Grants talk:PEG/Mohamed Ouda/Egyptian Wikimedians User Group/Wikimedia projects activities in Egypt

A decision has been made on this grant. Comments are still welcome on this page.

GAC members who support this request with adjustments

1. In general yes but something to review like the laptops. I remember that every time WM EG asks for a financial support, there is the inclusion of laptops, no time to analyze the use, but I ask to check if these are really needed considering that the equipment is not for personal use. --Ilario (talk) 07:39, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

GAC comments

More detail please

Hi Mohamed, I am very pleased to see a strategic follow up to your usergroups' success last year!! I think what you have outlined all makes sense, but I think we will all need a lot more detail on what you have planned and exactly what direct impact you are hoping to achieve. I guess I am looking for specific things like x number of articles, x participants in the WLM competition, etc. and ways of extending the project or incorporating the photos from last year's WLM or WLAf (;-)) into articles or WikiBooks, etc. etc.. I think we probably all need that level of detail to judge the cost vs. value of the project. Looking forward to your response. --Islahaddow (talk) 21:52, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi Islahaddow, thank you so much , I added now Measures of success points , please review it . --Mohamed Ouda (talk) 07:32, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

WLM: Photography trip and various

• Photography trips generally takes place for a day considering how difficult it is to arrange for logistics and how difficult it is to arrange/manage people to stick together for three days.
• Could you please elaborate how you are gonna manage everything. I would be more excited to know and many organisers can take this as an example. I would wanna know how many people you are expecting for the Photography trip?
• Could you think of any other alternative like joining Photographic groups in their Weekend plans instead of organising and taking the burden. I generally see many Photographic groups who go on a weekend mission and like your group can simple join them; well, even other might end up contributing and sticking in future. It might become an opportunity to find some partners and simple share burden.
  • What I mean to summarize by above three points are that we could actually save both in terms of energy and cost; and might add more people and value to the project!
• Gift packages for the judges? Will it be only one Jury member? If yes, then it looks like a costly affair. Could you correct or update on the same. -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 07:34, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

• • Hi ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ First of all sorry for delay.

well when we decided as a user group to participate in WLM we put many targets

1. Improve our quality
2. Increase our quantity
3. attract more professional photographers.

So we took more than five month planning for our activities just to make sure we will do it perfectly and our last year activities prove it. Concerning our WLM trips we chose it because it's very unique places which and we couldn't find free photos for this places.

• The destination from Cairo to Nuweiba 700KM so we can't make one day trip because of the destination and we will visit many places There.
• We have more than five coordinator and organizer for this trip and they are photographers at the same time.
• We already made connections with some Photographic groups.--Ahmed Mohi El din (talk) 18:14, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Other comments by Karthik

• Laptops? Alright for use till the project ends; but have you though how will it be used post the project?
• 3 edit-a-thon: How? Where? When? About what? Would need more light on the same. I do see a statement about recruiting 100 new editors; however I don't see any strategy for the same. 1000+ new articles added to the Arabic Wikipedia?: I'm not sure how realistic this could be unless a bot is used!
• Recruitment of Female editors: Might be better if you do an exclusive edit-a-thon for to bridge the gender gap. Would request you to share some light on the same.

Request you to strongly share some lights on these concepts. Thanking you in advance! -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 07:41, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

• I do support these questions as they are important for the grant evaluation rubin16 (talk) 10:02, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi ♪Karthik♫ and rubin16 , yes the Laptops will be assets will used in this project and also it the future projects , and we will make 3 edit-a-thon in three different places in Cairo , so we can attract different kinds of users .

• I modified the new articles to be +600 to be achievable .
• In most of your edit-a-thons we have more that 50% of females . --Mohamed Ouda (talk) 09:47, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Questions by Polimerek

• In your budget there is position: "WLM Calendars print calendars with the winning photos Prize 1 $1000 $1000" - Does it mean you want to print one calendar for 1000 USD and provide it as a prize?? There are also some other inconsistencies in your budget which makes difficult to understand it. Please revise your budget proposal and make it more logic...

Polimerek (talk) 10:36, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi Polimerek sorry this was a typing mistake , I corrected it now please review it now --Mohamed Ouda (talk) 14:40, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

WLM prizes

That's my personal view and my personal experience from WMRU participation but our prior experience showed that high prizes don't result in higher participation/impact, etc. For example, we proposed expensive notebooks, tablets, etc. as prizes in one editing contest; for another contest - 7 prizes worth to 10 ths USD cash with the top one above 2 ths USD: but that didn't result in higher involvement. Furthermore, it resulted in some distraction in local community. So, as Google shows that average salary in Egypt equals to 280 USD, prizes of 1 ths USD seem excessive for me. I think it will be better to make more but cheaper prizes, what do you think rubin16 (talk) 09:59, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi rubin16 , we decreased the amount of the prize. --Mohamed Ouda (talk) 09:57, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Detail

Hi Mohamed Ouda, thank you for your proposal. I am most concerned with the lack of detail and thoroughness in the budget table. Could you elaborate on the per-person cost of transportation and the $2000 for laptops? Do you plan to buy laptops? Have you considered renting them or getting them together with the venue? If you are sure you need to buy them, what do you plan to do with them?

It would sure help if you could link reports of past activities. In general, I would like to see more detail in every section: do you foresee risks? Can you elaborate more on each point in the "Activities" section? Thank you for your time. --Dry Martini (talk) 15:11, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi Dry Martini , the average cost of transportation $100 in month for the all members of the user group , and yes we plan to buy laptops , because we will use them in more than one editathons and in the education program, and total cost of buy will be cheaper from renting them every time . and I updates the "Activities" section now , please review it --Mohamed Ouda (talk) 09:20, 27 July 2015 (UTC).

Thank you for your answers and clarifications Mohamed Ouda, it is much better now, but I still feel the grant request should have been shaped better (I do recommend presenting your idea well ahead of time and discuss it in the IdeaLab or contacting a Committee member asking him to review your draft before submitting the actual proposal). I'd like to know more about your plans for edith-a-thons and the writing competition: will they have a theme? will they have different themes? how do you plan to attract specifically young users? Also, it is not clear (to me, anyway) what you mean for user group coordination and why is it spread in 6 months? What are your plans for that? Does the "monthly fee" refer to contracts such as public transport cards and similar? --Dry Martini (talk) 15:19, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi Dry Martini , we are planning to attract the young users to edith-a-thons be adverting in schools and universities and we make the writing competition to be a motivation for them to start editing, and about the user group coordination , this means meeting we will do to organize our activities and the monthly fee is the average fees for transportation per month --Mohamed Ouda (talk) 09:04, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Community comments

Tony1

Hi Mohamed, the movement is keen to support Arabic-language WMF sites, and Commons uploading from the Arabic world. May I echo Islahaddow's comment above about lack of detail; this is so we can work at optimising the proposal as much as assessing it. Reviewing would be easier if some of the detail were written into the activities section rather than appearing in just the budget lines.

1. Number of units: I'm confused in places, like $50 for refreshments?
2. Is the budget in US or Egyptian currency? Many items end in one or two zeros ... does that mean quotes and actual costs haven't yet been researched?
3. Internal transport in Nuweibe: is that by bus?
4. Accommodation: how many people estimated? What kind of accommodation?
5. I'm not thrilled with printing calendars; would they clearly promote editing ... and maybe even gender diversity?
6. Prizes and gifts—fine.
7. Meetups: we need full details about theme, structure, presentations, even if a few specifics are missing.
8. Laptops: I don't think the WMF will normally pay for laptops unless there's special justification.
9. Editathons: who would run them, how long each session, how would you select the participants, and how many per session, how many sessions for the same people, how long apart, what skill focus? How good the internet connection in the rented rooms? Advertising: I wonder why not all online (Facebook etc) rather than printed ...
10. Any contact with the people who ran the Cairo university scheme a few years ago? It would be very useful to learn lessons from them.
11. Your first aim is "quality"; yet in measures of success, quality is not measured. One way might be a benchmark for number of valued/featured pictures at Commons within a certain time. But there are other ways, too. Please ask us for advice if you need.

It would be great if your responses included editing of the actual application text, too.

Thanks and let's hope this can be made into a great programmatic scheme. Tony (talk) 09:56, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi Tony thank you for your comment and questions.I'll try to give you all the answers.

• • I corrected it.50 person not $50
  • All the number in US dollars.
  • Actually it will be pickups for desert.
  • will be around 10:15 pax.The accommodation will be 3 nights hotel
  • it's encourage the Participators to see the result of their work and let us promote all Wikimedia projects.
  • As we said the laptops will help us mange the Editathons, seminars and prepare the presentation for our workshops.
  • The User group members will run it.Usually we star from 10:00 Am till 6:00 Pm.Usually from the Facebook ads,Ads on all the Facebook page related to the Arabic community and form the universities. the Internet connection is good.
  • We already edited it in the application page.and our members from the universities will share the story of success and the challenges we faced.

please let me know if you need further information.--Ahmed Mohi El din (talk) 17:33, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

WMF comments

Hi Ahmed and Mohamed. Thanks to you and the rest of the group for your efforts and participation in the grant discussion. We appreciate the work you've put into planning these activities and integrating lessons learned from last year. We are very encouraged by the continued development and activity of the user group! We have a few remaining questions/comments and look forward to your response:

Wiki Loves Monuments

1. As Karthik noted above, 3 days for a photo expedition sounds like a long time. However, we understand you chose Nuweiba because of the lack of content about that region and it is quite far away.
2. Last year, the photo workshop was focused on uploading photos, there were 7 participants, and you remarked that it was of little value compared to the other WLM activities. This year you are expecting 50 attendees. How to you plan to recruit so many more people and what will you do differently to make it more of a success? Since we are very interested in the actual use of photos on the projects (in articles), it would be a good idea to both teach people to upload to Commons and how to add their photos to articles. It's great that you have a prize for this! Please add a measure of success around photo integration as well. We typically see ~10% photo integration 2 months after the contest on average. 25%+ is an ambitious goal.
3. Please provide more details on the advertising strategy and budget. It is considerably higher than last year.
4. Please provide measures of success specific to WLM -- number of participants, number of photos, and number of new editors that continue to engage on the projects.
5. Typically, WLM brings in a lot of new editors to the Wikimedia projects for the duration of the contest. It would be great to know if you have a plan for follow-up with these new people regarding how to get them interested in other projects the user group is doing.
6. I realize the prize amounts are the same as last year. However, they are considerably more than the global average. How were these prize amounts calculated? I'm curious to know your response to rubin16's comment above that prize amounts do not necessarily correlate to participation. We have not always seen that be the case and it would be good to know your perspective. You can also think about offering material prizes that don't cost quite as much -- tablets, camera equipment, etc.
7. The gift packages for judges also seem on the high side. Can you provide more details on what these packages include?
8. We have not found calendars to be a very effective outreach tool. If you need something for potential partners, I would recommend you consider printing a few nice photobooks, which normally cost ~$25-$50.

Editathons

1. As Tony1 mentioned above, one-off editathons are not very effective at either engaging new editors/active editors or increasing quality content. We have seen much better results from editathon series (where the same people attend multiple events and learn progressively more advanced wiki skills) or thematic editathons that focus on a specific topic and attract experts in those areas to work with active Wikimedians in addressing content gaps. We encourage you to think about both of these options.
2. Typically, we don't provide t-shirts for all participants of an event, but as a reward for the best new editor or article, etc. Please adjust your numbers accordingly.
3. Is the bus rental to pick-up and drop-off editathon participants?
4. Your last report talked about partnerships with groups like the ADEF Foundation who are able to host your editathons. Are they able to provide a free venue?
5. The calculation for editathon meals is unclear. My understanding is that there will be 4 editathons with 50 people/editathon. The cost for meals and refreshments is $5/person. 4x50x5 = $1,000.

Education Program

1. Please provide measures of success specific to the education program -- number of students, number of teachers, number of ambassadors, and content metrics.
2. Is the internet subscription for 2 classrooms or 2 ambassadors?

Other

1. We are able to fund laptops for the user group as long as they are tracked in the group's Logbook. However, $1,000 per laptop is quite high. We would expect a much lower price for the type of use expected.
2. The Community Notification and Endorsement sections are blank. It would be great to at least have a link to where discussions happened around this grant proposal by your community.

Thanks again for this request. Looking forward to your responses. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 21:00, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

• • Hi Alex Thank you for comments.
• concerning Wiki Loves Monuments trip we choose this place for many reasons:

as I said before we are trying to improver our quality by adding very good Content and very important at the same time because there are no free content about the places we are going to, I know three days trip looks too long but we already did many trips in Cairo and the near places so we have a lot of photos about those places for all those reasons we choose Nuweiba, Sinai for our trip but the distention more than 700km and we will visit many photography spots for this we can't make it less than 3 days.

• WE discussed the prizes for the WLM with photography groups we decreased it.
• Usually we follow with the participants in WLM,Edit-a-thon and Education program using our official Facebook page or group chat making online workshops for them trying to keep touch with them and invite them to every events to make them involved in the community of Wikimedia.
• We asked for good performance laptops because we will use it for the online workshops as our internet infrastructure is very poor and the quality very bad we need high performance laptops, we will try to find something cheaper.
  • we will add all the missing details to the grant page.

please let me know if you need further information.--Ahmed Mohi El din (talk) 14:35, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi Ahmed and Mohamed. Thanks for your updates to the grant request and the responses above. There are a still a few outstanding questions. Please review the comments above and make sure you've addressed everything, either on the grant page itself or through comments, so that we can move forward.

Specifically, we are still waiting to hear back about the following:

1. WLM workshop: Since one aspect of the workshop will be about teaching people to write articles and integrate photos, it would be great to have a metric around photo integration.
2. The advertising strategy includes social media ads and posters. Did you find posters useful last year?
3. What do the jury gift packages include?
4. You have budgeted for 60 calendars. After our phone call, I'm wondering if you've reconsidered the usefulness of calendars versus another type of photo product that would be useful for a select group of current and potential partners.
5. It would be great to hear your thoughts on our suggestions regarding the format of ediathons above.
6. Please reconsider the number of t-shirts needed. We are willing to fund 75 t-shirts if they are cheaper to produce in larger quantities, but they should not be given away to every single editathon participant.
7. We would like to see measures of success for the Education Program.
8. Please link to the laptop you would like to purchase. Considering your context, we would think that $500/laptop is an appropriate budget.
9. If you do have links to community discussions about the projects and grant, please provide them.

Thanks so much for your work on putting this plan together. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 22:21, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi Alex Wang (WMF) , please check the answers below

1. I added the metric tho the grant page
2. yes the posters for useful to notify many poeple about out activities
3. the jury gifts are gift cards from Carrefour Egypt to compensate their work for free.
4. we replaced calendars with photobooks
5. about the ediathons
   1. we will make the ediathons as a series from 2 or 3 sessions for the same people
   2. number of t-shirts adjusted now
   3. yes the bus rental is to pick-up and drop-off editathon participants
   4. unfortunately ADEF are not able to provide a free venue but they will make a discount for us .
   5. editathon meals adjusted now .
6. I added measures of success for the Education Program now .
7. here is [ https://www.jumia.com.eg/lenovo-g5080-laptop-intel-core-i7-6gb-ram-1tb-hdd-15.6-hdd-2gb-gpu-free-dos-black-281816.html the laptop] . and its cost EGP 4,799
8. links for community discussions here and mail sent to the mail list wikimediaeg-l@lists.wikimedia.org --Mohamed Ouda (talk) 14:51, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Changes Request

Please we need to extent project completion date to be 30 April ,2016 instead of 1 March 2016. due to postponing some of the planned activities --Mohamed Ouda (talk) 06:33, 29 March 2016 (UTC).

Hi Mohamed Ouda. Thank you for the update. The new end date is 30 April 2016 and your final report will be due 29 June 2016. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 29 March 2016 (UTC)