Grants talk:PEG/Pleclown/Youth Olympic Games 2016

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

GAC members who support this request

1. --DerekvG (talk) 20:10, 5 January 2016 (UTC) I think this is a worthwile project
2. Béria L. de Rodríguez ^msg 16:31, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

GAC members who abstain from voting/comment

1. As staff member of Wikimedia CH I am in a COI and I cannot vote, anyway I confirm that Pleclown is a very good photographer, with strong technical qualities and I am sure he will do a good job if he can have this opportunity. --Ilario (talk) 17:41, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

GAC comments

Scope of PEG and FDC

I think this is the kind of project that should have been fully funded by the local chapter, by being included in their annual plan. Having several funding sources for a single project means multiplying the costs associated with distributing the Wikimedia movement money and while I understand why it is done for huge-budget events (Wikimania and other conferences for instance) I'm really reluctant on doing that for only 4000US.

This is not a comment on the value of this project : it definitively worths the movement's money. I just think we should take this grant as an opportunity to clarify the relationships between the FDC, the chapters, and the GAC. Léna (talk) 10:51, 29 December 2015 (UTC) Léna (talk) 10:51, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Camera equipment

@Wolliff (WMF), Pleclown, and Ilario: The proposal says: After the event, the camera body and all the gear will join the Wikimedia CH equipment pool. Since it is quite a significant part of the budget, I would suggest this to be treated somehow like a joint submission from Pleclown and WMCH. Also, while the personal Pleclown's expenses are single-time, the camera will last for long, so another reason to treat these two parts little differentially (though I don't have any objection with treating this as Pleclown's own, I just think the slight explicit separation would be more helpful for evalutaing the submission). Up to you guys...

@Ilario: Can you or somebody from WMCH please state the verification of the will to accept the camera equipment to WMCH equipment pool as well as its expected/planned utilization? Thank you. While I don't doubt having a shared camera is useful, I just want to be sure it will have reasonable utilization...

— Danny B. 06:10, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Community comments

Hello, for those that I have not met yet, my name is Gabrielle Marie, I am a WMCH community liaison for the french speaking community in Switzerland. In an attempt to provide answers to the various questions:

@Léna Pleclown's request for a press accreditation was carried out during the course of the month of October 2015 after WMCH's submission for the annual plan 2016 which can be found here. This explains why the association has not provisioned for it and why his application was submitted via this channel ( on top of the ongoing micro grant request here).

Why is it not part of the Support for photographers programm ? Léna (talk) 11:24, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

@ Wolliff (WMF) & Danny B. We understand your points of concerns but we think that the equipment pool as such might not be the best course of action. Indeed, we observed that this method is not the most optimized support to the Swiss community, as the equipment does not move around so much and technology also becomes quickly obsolete. Therefore, we plan to use the equipment as subsidized support to another active photographer, once Clément is back from the trip.

In light of the above, we are also discussing alternative options with Pleclown such as maybe renting the equipment for the time of the event instead of purchasing it to see if it could decrease the funding request ( see below). We could also borrow it from another chapter ( if available at the time), only the costs associated with transport, insurance and taxes + staff time to handle it would probably not make a great difference.This being said, once additional information has been collected, a revised budget and/or further alternatives will be provided to see what could work out best for everyone. As indicated, Pleclown is a very active contributor who dedicates at least 2 week-ends a month to Wikimedia Commons projects which is why WMCH is so keen to support him.Thank you.--Gabrielle Marie WMCH (talk) 19:22, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Hello all,

I have no problem with renting. It would cost something from 400$ to 1000$, depending on the date of the decision. Buying a camera body (and the rest of the equipment) would give WMCH a good quality camera body to lend to photographers. As I see it, Fabienp could benefit from such a camera. He is providing great pictures with his 60D, and could do a better job with a 7DmkII. Pleclown (talk) 20:09, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Many thanks for the PEG comity's support to Pleclown. WMCH looks forward to share his contributions with the community.

WMF Comments

Hi Pleclown, thank you for your work on this request, and your responsiveness to comments. It is great to see how closely you have been working with WMCH to plan this project. Given your strong reputation as a contributor on Commons, this sounds like an exciting opportunity. Please see the questions and comments below:

• The cost of purchasing a camera is rather high, and it sounds like WMCH has determined that having an equipment borrowing program is not the best use of their resources. It would be good to have a comparison of costs between borrowing the equipment from WMDE and renting it in Switzerland. What would the cost of rental be if the request were approved by the end of this week or next week?
• How many images do you expect you can take using only the camera that you currently own?
• The measures of success section needs more detail. For example, of the 1500 images (150 per day x 10 days), what percentage do you estimate will be uploaded to Commons and used in Wikimedia projects? WMCH and WMFR have both funded photography at sporting events in the past. They may be able to help you estimate rates of images in use, page views or measures of success that you could expect from this project.
• How will this project fill gaps in content on Wikimedia projects? Are there particular athletes, sports or national teams that lack images or articles that you plan to focus on?
• Do you have any plans for how to engage communities in your project? You might consider working with volunteers on other language projects to host thematic weeks, contests or social media campaigns to encourage others to incorporate images into Wikimedia projects.

We look forward to your responses so that we can learn more about the potential impact of this project. Cheers, --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

First of all, I don't think that borrowing equipment from WMDE is a good idea. Their camera does not come with a CF card (as far as I can tell), and the cost of shipping between Deutschland and Switzerland would be prohibitive. If the decision is made and the equipment still free, it would cost around 330.- CHF ([1] and [2] for 15 days each) plus two back-and-forth travels to Bern (around 100.- CHF).

I think I would be able to produce about two-third of the images with only one camera, but it would be much more tiring and risky for my equipment (which I bought on my own funds, might I remind).

1500 images is the number of images that I would upload to Commons. The current usage rate of my sport images is around 10%, as I pointed out in the request (6650 images uploaded, of which 657 are used in 3482 articles).

All athletes, sports and national teams are currently lacking quality images. I will try to concentrate on sports such as short track, speed skating, biathlon... but I don't have a plan yet (the final schedule has just been released).

Finally, I want to point out that I'm a volunteer, investing a lot of personal time and funds in this project (10 days of holidays, various clothes and equipment). I'm not a community manager or a paid advocate, and I have a full-time job. I do not plan to invest all my spare time in thematic weeks or contests.

Pleclown (talk) 12:27, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Funding decision

We are pleased to support this project with partial funding in the amount of $2,060, with the understanding that WMCH will provide an additional 500 CHF through their microgrant program. We hope that WMCH will consider supporting Pleclown's work by encouraging volunteers or other chapters to incorporate images from this project into new and existing articles. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the discussion of this request. We look forward to seeing the great new images of winter sports! --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 00:29, 16 January 2016 (UTC)