Grants talk:IdeaLab/Establishing Wikimedia offices across the world.

Experience in Germany

Germany has 3 offices. In Berlin they have Women edit since 2013. I might be wrong but there is no signifikant (if at all) increase in female autors on the German Wikipedia ...Sicherlich ^Post 15:57, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

No need for Wikimedia office

There is no need for Wikimedia offices in order to achieve this: a US-based organisation (which is Wikimedia Foundation) will not be very helpful in building links with Nigerian community as an organisation. Instead, you need to have an active local community organised around a local chapter or user group to do this. You also do not need to have a 7 paid employees working on that: most of this can be done by volunteers. For an example of how a succesful project for this goal can be done, please see Grants:PEG/MMandiberg/Art+Feminism Editathons — NickK (talk) 18:06, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

The Wikimedia foundation had ought not be based in California. Since that doesn't seem to be changing, we had ought to have more offices elsewhere. Tharthan (talk) 19:59, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Those offices are currently orgainsed by local Wikimedia chapters and are staffed by local people who are supporting projects in local countries in local languages. This means that there should be a local community who should know whom they need to hire to support volunteers with specific skills and what they want to achieve. It is impossible to hire 7 paid employees and make them love and promote Wikimedia unless there are enough active volunteers who can explain them how Wikimedia works. So far there are no volunteers in Nigeria, thus your community needs volunteers and volunteer-driven projects first, and only later it will need an office and paid staff — NickK (talk) 19:32, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

No Need For Physical Offices

There's no need for physical offices. Wikipedia has a virtual presence, but as a non-for-profit an expansion into multiple international offices would likely be costly, and to the detriment of the organization as it would be a drain for the limited funding Wikipedia receives through donations. However, training programs like virtual 'Editor Training Camps' or help centers where users can more easily live-chat volunteers might be a possibility. Also, maybe 'Editing Camps' being brought to various locations in the world (Universities are a possibly), with interested parties being able to learn more about Wikipedia.--SecretName101 (talk) 04:33, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I would like to clarify, that I was proposing both virtual 'Editor Training Camps' online, as well as physical 'Editing Camps' being brought to various locations in the world (a natural fit would be at educational institutions and municipal libraries). Another idea I didn't propose in my earlier comment would be having video and interactive editing tutorials online for new users to quickly 'learn the ropes' of Wikipedia with.
SecretName101 (talk) 07:25, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Some suggested tweaks to your idea

Hi, thanks for posting this idea! I think the idea of worldwide training centres is pretty promising. I've just categorised it under Category:IdeaLab/Ideas/Events and training. Could I offer a suggestion? I think it might be better if you put "training" in the title somewhere, eg. "Set up training centres across the world", since training is the main point. At present that's unclear. --Skud (WMF) (talk) 22:54, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Suggestions

Hi Fred Timbee. Thanks so much for sharing your idea. I agree that offline Wikipedia training for girls is a promising strategy for engaging more women. However, setting up training offices around the world takes a lot of resources (people, time, money) that is not very scalable. As NickK mentioned above, the Wikimedia movement has a network of local chapters and user groups that are well positioned to do this type of work. What could be very interesting is discussing ideas around how to coordinate local Wikimedia affiliates around a female training program or setting up a process/team that better shares information around what is working and what is challenging in each locality. Better knowledge sharing and coordinated training is definitely needed and there are lots of ways we could go about doing it. Would love to hear your thoughts! Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 22:20, 17 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.

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Establishing Wikimedia offices across the world

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?	3.3
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	2.7
(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?	1.7
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	1.9
Additional comments from the Committee: Would like clearer articulation of link between distributed geographic offices and substantive impact on gender diversity. Not clear exactly what is being proposed: Corporate offices? Training for female Wikipedians in one particular location in northeast Nigeria? I like the idea of a global network focused on training girls, but physical locations alone may not be sufficient to have an impact on the gender gap. Would like to see more community engagement and support. Not clear who will be trained or how outreach would happen Would like better explanation of the budget Would like to see quantifiable measures of success like the idea of training (and also reflection on WMF presence in other countries) but connection between the two is not clear Suggest working with people who are already involved with training programs. Many projects need more enthusiastic helpers.

Inspire funding decision

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

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