Grants talk:Conference/Louise000 / Art + Feminism Japan 2020

WMF Comments

Dear Louise000 and DM180,

Thank you for submitting this informative and comprehensive proposal! We are happy to explore the opportunity to support you to continue building the Wikipedia editing community at Temple University.

Your proposal has many strengths. Here are some I wanted to call out, and also some follow up questions:

• It’s great to see that you are building on the success of your 2018 editathon, and especially that you are envisioning this as a long term project to engage Temple University in expanding the articles on Japanese Wikipedia about creative women of Japan.

• What do you consider as 'new users and substantial edits'?

• It’s smart to include a panel discussion as a space to draw the connection between creating articles about women and the larger issues of gender inequity in Wikipedia and the digital sphere as a whole. Given your survey results (which I suggest to keep active), this kind of engagement seems to be a strong motivator for your participants.

As for the honorarium - we typically do not pay honorariums. However, as I know you are looking to bring an outside gender expert, I’m willing to consider but would you please elaborate on how this person is bringing valuable insight from outside the Wikipedia movement?. If you have specific speakers in mind - please share.

• Training students to serve as peer teachers for newcomers at the event is a strategic way to create a sense of connection at your event and build layers of skill and leadership into your editing community. As those are university employees that requires payment, do you have any available volunteers to help with the training?

• Glad to see that you will focus on support for navigating online bullying and Wikipedia cultural nuances that might prompt deletion. Many gender equity organizers in the Wikimedia movement report that this is exceptionally important for a successful event.

• You mentioned that editathons at TUJ are learning platforms that other faculty can potentially take into their classrooms. Do you have adequate support and resources for these faculty? It sounds like you have a fair amount of experience and support already on campus, but just in case, I want to make sure that you are aware of these resources:
  • Outreach Wiki offers guidance about incorporating Wikipedia into college classrooms: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education
  • You can contact education staff at WMF for direct support using the contact information provided here: https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/About/Partnerships/contact

• The one major thing I'm missing from this proposal is Evaluation plan. How will you measure your impact? What will a success look like? How will you keep track on the new participants future contributions? Do you have any post-conference follow up plan? Please offer some metrics and objectives that will indicate that you met your goals.

Budget:

• Please add the ‘Amount in USD’ column to the budget table.
• What do you mean by ‘Print advertising’? Is it not a part of the ‘Poster, banner and flyer printing costs’?
• Are you sure you only want to offer 2 scholarships? Do you not expect participants outside of Tokyo? What will be the criteria you will use for selecting scholarship recipients?
• In which languages will the simultaneous translation be available?

Thank you for the work you have done on this grant proposal. We are excited to see your motivation and initiative to encourage growth within the community and to raise awareness to such an important issue that challenge our whole community and the free knowledge vision. Best CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 15:04, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Answering review questions

Regarding Inviting Speakers

Regarding “honorariums”: This expense is to help cover some the costs of the guest speakers to allow them to participate in the event. In the original budget we differentiated between the costs of the wiki-experts (placing their costs under scholarships) and the artists/curators/art historians who will be part of the evening conference (placing their costs under honorarium). Honorarium is often used for these types of expenses in university budgets and as we are holding our event within our university, we used this term. For our community of young people, gender is often an insidious social issue which means it needs to be identified and clearly signposted, and Wikipedia needs to be located in a wider discourse as a tool to work on the issue. We feel that without a speaker event with high caliber guests, students and the public may not make the connection that will ignite an urgency to want to make a change here. We appreciate the advice and guidance of WMF team in this matter and will follow further instructions as needed to comply with WMF requirements.

Regarding Learning Resources

You mentioned that editathons at TUJ are learning platforms that other faculty can potentially take into their classrooms. Do you have adequate support and resources for these faculty? It sounds like you have a fair amount of experience and support already on campus, but just in case, I want to make sure that you are aware of these resources: Outreach Wiki offers guidance about incorporating Wikipedia into college classrooms:https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education

Thank you, yes. Since we are a branch of an American university I believe we are eligible to use wikiedu.org which seems like a fantastic resource. Louise has gone through the basic training on the site to setup an account and aims to get familiar with it by the end of this semester in order to work with students in the spring semester using the platform in preparation for the event. I plan to do a short session for interested faculty in December in case any other faculty at the school would like to incorporate Wikipedia into their assignments and need to know how to access these resources.

Regarding Scholarships

Are you sure you only want to offer 3 scholarships? See note above Do you not expect participants outside of Tokyo? What will be the criteria you will use for selecting scholarship recipients?

We have increased the number of scholarships to 3. We are especially keen to grant scholarships to experienced, veteran Wikipedia editors who will add to the knowledge base of peer teachers in the room. I have located about three users so far who are not only experienced editors in Japanese language Wikipedia but also involved in gender activism via Wikipedia. Two out of the three I have found will certainly need the transport and accommodation support in the case that they could attend. Our student body comprises 1300 students and the greater Tokyo area with its excellent and cheap public transportation links is home to 38 million people so we are primarily concentrating on this region.

Regarding language accessibility

In which languages will the simultaneous translation be available?

Our student body uses English as a working language, around 40% of them also speak Japanese as their first language, and a considerable proportion overlapping with that 40% speak other languages that include but are not limited to Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Portugese, Spanish, Indonesian. Last year at our small internal editathon we had a student that wanted to edit in Portugese and while we were not able to read the article we found a lot of the issues that come up between Japanese and English were applicable for navigating the translation process and that a multilingual community was more important than every language being supported. Since TUJ's working language is English, and the outside community of the public, speakers and veteran Wikipedians will find Japanese easiest, we will stick to Japanese and English for this event unless one of the invited speakers is very keen to talk in another language.

Regarding print advertising

This cell in the budget refers to an allowance to put information out in key print publications e.g. Bijutsu Techo (the main art event guide, published monthly), The Japan Times (national English language newspaper published daily), Printed art maps that are published quarterly e.g. Tokyo Art Beat https://www.tokyoartbeat.com/resources/doc/koukoku.en 30,000 yen doesn't go very far in print advertising so I think we might have to choose one strategic shot, but I think it's worth to try because Japan still has a strong print media audience.

• This post may be updated with new info until 9/27 EST

Final WMF comments

Hi Louise000 and DM180,

Thank you for your response and adjustments. The committee and I have a few last comments and challenges to highlight:

• You have done a good job in refining the metrics, but as training and gender gap are main themes, we think you should also have targeted goals to address those issues. How will you measure the direct contribution to the Art and Feminism content? We actually have some ideas around it, and if the grant will be approved, together with User:I JethroBT (WMF), we can work on refining some target outcomes to better align with the general goal of the event.

• We are also curious regarding how are you planning to invite members of the public or Japanese Wikimedians to the conference? I know you are planning to advertise the event on print media, but how will you reach out to existing Wikimedia community members? We think this can be a very helpful audience to reach out to, and to strengthen ties with.

I appreciate your thorough response. Final decision will be announced October 29. Thank you again for your cooperation! Best, CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 13:59, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, Round 1 2019-2020

This Conference Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for Round 1 2019-2020 review.

New grants will be announced October 29, 2019. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

Updated proposal approved

The redrafted proposal submitted by Louise000 and DM180 is approved. See here for formal approval. DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 10:15, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Postponement of edit-a-thon to early 2022

Due to some delays, Louise000 and DM180 would like to postpone the edit-a-thon event to late January - February. This date change we let us maximize event participation and more closely tie the edit-a-thon to our publication. We hope this would be acceptable; please let us know. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by DM180 (talk)

Hello DM180, thanks for posting your request. I have reviewed and formally approved it. The new grant end date is March 31, 2022, and the final report is due on May 31, 2022. Best regards, DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 08:51, 22 November 2021 (UTC)