Grants talk:PEG/Ravan - Community of Arabic Wikipedia/WikiWomen Prize-2015

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

GAC members who support this request

1. --DerekvG (talk) 13:59, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
2. --Ilario (talk) 19:49, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
3. Refer comments as well. -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 18:03, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

GAC comments

Hello Ravan , allow me to make some suggestions, if this a 3 monthly contest I would suggest (and support) that your actually change this grant to make 4 contests and request prize money for all 4 contest + expences for the coming year. Another suggestion You might also ask for promotional materials such as T-shirts or scarfs made printed and send them out to contestants. Actaully paypal is everywhere available, people get their money on their paypal account but they cannot collect it to their own bankaccount ... if they don´t have an account, or cash it at WestUn offices. --DerekvG (talk) 13:59, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

-- Thanks a lot DerekvG for your comment, I think it makes sense, I will change the cost to be annually.Ravan (talk) 20:13, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Comments from Karthik

Hi Ravan, more suggestions. I'll be happy to see a structured contest. I see that you are planning to organise the same in different phases; so why not go-ahead with a different concept all the time. Maybe; first round can me on biographies, second on literature, and so on. Those are just examples; however this will help in balancing the variety of article. Let me give an example; if I would plan to organise something to increase content on Indian women, it will be more about Bollywood and regional film actresses. Also, two volunteers? I'm worried about burnout; which is something I always highlight in grants as I have personally gone through them. -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 18:03, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

WMF comments

Hi User:لا روسا and Ravan, thank you for submitting a request for funds for this project. We were very impressed with the last WikiWomen Prize, so it is wonderful that you and the Arabic community have decided to plan the contest again. Please see our comments below and let us know if you have any questions.

• It looks like you now plan to run the contest four times over the course of one year. Would you please update the request to include contest dates, amount requested and make it clear whether the measures of success are for each round, or for all of the contests combined. Do you have any concerns about burnout among contest participants and/or judges from running the contest 4 times a year?
  • I've updated the contest dates for the 4 rounds and mentioned that the measure of success is for each round. Regarding to the Burnout we don't think that will happen as we lack so much information about females in general and there are a lot to do, as a small verbal checking we did with many editors we think that they only lack the motivation and we hope by this prize will give them that motivation. Regarding to the Jury they will be changed secretly for each round so they will have time and energy to assess the contributions well. Ravan (talk) 18:43, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
• The report from the previous WikiWomenPrize indicated that future contests would benefit from more help from the Arabic Wikipedia Community and offline volunteers. Do you feel as though you have the support necessary to carry out the contest this time?
  • For now we have the community support as we discussed the idea twice already in both WikiArabia earlier in Tunisia and in the Arabic Meetup in Wikimania 2015 in Mexico, for the offline volunteers we plan to use the social media to publish the news among feminism interested organization in order to grab their attention and therefore their contribution. Ravan (talk) 18:43, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
• The measures of success are very high considering the last WikiWomenPrize contest had 275 new articles written by 30 editors in 7 months. Is there something that you will do differently this year to achieve such significant increases in content?
  • Last wikiwomen prize was not well known among all Arabic world as they didn't use the social groups for Arabic Wikipedians to announce. According to the amount of participation we've seen in producer Prize in Arabic community we guess that our expectations are quite reasonable. Ravan (talk) 18:43, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
• Who are your target participants, and how do you plan to promote the contest?
  • We target both males and females and for promoting we will use the Wikipedia interface along with all different social media ways including posting the news in as much as feminism organizations as we know in order to grab them into Wikipedia.Ravan (talk) 18:53, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
• In the last round of this contest, the prizes were smaller ($200/$100/$50) and awarded based on seven months of work. What additional benefits do you expect to see from offering significantly larger prizes ($500/$300/$200) on a quarterly basis?
  • We saw from the Producer prize that this amount of prize would be more encouraging as a beginning to any editor to make his/her edits more focused in both quantity and quality in parallel. As per previous experience we noticed that the earlier prize wasn't taken that seriously and as we are really targeting a big jump in the content we hope that this prize makes a significant difference. Ravan (talk) 18:53, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

We are pleased to see that there is continued commitment from your community to close the gender gap on Arabic Wikipedia. Please let us know how we can best support you to meet your goals in planning and implementing this project. We look forward to your responses to our comments. Cheers! --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 22:47, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi KHarold, the contest of last year was for 1 month and half, from 1 september 2014 till 15 october 2014, i was the head of the jury.

Suggested dates

start date: (2015-2016); End date: (2016)

1. (Round 1) from Nov, 1st to Jan, 30st;
2. (Round 2) from Feb,1st to April, 30st;
3. (Round 3) from May, 1st to July, 30st;
4. (Round 4) from Aug, 1st to Oct, 30st

--لا روسا (talk) 05:14, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Community comments

Tony1

This hits two important buttons: diversity and global south. These are high WMF priorities. In-principle I strongly support the application, but want to know some critical details. These would be best added to the application for the benefit of subsequent reviewers and as reference for judging the report later. By all means respond indented under each issue below if you like, rather than in one big clump at the bottom. Up to you.

Linked site

Some important details are on your linked site in Arabic, which I've accessed through google translate. It would be more practical to add more to this PEG application, wouldn't it, for reviewing and feedback purposes? For example, I now learn that it's Egypt-based and that there will be a ceremony, presumably in Cairo. Where (nothing in the budget about this)? Is the scope restricted to Egypt? What of the dual Egyptian Arabic – general Arabic Wikipedias? The prize money is different from here. I'm a little confused.

@Tony1: Sorry you can check the actual link of the contest, the link that you mentioned and which was put by error is for the last year and it was a local contest. Now, we have a regional contest for all the arabs.--لا روسا (talk) 14:03, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Scope

• When you say: "one or more Arabic-language-related Wikimedia projects"—how widely are we thinking? Why not restrict it to Commons plus only Arabic- and other language-sites of the WMF related to the Arabic world (Kurdish? Farsi?)? Why the English Wikipedia? My instincts would be to narrow the scope.

Measures of success

• It would be almost unbelievable value to gain 1000 new articles, 500 improved articles, and 200 new photos for spending just US$1100. How so, when you estimate only 20 contest submissions, which is not really many? Please give some indication of how you've arrived at these numbers (perhaps it's on past experience?)
• For all five bullets under this section, do you mean "female-related"? Are you including photos shot and uploaded by a female Wikimedian, but not female-related in theme? (Just to understand your scope ...)
• Will there be suggested categories for the 500 existing articles? We're all most interested to get an idea of what female-related areas are priorities—not just for this project, but more generally in the Arabic world of WMF sites.

Process

• Who will the judges be, and what skillbase or experience will they need? Who will choose them? Will there be strict conflict-of-interest guidelines?
• How will you balance number of entries, quality, and mode? This needs some basic guidelines. So one contestant submits two really important and high-quality article improvements on major female-related issues; another submits 40 female-themed photos (of which five might be judged as probably featured quality)? I note that the judges can't talk to each other about it (or can they?). If it's to be an all-in-the-mix, judge overall on quality, quantity, mode, judges' discussions will be rather important, won't they?

Language comment

• "Each contestant creates a "Submission page" in which he lists a number of goals he thinks he can achieve". In English, it's now considered to be gender-skewed to use "he" and "his" generically to refer to both women and men. Please consider changing the application form to gender-neutral language: "s/he" is fine; so is "she or he", or "he or she", or "she/he" or "he/she". You could also use the singular they ("in which they list a number of"). Take your pick—but not "he" alone. I raise this because the gender-related goals of your project in particular, but it would apply anywhere.

Transaction costs

• Awful that it's 10%. It's just feeding banking monopolies. Can't you transfer direct to bank accounts cheaply and securely? But I do like the fact that it's cash, and I like the 500–200–100 division (perfect).

Tony (talk) 08:38, 2 October 2015 (UTC) -- I totally agree with you Tony, I personally went through many difficulties due to the financial boundaries in MiddleEast, No Pay pal, No Visa Card and Master card activated in some countries, so Western Union and direct transfer seems to be the best solution, Direct transfer through banks I'v tried it and they deducted almost 12% as a fee for the transfer!! I know it's shocking comparing to the easy and fair services in the west but unfortunately this is the case here.Ravan (talk) 08:16, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Comment

• I note that most of my queries went unanswered. That's hardly satisfactory. Tony (talk) 02:24, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

HiTony1, You have asked some important questions, and thankfully as the template on the top of the page shows, this page is still open for comments. You may notice that a few of your questions have been answered in the response to WMF questions. Although the goals do seem high, they are in line with results from the Producer Prize, so they do not seem unreasonable. We decided to fund this request because both the organizers have a record of success running Wikimedia programs, the contest itself has had good outcomes in the past, several GAC members supported it and we were satisfied with their contest plans and measures of success. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 06:05, 24 October 2015 (UTC)