Grants talk:IEG/Editing Maithili Wikipedia

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2015

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2015 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 2 2015 begins on 20 October 2015, and grants will be announced in December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

You may be interested in adding the WOW! Editing Group to your watchlist. This current IEG project also supports mentorships between college and high school age students! Marti (WMF) (talk) 01:21, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Marti, added the WOW! Editing group to my watchlist.--Biplab Anand (Talk to me) 01:54, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

comments from Thepwnco

@बिप्लब आनन्द: hello and congrats on your grant proposal being confirmed as eligible for review! I have a few questions for you - and generally would like to see more details about your project activities before the formal review period begins (I am part of the IEG committee).

• Like Marti, I was going to suggest you have a look at the WOW! Editing Group project as there are quite a lot of similarities. I know from the project lead of the WOW! grant that one challenge was recruiting students and contacting schools. Do you have any ideas as to how you will recruit students or if it will be relatively easy or difficult to get in touch with schools?
• Your goal of a total of 45 classes over a 6 month period is ambitious, but I might suggest focusing on a smaller number of institutions for this project until you work out what works and what doesn't. If your proposal was funded you could always apply for a renewal later and expand to more schools at that time.
• Do you or others on the project team have any experience with teaching or running edit-a-thons?
• With regards to the section on "Sustainability" - generally in this section we like to see prospective grantees indicate how their activities and efforts outlined in their proposal will continue after the project is over. For example, you mention that you will create "a guide that can be dispersed, edited and shared with other institutions and community groups." This is just one way that your work could continue to live on after the 6 months of your project; you may know of others.

thanks in advance. -Thepwnco (talk) 23:10, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

@Thepwnco: first thanks for the concerned you shows about the project. we have got little bit of experience regarding the activities involved in such kind of project like we did during Maithili wiki creation and we have got some ideas from the WOW! Editing Group project about activities. We have already started our initiatives about the project to some of the schools in our Saptari distrcit and they gave positive response. we have a team Bijay Chaurasia, Tulsi Bhagat, Nilam Karn and Soni Chaurasia that have quite good experience regarding edit-a-thons and outreach activities. We are currently running edit-a-thons in mai wiki. It seems our project is ambitious as far as number of institutions is concerned but institutions in our area do not have sufficient number of students and among those very few have interests in such kind of projects so we decided to incorporate more institutions. Thanks --Biplab Anand (Talk to me) 07:44, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

A guide on how to do the project could help other underappreciated wikis. Geraldshields11 (talk) 19:59, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Editing Maithili Wikipedia

Scoring criteria (see the rubric for background)	Score 1=weak alignment 10=strong alignment
(A) Impact potential Does it fit with Wikimedia's strategic priorities? Does it have potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	8.2
(B) Innovation and learning Does it take an Innovative approach to solving a key problem? Is the potential impact greater than the risks? Can we measure success?	7.3
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in 6 months? How realistic/efficient is the budget? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	8.5
(D) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support? Does it support diversity?	8.8
Comments from the committee: Very high potential impact in Maithili Wikipedia. The project fits in with the WMF priority of increasing participation on Maithili Wikipedia among high school and college students. There is potential for online impact although not many details are provided about how interest in Wikipedia will be sustained after the 6 months of the project are over. More planning for sustainability is needed, along the lines of creating a guide (as mentioned in the proposal). Very innovative project, and could be even promoted in India if successful. Contests and pairing college age with high school age is an interesting approach. Little risk, big potential impact The approach is not innovative--it seems to be modelled after other IEG funded projects, but the idea itself has worked in other contexts and the requested funding amount is quite low. Measures such as number of articles created/edited seem unrealistically high (10K), while number of active editors seems achievable. The success of the project depends on getting enough schools to participate. A group of passionate people and the project sounds achievable. The project timeline would only be feasible with a single cohort. Successfully piloting with a one cohort would make it more likely that scaling would be successful later. Detailed and plausible budget and outline of planned activities The project may be trying to accomplish too much for the time frame (15 participating schools, 45 total classes given). It sounds like this project is proposing to do 2 different things: a series of editing workshops at multiple schools AND creating a group where students are partnered with each other. It appears the project team has some relevant experience in leading editing workshops but more info / confirmation on this would be welcome. Has a specific target community, with strong community support This project would support language and geographic diversity. Support for gender diversity is less apparent because there are no details on how the project team will ensure women feel welcomed/encouraged to join the project. The amount requested may not be enough to fund the entire scope of the project. It is worth scaling back the scope to focus on establishing mentoring/editing relationships,not just trying to reach the largest number of people as possible. How will they achieve the target number of participating schools? What would be done if not all schools decide to participate? Good costs/benefits ratio

Round 2 2015 decision

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for an Individual Engagement Grant.

The committee has recommended this proposal and WMF has approved funding for the full amount of your request, $1,550

Comments regarding this decision:
We appreciate this team’s commitment to inspiring the next generation of editors on Maithili Wikipedia--and we love that the team includes recent student alumni from the project lead’s school-based trainings! We’re looking forward to seeing you tackle 15 new schools, sharing your contagious enthusiasm for free knowledge.

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
2. Review the information for grantees.
3. Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
4. Start work on your project!

Questions? Contact us.