Grants talk:IEG/WIGI: Wikipedia Gender Index

I've come to think that some of the problem with readers thinking that wikipedia has few or poorer biographies of women has to do with how well linked the articles are. Poor linkage would, I presume, come about because the people contributing the articles may be less wiki-savvy than the archetypical nerdy male contributor, even if the article is quite long and well researched. Perhaps the researchers might like to think about counting incoming and outgoing links on the articles about people of different genders. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 05:16, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

I see this project as good visual talking point for discussions like this. We could include the level of fidelity or linkages of individual articles as a factor to measure. Example of another thing I personally like to know or see: the ratio of self-reported male/female/unknown authors under male biographies, female biographies, and in non-biographical articles. The ensuing conversation or thought that comes to mind is: Must women always write about women? What if there is a trend in women writing about more abstract concepts and men more interested in writing about the lives of notable strangers do not care to include women?

In addition to addressing self-reporting biases, I think these index tools brings further understanding about the nature of female representation in Wikipedia. Whether the solution is more about inspiring women to write, inspiring men to care or write about women, catering to female writers, or something else is something else to discern and should be based in the actual research available. Further analysis of the information and then re-clarifying the main takeaways will make it easier for Helium and others to understand at a glance what is important and why. Frances Soong (talk) 19:05, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Color scheme

For me (with fine eyes) the 6 color codes (see the 6 example squares) seem to run from medium to light to medium to dark of the same color. #1 and #4 and furthrr #2 and #3 are indistinguishable for me.

The additional use of a color shift e.g. from blue to red (modulated: dark-light-dark) should help. --Helium4 (talk) 06:08, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

@Helium4:, I'm sure our designers who know more about colors than myself will take this into accuont, thanks for bringing it up! Maximilianklein (talk) 23:48, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

) --Helium4 (talk) 13:10, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Proxy?

"The solution to understand the trend of editorship is to focus on a proxy, the trend of gender in biography articles."

I question whether gender ratio in biography articles would actually work as a proxy for editor ratio. Certainly they're probably correlated, but I question the level of predictive power here. For one, biography articles are often historical, and their notability may reflect attitudes about gender diversity during the time that they lived. More generally speaking, gender biographical ratios may reflect current attitudes about gender diversity in general; the correlation between attitudes towards gender diversity and gender itself may also be relatively weak. And while women may be more likely to edit articles about other women, I suspect this correlation is also somewhat weak.

I'm not saying this is not worth pursuing, but if your aim to is to actually provide a proxy for the editing gender ratio, then I'd like to some justification of this claim.

Mvolz (talk) 14:47, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

@Mvolz:, your point is well taken, I have adjusted the text and point of the study to shift away from the idea that biographies can directly predict editor participation. We might also change the name of the project to reflect this. Maximilianklein (talk) 22:46, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Rough Draft

@QEDK, Piotrus, Hargup, A li cor, Masssly, and Komchi: @Frances Soong:, I have made a rough draft of a complete IEG proposal. Please review, correct spelling and grammar, add any points you think are important. For those that have signed up to develop and research I would love to have you as part of the team if this was accepted and split the budget with you as much as fairly as possible. So if you think the budget needs adjusting too, please do so. Deadline is March 29th, so I'll probably be back to put on finishing touches in 4-5 days. Maximilianklein (talk) 23:27, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

@Maximilianklein: On it. :) --QEDK (talk) 04:48, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

@Maximilianklein:I am very sorry I was on a Wikibreak and could not join you.If you need any help I would love to help just mail me :) Komchi (talk) 01:08, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Timeline of the Project

@Maximilianklein: We should create a project timeline, that is, a list of deliverables with dates. Something like a GSoC proposal.

Good idea. --QEDK (talk) 04:58, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Web design

10,000 dollars for web design feels like a very large amount of overkill. We can trivially host it on Labs using a dynamic shiny application like this one; I'll put it together for free. Ironholds (talk) 18:00, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

I too feel that 10,000 dollars feel like too much.

10,000$ is overkill. We can cut down on web design if not anything else, atleast. --QEDK (talk) 04:57, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Sure, if we can do web design cheaper then obviously that's a great idea. Maximilianklein (talk) 17:29, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, Inspire Campaign

This Inspire Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for the Inspire Campaign 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 begins on 6 April 2015, and grants will be announced at the end of April. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us at grants(at)wikimedia.org.

@Maximilianklein, Masssly, and Piotrus: Hi5, guys! :) --QEDK (talk) 14:08, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

feedback and comments from Thepwnco

@Maximilianklein: hello and congrats on your grant proposal being confirmed as eligible for review! I wonder if you could please elaborate on the budget - specifically, how you arrived at your estimates. I'm also curious if you already have an idea of the team who would work on this project (i.e. the developers, project managers, community mangers listed under budget)? cheers. -Thepwnco (talk) 20:29, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

@Thepwnco, Superzerocool, and QEDK:, I have made a complete budget breakdown now, thanks for giving me some advice. I'm still happy to take advice on the budget details. Maximilianklein (talk) 23:47, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Comments from Superzerocool

Hi @Maximilianklein:, the idea is wonderful and your paper it is a great plus to consider when we will evaluate your proposal. As Thepwnco said, I like to see a budget more realistic (or grouped by item: personnel, development, analysis, etc.). Regards Superzerocool (talk) 17:34, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks :) Superzerocool (talk) 17:16, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Notifications

Just doing my rounds to remind folks about community notifications, and happy to see you've done a fair bit already! Thanks, PEarley (WMF) (talk) 16:49, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Final Budget Adjustments

@Siko (WMF):, cut $2,500 out of the Research section. I think we miscommunicated a bit about the Report. The "report" is more along the lines of an statistical academic paper reporting the validity of the project as an observational experiment. It should also serve as a guideline for other researchers on how to correctly use our data. Thanks again, I think we have a very lean and efficient budget now. Maximilianklein (talk) 05:36, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Wikipedia Gender Index

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	7.9
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	7.0
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	8.6
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	8.3
Additional comments from the Committee: Project would primarily increase awareness of the gender gap in terms of Wikipedia biographical content, which may prove an impetus or motivation for contributors to improve biographical content. Online impact may come from actually providing evidence that displaying and visualizing editing activity does in fact lead to improved content/increased participation. While the grantee does emphasize that the gender of biographies does not directly predict the gender of editors, I am concerned that this might get lost in the 'easy to understand' messaging intended for the media. While it doesn't directly increase diversity of content or contributors it could act as a general tool to see progress in having more diverse content. It could be used for other types of article, too and cross different wikis. I firmly believe in their exhortation that "what gets measured gets fixed", and measuring in a more organized manner the biography gender gap will give us concrete data we have not had before to work on fixing this problem. I would hope that with the multilingual developing team and the increased prominence of Wikidata that this project can be highly multilingual and thus impact more than the English Wikipedia. Having reliable, accessible, precise information would be very useful. Plans and times for engaging the community are provided but it is unclear who the community/community stakeholders are, or how they will be engaged. There has been quite a lot of community notification, especially among researchers, and there is support from the Wikidata community too Adequate target of who might want to use the data and connections in the community to promote its use. Has good support from long time Wikimedians. Plan for engaging the community while reporting research is excellent. The proposal seems like a "cool technical challenge" for developers, less clear if it will have impact on the real issues. Plan seems feasible and it is encouraging to see the prototyped research and preliminary results. Approach to have a large group of people sharing the burden of the work with people on three teams doing different aspects of the work makes sense. Since they have 3 people who are designated bottomliners who assume responsibility this large team could work. We had concerns with the original size of the budget, which seems excessive at $50/hour for each role. Both quantitative and qualitative measures are provided, however, it would be nice to see a measure for the impact on gender gap awareness or gender diversity, for example, # of media articles about the project that focus on WMF's self-awareness of the gender gap and efforts to address it, or measures of improved quality/increased content for biographies as a result of the attention Statistics about page view is a key measure but some how seems lacking to measure the success. Should include feedback from surveys about usefulness of data, too.

Inspire funding 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, $22,500

Comments regarding this decision:
We appreciate the updates made to the plan and budget so far in response to feedback. Confirming here that exact amounts to be paid to each contributing team member will be tracked and distributed by the primary grantee, so we’ll approve the overall 3 buckets as-is for the time being. We’re looking forward to partnering with you as you carry this project forward.

Next steps:

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