Grants talk:PEG/WM AM/WikiConference Yerevan 2013

GAC member status

Support

I support this grant proposal. Polimerek (talk) 20:17, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Some thoughts and questions

Thanks for the submission Susanna. Great to see that you plan to organise this conference once again. My questions regarding this request are as follows:

1. Can you provide a link with report from the conference in 2012? How many people attended it? What are the novelties that you plan to introduce this year?
2. Do you have any sponsors who support the conference? What kind of support they will be able to extend to you?
3. How and when you plan to select the experienced Wikimedians who will attend the conference? Do you have any eligibility criteria for people to apply for any of these three places?
4. What is meant by "achieving the copyright law" as noted in one of your measures of success?

Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 22:04, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Here is the report about last year's conference. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 21:33, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Asaf. But I still prefer an opinion sharing some of the impressions from the last year's conference and the things that will be changed this year.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 17:08, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Certainly! I just offered the link for anyone interested in reading the report. This does not obviate the need to answer your questions! :) Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 19:33, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi Kirill.

Thank you for questions and excuse for delaying answers. As new chapter we have many things to do and have many meetings. Foundation of Armenian chapter, encouraged many people, to participate in our activities. Frankly, we weren't ready for so much activities.

1.Can you provide a link with report from the conference in 2012? How many people attended it? What are the novelties that you plan to introduce this year?

• Here is the report of the conference in 2012. Around the 250 people attended the conference.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Susanna_Mkrtchyan/Wiki_conference/Report Since we already are a chapter, now we are going to attract attention of supporters and sponsors, in order to join all able forces for development Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects and Wki movement. This year we prepared the ground for GLAM projects and we are going to organize round table for GLAM researcher, education representatives and the developers of Armenian environment software. This year we are going to involve more participants from regions to organize local active groups. We had good experience with Gyumry. We want to make wikipedia and wikimedia movement as a platform for development of online Armenian language environment. Instigate Foundation developed translator from classic Armenian writing text into contemporary Armenian writing text and now in Armenian Wikipedia we have the button for changes. We are going to invite some people from Armenian language developers’ group in order to unite forces for providing free tools for facilitation of editing in Armenian. (ABBYY Lingvo)

2.Do you have any sponsors who support the conference? What kind of support they will be able to extend to you?

• We have verbal agreement with mobile operator Beeline to get some financial support , they were satisfied with cooperation on Wikiconference Yerevan 2012. Also we have agreement with American university of Armenia to provide Venue.

Our permanent partners are Shirak technologies, Instigate Foundation, KAZA Foundation.

3.How and when you plan to select the experienced Wikimedians who will attend the conference? Do you have any eligibility criteria for people to apply for any of these three places?

• We hope that Foundation will help us to choose right people. The main criteria are experienced with GLAM, Education program (success program learning by contributing to Wikipedia ) and additional tools for automation of creating and editing Wikipedia (bots, increasing language environment)

We hope that we'll have money for invitation more participants from other chapters.

4.What is meant by "achieving the copyright law" as noted in one of your measures of success?

• You can't imagine how huge impact did first Armenian conference in 2012, particularly on negotiation with authorities. All our achievements we received thanks to conference and of course amendments in Copyright Law. Now we are lobbying to amend Copyright Law: works, that had had made on state money, will be considered as public domain.

Susanna SusikMkr (talk) 10:24, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

1. What exactly the cultural program (1000$) is about to be?
2. What about catering - you have left this empty - does it mean there won't be catering at all or paid by participants?

Polimerek (talk) 12:10, 20 June 2013 (UTC) Hi Polimerek. Good questions. We decided to try all our best, to find more money from other sources, that's why we requested lowest sum for each item.

1. Cultural program:

• I have an idea to have a party on the occasion of foundation of Wikimedia Armenia to disseminate our goals and plans, in order to attract sponsors and encourage membership.

1. Catering

• Our team members decided that, only tea/cofee will be free, I am not sure that it is right approach. All depends how much money we can find outside the Grant.

Thank you. Susanna.SusikMkr (talk) 09:26, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Please resolve funds due from previous grant submission

Hello, Susanna:

Please see the note here regarding funds due from your last project: Grants_talk:Susanna_Mkrtchyan/Wiki_conference/Report#Funds_due. This compliance issue will need to be resolved before a decision is made about this grant request, as a significant outstanding amount is still due WMF. Please contact us with questions, and we look forward to resolving this soon.

Regards, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 23:32, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Hello, Winifred.

Excuse for misunderstanding. Whole money is in the bank. In Grant submission I noted that we left money from last conference. I checked it again, US$2097 still are in the bank. I thought that that this money will be subtracted from the requested money for new Grant. Frankly, I have no clue, what I have to do. Best regards, Susanna.SusikMkr (talk) 07:59, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Dear Winifred, it seems to me I eventually understood, what I need to do. You know Wikimedia Armenia is going to organize Wiki loves monuments (Armenia is among participate countries), may be apply for this US$2097 for the organization of this event, more over we are seeking sources for it. If you agree, it would be great.

Susanna.SusikMkr (talk) 09:47, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Hello, Susanna!

Thanks very much for responding about the remaining funds. Now that we know that the funds are unused and safely stored in your account, WMF will give you permission to retain the funds until a decision is delivered on this current grant submission for the WikiConference 2013. If your current grant for the WikiConference 2013 is funded, then we will simply deduct those unused funds from the old 2012 grant from the amount we send you for the WikiConference 2013 grant. If the current grant for WikiConference is not funded, we will ask you to return the funds.

Regarding funding for Wiki Loves Monuments in Armenia, please submit a new grant request according to the instructions here on the Grants:Index if you would like to request funding for that project, and feel free to reach out to us at grants at wikimedia dot org if you have any questions about doing that.

I hope this is all clear, but feel free to ask for additional clarifications if it is not. Otherwise, I will be back in touch at the time a decision is made about this WikiConference 2013 grant proposal.

Best, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 18:33, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

This grant request has been funded, and so remaining funds from the previous grant will be applied to this new grant (deducted from the total amount sent). See Grants_talk:Susanna_Mkrtchyan/Wiki_conference/Report#Funds_due for more details. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 00:52, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Measures of success

You mention you expect the Armenian Wikipedia to have 300 active editors following this conference. This strikes me as quite unrealistic considering both what we know about active communities elsewhere and the total number of Armenian speakers. I note that HYWP currently has a steady number of ~50 active editors (see graph) from within Armenia (and ~65 counting editors from outside Armenia), and has had that both before and after last year's conference, i.e., it does not seem that the previous conference has significantly altered the number of active editors.

What made you pick this number, and can you offer a more realistic measure of success? Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 06:50, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Dear Asaf thank you for questions.

It helped to analyze what is going on and systemize our activities.

You are absolutely right. Sometimes I put very high goals.

A little about the statistics. After the last conference the number of active editors grew up from 200 to 250 (according to the List of Wikipedias) Unfortunately this number decreased during the period December 2012 -June 2013 (Presidental election and Yerevan mayor election).

I would like to mention, that Armenian Wikipedia made essential development on both characteristics as quantity, as well quality. And also there are about 25 wikipedians which feel responsibility for development of Armenian Wikipedia and Wiki projects. We are now working on the outreach of Wiki projects and Wikimedia activities into regions.

Eventually we have scanned and have digitized 13 volumes of Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia and put it in Wikisource. In addition I would like to mention that now active wikipedians are working on collaborative projects.

All our activities on Wiki projects have great impact on activities of editors of Armenian Diaspora. We agreed with Instigate Foundation to have livestream. We are going to use the capacity of Armenian Diaspora for development as Armenian wikipedia, as well local language Wikipedia. (Collaboration with Ukrainian Wikipedia, in autumn with Estonian Wikipedia)

Besides we are thinking how to attract people from other language speaking communities in Armenia. In addition the conference for us the point of culmination of all activities and also last year report and start point for new activities.

In my opinion the main achievement of last year conference, that in Armenian Wikipedia now we have tolerant and synergizing atmosphere. How to measure this, I don’t know.

I'm afraid you're expecting a different response from me. SusikMkr (talk) 14:24, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Susanna, for these clarifications.

(Could you please get into the habit of indenting your responses, using a single colon (:) character at the beginning of each paragraph (I have done this for you now). Subsequent responses use more colons (my response here uses two, as you can see when editing). Thanks!

First, regarding active editors -- let's please stick to the standard measurements used by WMF stats -- an active editor is defined as an editor with at least 5 edits in the past 30 days, i.e. one who edits about once a week on average. A very active editor is defined as an editor with at least 100 edits in the past 30 days. The page you were using is using the "Special:ActiveUsers" measure, which is deprecated (no longer used), and is defined differently -- it defines "active" as editors who have made at least 1 edit in the past 30 days.

So clearly, that is the source of the mismatch in our numbers. You could not have guessed it, I suppose, but let's use active and very active in the WMF sense in this discussion, please. The graph and the stats link I gave above both use those definitions.

Second, I'm glad to hear of this additional result of last year's conference -- community atmosphere and harmony are indeed difficult to measure, but they are definitely worthwhile results of a conference.

Third, since conferences do not seem to generally increase active editors, perhaps you can articulate a different primary goal for this conference? Essentially, what does funding this conference achieve, in terms of our movement goals? Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 22:26, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Dear Asaf thank you very much for your recomendations.

As I mentioned in previos discussion, we have put in Wikisource 13 volumes of Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia http://hy.wikisource.org/wiki/ Ինդեքս:Հայկական_Սովետական_Հանրագիտարան_(Soviet_Armenian_Encyclopedia) _1.djvu ...

http://hy.wikisource.org/wiki/Ինդեքս:Հայկական_Սովետական_Հանրագիտարան_(Soviet_Armenian_Encyclopedia)_13.djvu

(All this we have done, without spending a cent)

Experts say that it is the best from encyclopedias in Armenian. During the Conference we are going to make workshop: how to perform this content into Wikipedia articles ( one page instruction).

I think if we will set goal of the Conference, by the end of this year to put into Wikipedia all this content, we will have both valuable content and new editors.SusikMkr (talk) 12:34, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Scale-down

Do you think you could do this event with an alternative budget that is a little scaled down? In particular, perhaps fewer international guests and fewer T-shirts can be budgeted for? Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 06:50, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

For our active members it is very important speakers from Foundation, other chapters and other projects. They all time asking me how to get more guests, how advertize in order to have more guests.

If we need to scale down the budget, may be it would be better delete the cultural program. SusikMkr (talk) 14:34, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

You're telling me your active members want "important speakers". That's understandable, but can we discuss the need (rather than the desire) for such guests? Also, perhaps one guest can represent more than one subject? Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 22:29, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Dear Asaf one of Conference goals is to start GLAM project. Although I and Beko have made three workshops for museums, but I am sure that our vision is superficial. In addition I hope that we will have round table for representatives of museums.

Also we need to attract programmers to our movement somehow to automatize and facilitate editing in Armenian. We need to know what is going on leading Wikipedias.

Besides we have organized many workshops in universities and high schools, but we aren't so happy in result.

In addition, for our society in whole, speeches of foreign speakers are more valuable.

Nevertheless, I changed the number of guests. SusikMkr (talk) 11:05, 7 July 2013 (UTC)