Grants talk:IdeaLab/Women, Wiki and Wonders: Jadavpur University Campaign

this particular "proposal" has left me confused. the funding math does not add up. the description dodgy. the claims contestable. and doesn't seem to have any women in the team so far. the tone feels too patronizing towards women. Indranil Das Gupta - 30-03-2015 02:50 AM IST
I will try to be more specific about my questions.

1. Problem statement not clear. You have wrote three problem statements as follows

• Provide the knowledge of Wikipedia as an independent platform to discuss women specific issues
• To create an awareness through open-source knowledge creation
• Enhance the wikiprojects through indigenous knowledge documentation.

And all three looks like three different contribution pathways to me. Not well defined problems. Please explain

2. I see four solutions offered through the program pertaining to the 'problems' discussed above namely

• University level workshops to document the issues pertaining to education, culture, socio-economic aspects of women.
• Generating content pages such as jobs, skill developments targeting the female population
• Putting legal rights and providing free content as legal aid.
• Promote wikipedia for women, this can be either uploading the materials related to women activists, freedom fighters, film makers, successful personalitie or creating avenues for researchers to work in the gender equality domain.

And none of them address the problem defined in the initial pitch which is "It is no longer a secret that women require an independent platform to raise their voice .......................Wikipedia Inspire is one such campaign which aims to provide such a platform. We believe university-level students can certainly contribute to this movement and make this endeavor a success." Student contribution is not clearly defined/discussed in the solution. Also what is the independent partial platform? If it is referring to WikiPedia then that already exists. So how does the proposed solutions aligns to that.

3. In activity only workshops about creating awareness,discussion and promotions is discussed. Ways are not. As well as the budget suggests it involves time taking coding+designing is needed for any application (Assumption based on the terms in the budget as "Designer" and "Developer" and the fund requested) but what application and what are it's purpose not discussed. More explanation needed.

Atanuami (talk) 13:17, 31 March 2015 (UTC) Atanuami (talk) 13:17, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

4. Community engagement probably doesn't mean verification of developed app. Please explain

5. What is exactly planned of being built? Or what apps? I wanted to ask about purpose. Is it some kind of female related job board? In University? There is supposed to be uniform job boards already. Also not aligned with the proposed problem (which is also unclear from teh proposal) and suggested solution.

6 Measure Of success: Do we have any kind of data/metrics available on this? Keeping other universities out of it since it will initially be for JU do we have any metrics of available female students in the campus(approximate? but based on data)? --Rabimba (talk) 23:45, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Atanuami (talk) 13:17, 31 March 2015 (UTC) :: @Rabimba:; yah, Jadavpur University keeps a record of female students but you this campaign aims at gender gap, doesnot mean it is barred for males. We are including three universities in total through three workshops Atanuami (talk) 13:17, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

@Indradg:Indranil Dasgupta: Our plan is to include as many as we can, again by using words such as patronizing may equate with words such as feminizing. As far as the campaign concerns it is no where mentioned that men cannot work for issues related to women, as long as they agree to the Agenda, right?

Yes so we will see what are the articles written on a particular issue and then choose what we will be doing during the editathon. Wikipedia itself is works on open source we need to make it more articulate so that new wikipedians contribute more. In one of the workshops we are going to add field data. I meant yeah within wikipedia we can create a page like job page which will be updated on a regular basis. Legal contents will be added in another page for those without a copy right issue.
no we are not aiming to build an app in this project, you can now see the updated month wise plan. Atanuami (talk) 13:17, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

@Atanuami:, would please split your answers from @Rabimba:, they are currently pretty hard to read. --Vituzzu (talk) 11:41, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

@Vituzzu:, hey I have done it. 202.41.10.21 12:31, 4 April 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.

Similar proposal

You may want to take a look at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Full_Circle_Gap_Protocol:_Addressing_the_‘Unknown_Unknowns’. I believe there are several similarities, and reviewing their proposal may help you to articulate your goals and plans. --Mssemantics (talk) 14:58, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
@Mssemantics: Mssemantics Yah thanks I have read their proposal and taken a note. thanks Atanuami (talk) 15:46, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposal feedback

Hi Atanuami. Thanks for submitting your proposal. We're excited to learn more about your proposed activities and have the following questions:

1. Regarding the overall goals, we understand the aims of the workshops/editathons, but are unclear about how the job/skills development and legal rights aspects of the proposal are related. Please let us know how these parts of the plan are directly related to either increasing the participation of women on the Bengali Wikipedia or increasing content related to gender issues. Unfortunately, we are not able to support the indigenous knowledge research component at this time. We understand the value of this knowledge, and have supported some research into how it can be incorporated on Wikipedia, but it is a much larger issue than can be addressed in this project.
2. Have you reached out to the active editing and offline volunteer community in your area? It would be great to see that there has been some type of community notification and feedback on the project. Having experienced Wikimedians supportive of the project who can help with the trainings and facilitate editathons would be very valuable.
3. We have found that one-off events such as one workshop or one editathon, does not result in much impact in terms of content creation or retained editors. A better strategy has proven to be a series of trainings, focused on increasingly advanced wiki skills, followed by an editathon. Additionally, having a follow-up plan for online mentorship between sessions and after the editathon is critical to insuring retention of new editors. We would recommend you consider this approach in one, perhaps two schools.
4. Have you thought about your strategy for engaging female students at these universities and/or gauged their interest in the project? Do either universities have a gender studies department that would be well poised to participate?
5. We would like to see better defined measures of success. For example, the # of participating students, the # of articles created/improved, the # of new editors who continue editing x months after the event, etc. Here are some good resources regarding editathon/workshops and suggested metrics: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Evaluation/Program_resources/Edit-a-thons.
6. If you expect 50 students at each workshop, you should prepare to have at least 5 experienced Wikimedians at the event to help facilitate.
7. In terms of the budget, if you can recruit members of the active Bengali editing community to help at your events, there is probably little need for honorariums (in addition to covering expenses like local travel). Please provide more details on how you calculated $900/workshop. What materials will you be printing? And what do you expect to be included in the contingency line item?

Please let us know if you have questions about the above feedback. We look forward to your response. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 01:06, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

1. In the Editathon-s we will encourage participants to contribute information on the legal rights of women and also suitable job news, skill development will be kept as addtional themes, for these we would like to invite corporate business/working women.
2. We already spoke to two women professors in two depts, who have shown interests in this endeavor. Some expert wikimedians have committed to facilitate the workshops.
3. Yes we are committed to follow ups and brief training programmes.
4. Refer to Budget on the grant page
Atanuami (talk) 05:52, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Women, Wiki and Wonders: Jadavpur University Campaign

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?	6.6
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	6.5
(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?	6.9
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	4.7
Additional comments from the Committee: Overall sounds like an interesting idea, but it is unfocused and so we’re not entirely sure what is being planned. Would like to know more. For example: How do lawyers connect to this? Are there two university workshops or three? What is going on with jobs? Unsure about how you’re thinking about combining the issue of indigenous knowledge. It might be worth looking at the prior outcome of the oral citations grant. Trying to put non-published indigenous knowledge in Wikipedia may be unrealistic at present. Idea generally has the ability to reduce the gender gap and systemic bias in online content. Some concerns about sustainability - worried if the project will end as soon as the grant period ends, as there is not much information yet about conducting follow up events. What happens after the grant period ends, when project leads are no longer funded? Would like to see additional support, other than from the project team, from some preexisting Wikimedia communities. Would be useful to understand more specifically which language Wikipedias they plan to edit and to demonstrate plans to work with local editors, chapter, or the Wikipedia Education program Budget is somewhat vague, but not super unreasonable. The people involved have the skill and experience. The printing costs may be a bit high? The "excursion" event, the third one, is obscure, unsure what it entails. Metrics for success, both quantitative and qualitative, are not really present, and this part of the proposal probably needs revision in order to make the results of the project measurable. Would like to see clearer goals and more specific measures of success - proposers may need further help/advice to come up with these. Logistics aspects of the proposals could use more details, workshops will be how long, how many people, % women are they looking to reach out? Would like to see the proposal articulate with more specificity what exactly they are planning, and probably narrow the focus a bit further. Working with smaller communities has a good potential for impact, we appreciate the overall idea and effort you’ve put in so far!

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:
We’re glad you engaged in the Inspire campaign! As noted in the feedback above, some more discussion and updates are still needed in order to develop an actionable plan that we’d be able to support with funding. Looking forward to discussing further with you as you consider updates to your proposal and consider resubmitting for a Project and Event Grant in future.

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.

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