedia. I also fully support your efforts to recruit and support new editors, a vital need across Wikipedia. Here are my suggestions:
i) Include a brief description of your organization as soon as feasible within your proposal. I did not know that your focus is on the Catalan language and culture until I had been reading for several minutes. Sure, I could have clicked on the link for Amical Wikimedia, but for quick comprehension, telling the reader straight away will help. I don't know if there are space limitations, but the lead paragraph for Amical Wikimedia is very well written, and some or all of it might be included in the beginning of your proposal.
ii) Although your English is much better than my Catalan ;^) you might ask a couple of friends for whom English is their first language to proofread your article and suggest edits to enhance quick understanding. This would simply be fine-tuning, as your proposal is well-written overall.
iii) I am a very part-time editor who tries to contribute to the decision-making process when possible. For editors like me, who are not intimately familiar with these proposals, it helps to define terms, including acronyms. For example, I recommend defining, via a parenthetical explanation or hyperlink, terms such as:
Why this amount? What is the minimum amount that the grant submitter believes is needed to accomplish these goals? Can the grant submitter accomplish the goals stated in your proposal, without funding? If the grant submitter can't, why not? If the grant submitters grant request is not approved, what alternative sources of funding are you seeking? If only one grant is approved during this round of grant approvals, why should this grant be approved rather than all the other grant proposals--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 17:05, 29 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
If Amical is able to successfully answer this question I will not only guarantee 100% APG funding but also the Nobel prize for [bio]chemistry. Wittylama (talk) 19:11, 26 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Liam you can't speak for the whole FDC. Promising full funding, you have to show that you can put your foot where your mouth is. Show us the money. Now. (Obviously, Alex successfully answered the question).Delphine (WMF) (talk) 13:52, 4 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
