Grants talk:PEG/AndyLaw/MULP

Comments by Polimerek

Although the project sounds interesting it seems to be completely out of scope of Wikimedia Foundation mission and strategic goals. The phone call system is about to provide an information about "city hall event calendars, meeting minutes, agenda items, news and community events" so it has nothing in common with the current Wikimedia projects. Polimerek (talk) 00:10, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I must concur with the above; it looks like something with the potential to do social good, and very interesting from a technical perspective, but I'm not sure how it fits within the scope of this grant programme. Craig Franklin (talk) 10:57, 18 November 2013 (UTC).

I agree with Polimerek. The project is interesting and is very good described, but it is out of the scope of GAC. --Packa (talk) 22:14, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I need to be a yet another person to agree - if I read this correctly, the aim of the project is to give a free WWW via phone service to some local community, which is out of scope of present activities of WMF and certainly out of the realm of GAC. Works on adding text-to-speech or speech-to-text functions to MediaWiki or hosting a dedicated software serving Wikimedia on WMF servers - this is something we could discuss upon. General distribution of textbooks for free, buying books&magazines for libraries in Uganda or general Internet connection for free - unfortunately we do not reach that far. Best Regards, aegis maelstrom δ 18:09, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Good ideas, big budget, but (like Polimerek told) I do not see it is related with the main goals of WMF and Foundation's Wikimedia Project and Event Grants program.--MikyM (talk) 12:42, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

• To agree with pretty much everyone else; cool idea, but out of our scope. Even if it were closer to being in our scope, the P&E grants program doesn't compensate participants for their time spent on projects, as the budget here seems to be asking. Kevin (talk) 23:48, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
• I had to reread the proposal again, it sounds exciting, very innovative and provides a lot of potential, I just couldn't seem to figure out its relevance at the moment with WMF's goals. -- Roel (talk) 10:37, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
• Yup, out of scope, and if I could add - seems a bit commercial to me. NLIGuy (talk) 05:00, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Comment by Kiril Simeonovski

Thanks for the submission. Here I will try to summarise my comment on why I think this project should not be supported:

• The project's scope is limited out of the Wikimedia movement. The Marked Up Language is important for the Wikimedia projects, but there isn't even a single word on how any of the Wikimedia projects will benefit from this project.
• The project itself is not feasible to justify the amount requested. Spending US$ 61,600 to reach out to people in a tiny area like Rhode Island is too much provided that the same amount could be spend, for instance, in India or any African countries to make a successful outreach to dozens of million people.
• Most of the measures of success use only descriptions on how the project will contribute to something which is not quantified. We need clear numerical cutoff to know beforehand that the organisers would consider the project success if 'the total number of X, Y, or Z would climb over a minimum threshold'.

While the third point can be easily amended, the first two essentially present the nature of the project. Sorry, but the project should be definitely reworked and my suggestions are to do it in the following ways: (i) provide a statement on its alignment with the movement goals, (ii) cut the budget to reflect higher feasibility on its main activities, (iii) define a set of quantity measures for the success of this project. Thanks.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 09:56, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Response from Applicant

Thanks for the feedback and questions. I have attempted to summarize them here and attempted to answer them.

• Why is the proposal important and relevant to Wikimedia?

The project proposes to build and test a system that uses a new form of interaction to give people access to Wikipedia who have a phone but are without a data connection. Using various sources of data this can be estimated at over 4 billion people worldwide with 30 million of these being based in the USA.

This is the same objective as the Wikipedia Zero project but it utilizes an even more accessible form of service interaction. It is reasonable to expect that the business model of a large-scale deployment beyond the proposed initial test project would be the same for both projects.

• What are the exact measures of success?

The effectiveness of any system can be demonstrated by the extent of its use and the number of repeat or active users. Monthly page views per active user are a very good indictor of sustained success and are especially useful when assessing emergent systems. Wikipedia will continue to be considered successful because it has a large numbers of ACTIVE users.

If the proposed system generates a greater number of page views a month per active user than Wikipedia, which is currently at 11 in the USA, can we agree that it is successful?

• What is the purpose of the proposed content?

The content and the user group for the initial trial project have been carefully considered based on previous deployment experiences.

Determining the effectiveness of the proposed system requires a specific test that has COMPELLING content for a REACHABLE user group. An inaccessible user group will yield no information and content that is not user specific and engaging will not be accessed even if it is easily available.

Rhode Islanders living close to Providence is one such user group that is within my region and it also contains large numbers of people who only have 'dumb' phones and don't have easy access to the internet.

Whist a Providence City Commissioner for Transparency and Accountability I came across the unresolved struggle to provide City Hall data access for people on low incomes who have a phone but are without a data connection. They were the inspiration for the system’s design and still seem the most engaged and reachable user group that I have managed to envisage.

We all agree that Wikipedia has great appeal within that group but its content is very broad and a large amount of the Providence specific information is engaging only to visitors or is infrequently updated. Maybe people can suggest what Wikipedia content would appeal strongly to that user group?

• Can the requested budget be dramatically reduced?

Call Charges Assurance Mobile operates a program that offers free mobile phones with free minutes. Targeting their users and helping others to apply to the program could eliminate some or all of the estimated phone charge costs.

Software Development The open source software powering the service is called Asterisk, which has a large enough community to approach for volunteers to undertake the development.

IP Protection Patents for the system are ‘optional’. No one will be able to claim ownership of the interaction if a patent isn’t filed.

Project Management and Data Entry. I could personally volunteer to take responsibility for both the project management and data entry.

All these measures could reduce the costs of the proposed project to $2500. I would prefer some software development and project management budget to be made available.

Such a small budget would certainly slow the project down significantly but even then it would certainly be a good start.

ZeaForUs's question

Are you this Andy Law ?  Klaas|Z4␟V:  10:14, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Evaluation by the GAC

GAC Members who oppose this grant request

1. Please refer to my comment above.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 09:56, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
2. It seems the applicant needs expensive hardware for software. If it does not run on a $600 laptop it's not software we would like to promote.  Klaas|Z4␟V:  10:04, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
3. I am unconvinced this falls within scope of what WMF is interested in, and besides - I don't think that WMF funds should be used to promote patent pending inventions, even if they're not filed. There are enough startup incubators for this. NLIGuy (talk) 05:03, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
4. This obviously has some alignment with WMF's strategic priorities, but I do not believe WMF is an appropriate primary funder for the project. That's not to say it's not a good project, but the ROI isn't here for us to be primary funders. Kevin (talk) 21:58, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Proposal declined

Thank you for offering us an opportunity to consider funding your proposed project. I am afraid we are declining to fund it.

The project has merit, but is too far removed from our core work. It would be interesting to experiment with, but it is not for us to do the experimenting. I suggest you seek funders that are more closely aligned with this work, perhaps on a national or regional level.

We wish you great success! Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 00:15, 7 December 2013 (UTC)