Grants talk:IdeaLab/Bored with Boards: Attract Pinterest Users to Wikipedia

initial thoughts and feedback

@Hahahammond: hi and thanks for your idea - I think this is a really interesting suggestion, but am having trouble thinking of ways of implementing the idea that wouldn't require substantial changes/additions to the underlying technology (MediaWiki software). I'd love if you could share some thoughts you had about how to put the idea into action, and test out the idea on a smaller scale first to see if changes were successful at nurturing social relationships on Wikipedia. Thanks -Thepwnco (talk) 23:34, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

@Thepwnco: Hi, Thepwnco! Thanks very much for your feedback. Here are some of my thoughts about putting these ideas into action and testing them:

• Encourage users to publicize their contributions and present them visually. This might entail including on user profile page thumbnails from articles created and edited, arranged under headings of the user’s choice (sort of like “boards” on Pinterest)
• Perhaps a way you could “follow friends” would be to include their user profile pages on your Watchlist, and then view the “User contributions” that your “friends” have made to their own user profile pages. In “User contributions,” would it be at all possible to view the actual thumbnail images that your “friends” have added to their user profile page, in a sort of scrolling list (like on Instagram)?
• Would it be possible to allow users to make their Watchlists public, so so that people can see who their friends “follow”?
• The effectiveness of such changes could be tested by focus groups composed of target demographics. -Hahahammond (talk) 02:56, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

@Hahahammond: hello again and thanks for providing more details about putting some of these ideas into action. I really like the idea of publicizing thumbnail versions of contributions on profile pages (similar to Pinterest boards). However, given the approaching deadline for proposed projects for the Inspire campaign - as well as the lack of a developer or other technical support committed to this idea - I wonder if the trial should instead focus on encouraging use of Pinterest among a small group of Wikipedians, and then run focus groups and other evaluations to measure if there was any impact on user experience, social relationships, and increasing exposure to areas of content that are in need of better coverage. In any case, if you have more thoughts, I encourage you to further develop your idea by outlining activities and budget needs in order to finalize your proposal in advance of the March 31 deadline. -Thepwnco (talk) 16:54, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

@Thepwnco:Thank you for your feedback! Could you please clarify one point for me? Are you suggesting focusing on encouraging Wikipedia-editing by a small group of current Pinterest users, or encouraging Pinterest use among a small group of current Wikipedia-edtiors? If the latter, could you please say more about the utility of doing that? - Hahahammond (talk) 21:24, 29 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.

more feedback and comments from Thepwnco

@Hahahammond: hello again 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 the activities proposed here before the formal review period begins (I am part of the funding committee).

1. what relevant experience do you bring to the position of project manager? Have you previously been involved with research and data analysis similar to what's being proposed here?
2. do you have ideas as to who you might hire in the research assistant positions?
3. do you have any thoughts on how you might identify and reach out to potential case study participants? Have you already had expressions of interest from some Pinterest users? I see one has already endorsed your project - it would be nice to see more evidence of this interest (perhaps by making use of the community notification section?)

cheers. -Thepwnco (talk) 15:29, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

@Thepwnco: Thanks for the questions! I will report back on those topics shortly -- but first, is it possible to change the display name of my grant proposal from "Make Boards, Not Bored: Lure Pinstars and Instagrammers to Wikipedia" to "Bored with Boards: Attract Pinterest Users to Wikipedia"? The latter is more representative of the project in its current state. Thank you! -Hahahammond (talk) 17:07, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

@Hahahammond: it looks like yes! User:AWang_(WMF) has gone ahead and made the change for you. -Thepwnco (talk) 22:52, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

@Thepwnco: Thank you! In response to your previous message:

1. I am a student at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College in Boston, concentrating in Information Science and Technology. During the upcoming academic year, I plan to study women’s involvement in online crowdsourced projects more generally, with faculty support in an interdisciplinary research seminar setting. In the past I have coordinated university programs and events related to women’s and gender studies, managing volunteers across the country. I have also been responsible for designing and implementing surveys related to the demographics of academics studying women’s and gender studies, as well as the composition and activities of organizations devoted to facilitating and fostering women’s and gender studies research.
2. I would like to select a research assistant from the all-female undergraduate population of Simmons College -- ideally a Wikipedian majoring in either Computer Science or Mathematics & Statistics.
3. Taking a cue from the study “Of Pins and Tweets: Investigating how users behave across image- and text-based social networks,” I would most likely use Twitter solicit participation in the questionnaire examining socioeconomic determinants, and then I would select case study participants from the pool questionnaire respondents. In particular, I have considered targeting educators who are active on Pinterest but not on Wikipedia. Another recent study found that teaching was a common profession among top pinners, and I believe that this demographic might be particularly amenable to experimentation with Wikipedia use, given the nature of their profession.
4. I have received positive feedback from both the Wikimedia-boston mailing list and from the Twitter account I have set up for the proposal. I will continue my outreach efforts over the course of this week. -Hahahammond (talk) 13:58, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Related research

You may want to look at http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~schang/papers/cscw14/. --Mssemantics (talk) 02:59, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

@Mssemantics: Awesome, thank you! -Hahahammond (talk) 13:59, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Notifications

Hello User:Hahahammond, congratulations on making the eligibility stage of the process! One next step is to notify relevant communities about your project. As the project has a large research component, and is gender-gap related, posts to these two mailing lists (Gendergap mailing list, Research mailing list) would be a good idea. For the image component, the Commons project should be notified as well. This board would be a good place. The Pinterest community should know too, as you are an active member there, you probably have a better idea of the best way to do that. If you any questions, or need help with any of this, let me know! PEarley (WMF) (talk) 15:41, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

@PEarley (WMF): Great suggestions, thank you! I will reach out to all of these groups. -Hahahammond (talk) 15:47, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

• @Hahahammond:, great! I was just thinking that I pointed you to probably the wrong spot on Commons, this board is more general and probably better. (The proposals page is more for concrete proposals about existing Commons processes). PEarley (WMF) (talk) 15:53, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Copyright and terms of Use

I've had a quick look at Pinterest copyright and to my untutored eye it looks very different to ours. At the least that would require some sort of FAQ or briefing note to people we recruit from there.

Whilst I love the idea of trying to recruit new Wikimedians from the users of Pinterest, I doubt that the people behind Pinterest will be so keen. Have you checked out their terms of use and other legals to see whether they allow or disallow it? You may find that they are perfectly OK with it, provided the WMF pays for a business account and for advertising on their site. WereSpielChequers (talk) 11:25, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers: Thank you for your comments! If all else fails, contact via alternate social networks could be used for recruitment. Oftentimes a user's Pinterest account is linked to her Twitter, Facebook, etc. In fact, I believe that for a while an account with Facebook and/or Twitter was required to sign up for Pinterest. -Hahahammond (talk) 13:03, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Similar issues may arise on Facebook, though yes from what I understand of Twitter you can tweet to pinterest people if your tweet is relevant to them. However I'm not saying don't do this sort of thing, I'm saying be prepared to pay - though remember to ask if they do discounts for not for profits. I'm sure we pay for staff recruitment advertising, why not pay for adverts to recruit editors? WereSpielChequers (talk) 14:03, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Make Boards, Not Bored: Lure Pinstars and Instagrammers to Wikipedia

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?	7.3
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	6.6
(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?	5.5
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	4.2
Additional comments from the Committee: There is some impact on Wikipedia but I don't see a clear potential to increase female collaboration on Wikimedia projects. Interesting idea not tried previously. Not clear the research results will impact the recruitment of Pinterest users. Definitely potential for online impact, especially in terms of developing processes and documentation for onboarding newcomers from other sites - also could yield interesting gender-gap insight, and creation of new strategies and mechanisms for engaging with and recruiting new female contributors. It's unclear how the initiative can be sustained - I think this will depend partly on whether the experiment is successful. The proposal has the potential to attract a different demographic group as online contributors to wikimedia projects, and eliminate systemic bias from online content. Like the idea, I just think it's very challenging to "make the match". Target community is active female Pinterest users who are not yet Wikipedia editors; it's not clear, however, how participants will be recruited. There would need to be strong team from the community working with this project to help retain the new recruits. The plan needs a large multidisciplinary team to be well executed. The budget is quite high and the scope is a bit too large for a project of this nature - I would like to see the project focus only on step 2 and 3 activities - i.e. survey of Pinterest users and onboarding/orientation to Wikipedia editing (including matchmaking service and 2-week diary study). I think the study should also be limited to a 6-month pilot/trial period, which would further cut down on the budget costs for project management. Biggest concern is the lack of detail in step 3 which is key to taking the process from a research to a plan that would address the diversity issues. Unsure if the project managers would be able to find sufficient survey takers to come up with a sufficiently large sample size. The measures of success seem underdeveloped, but there is some argument to be made that if the project is successful, its outcomes will be able to be shared across the Wikipedia movement regardless of that problem. Would support with a more detailed timeline and budget and the addition of a full team including Wikipedian community members, but this probably cannot happen in the timeframe of the Inspire campaign. Would encourage them to refine the proposal and come back to apply for an Individual Engagement Grant.

Inspire funding decision

This project has not been selected for an Inspire Grant at this time.

We love that you took the chance to creatively improve the Wikimedia movement. The committee has reviewed this proposal and not recommended it for funding, but we hope you'll continue to engage in the program. Please drop by the IdeaLab to share and refine future ideas!

Comments regarding this decision:
Thanks for sharing this idea during Inspire. We see potential in this proposal for a future Individual Engagement Grant, so please do consider continuing to develop it and reapplying in the fall!

Next steps:

1. Review the feedback provided on your proposal and to ask for any clarifications you need using this talk page.
2. Visit the IdeaLab to continue developing this idea and share any new ideas you may have.
3. To reapply with this project in the future, please make updates based on the feedback provided in this round before resubmitting it for review in a new round.
4. Check the Individual Engagement Grant schedule for the next open call to submit proposals or the Project and Event Grant pages if your idea is to support expenses for offline events - we look forward to helping you apply for a grant in the future.

Questions? Contact us at grantswikimedia.org

Thank you very much for your comments! I really enjoyed participating in this campaign, and I look forward to incorporating your feedback as I develop this project. -Hahahammond (talk) 18:46, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Checking in

Hi there Hahahammond and Simmimourya3107. I wanted to check-in with you to see where we might be able to go next with this proposal. You received a lot of positive feedback in your last review, and the concerns with it were related to the scope/detail of your activities and finding folks with the right skill sets to work together with you to tackle some of the research and engagement goals you've set out here. I think the recruitment idea here has potential, and I agree with the committee member who noted that this could be a good fit for an IEG with some additional detail. If you'd like, I'd be happy to talk with you more about getting this idea ready to propose for an IEG in the future, so let me know if you're interested. Take care, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:35, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I JethroBT (WMF)! I would love to talk about how to develop the idea for this project and recruit more folks to work on it. I'm open to anything! I was invited to present on this topic at the Rutgers iSchool Research Invitational at the end of October, and I was hoping to get some additional feedback there. Simmimourya3107, thank you for your interest in the proposal -- I would be delighted to have you on board. --Hahahammond (talk) 05:04, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

@Hahahammond: The presentation at Rutgers sounds like a great plan, and I'm glad you can use it as an opportunity to get feedback to develop this idea further. Let's chat a bit-- I'll send you an e-mail so we can make arrangements to talk over Google Hangouts / Skype / whatever is convenient for you. Talk to you soon. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 13 October 2015 (UTC)