Grants talk:PEG/Keilana/Loyola Women in Science and Math Workshop

Discussion / Comments

Comments/questions from Tony1

It's such a trivial amount, I'm inclined to push for this to be approved with a minimum of fuss.

I quickly hunted for but could not find any information about where, when, how long, who's conducting, and whether online and face-to-face or one or the other. What are the skill-objectives of each session?

I have argued in other places that editor training sessions should focus not just on creating articles, but on the editing skills needed to improve existing articles. You may well have reasons for not doing this, but I'd be inclined to create several mini-stubs and furnish people with good source material (possibly photocopies and URLs) for the purpose of the opening session, to ease people into it. I've seen editor training sessions that get almost nowhere for want of sources at hand; hunting for actual sources in a bid to gain something to base article creation and/or improvement on shouldn't be part of the early training, I believe. Let's get straight into how to cite, paraphrase, quote. And the more structured the experience is for them, the more they'll learn, in my experience. A two-hour session might comprise three or four changes of method/theme/activity. Tony (talk) 16:29, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Tony, this looks like good value for the bucks. Little to discuss about, only one item of minor amount. --Manuel Schneider^(bla) (+/-) 08:15, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Like Tony and Manuel.
Side tech note/question for GAC/WMF: How is it with the minimal threshold from practial point of view? Should we send the minimal amount (aka add 80$ on top) or stick to the requested amount? I'll open the question on more generic page, this is rather a reminder.
— Danny B. 10:26, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Tony, thanks for your comments! I just want to explain my vision for what exactly these workshops will look like, and I think you'll be happy with the guidance I plan to give the new editors. A lot of the information is currently on internal Loyola pages (as far as I can tell) but there will be a public page on Wikipedia when I sit down with the president of WISAM tonight to iron out details. The first session will be held at Loyola's Information Commons on Saturday, October 19th and I will be conducting it. It'll begin with a 20-minute rundown of basic editing, with lots of reminders about copyright.

I will have created 1-2 sandboxes in my userspace for the new editors to work in and write one sentence about each scientist. I agree with you wholeheartedly that source-hunting is often unproductive for new editors. To mitigate that risk, I'll be bookmarking each scientist's entry in Loyola's collection of biographical dictionaries and have the books available in the room. I will also find any database or web sources and print out a couple of copies. The bulk of the session will be focused on how to cite and paraphrase the sources appropriately. I hope this makes things more clear! All the best, Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 14:58, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Short opinion

Thanks for the submission. This should be definitely supported in a very short manner of time with less efforts, but please reconsider your thoughts once again if you really don't need any additional funds to support these activities. It's clear to me that you plan to use the logistics for free, but there are still some expenses that inevitably occur when conducting workshops. Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 13:33, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Evaluation by the GAC

GAC Members who read the grant request without comments

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GAC members who approve this grant request

1. It's a pretty trivial sum of money, and Keilana appears to have a well thought out approach to workshops that will avoid some of the pitfalls editathons frequently fall in to. The workshops will specifically be targeting under-represented disciplines, which is a plus. Normally I'm skeptical of editathon expenditures because they appear to have very low (read: close to zero) retention rates, but I feel like this set may be an exception since she'll be running it in conjunction with a student group focused specifically around women in science. Given Keilana's track record of content creation and depth of knowledge in this area and the low amount of money involved, I think this is worth approving. Kevin (talk) 23:39, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
2. Just for the record as I already expressed my support above. Appearantly the process was cut short by WMF staff and the funding decision has already been made. --Manuel Schneider^(bla) (+/-) 07:26, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes; in line with GAC comments above about how this should be approved quickly, and our policy of making simple proposals simple to get approved, I approved this last night. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 00:05, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

1. Yes. Tony (talk) 08:00, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
2. Cool, more projects like this allover the world  Klaas|Z4␟V:  13:00, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

GAC Members who oppose this grant request

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GAC Members who abstain from voting/comment

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