Grants talk:PEG/WM ZA/WMZA Funding Jun15-Dec15

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

GAC comments

measurable measures of success

H, guys! I am still looking through the proposal but small comment: the measures need to be measurables. When you say increased number of chapter members, it is nice to know what is the target value. The same relates to other measures rubin16 (talk) 10:15, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi rubin16, thanks for the feedback and sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I will be making some significant changes to the bit right now to better reflect our core measurables (membership numbers, volunteer base, survey participation rates, etc.). I assume that success metrics for the projects (WLM, Afrikaans Writing Comp, JHBpedia) are okay as they are already present. Is that right? --Discott (talk) 20:24, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

WLM 2015

Did you consider that at the moment there is an ongoing discussion to move the data in Wikidata and that there is no international team still ready to take in charge the organization of WLM? I suggest to setup a second scenario when there will be only a national contest if the WLM will not be managed internationally. --Ilario (talk) 07:44, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi Ilario, that is a good point. By and large we have found that international component of WLM has only ever played a very small role in the organisation of WLM in South Africa. Should the international component of WLM have no international organizing team this year then I do not foresee this having any negative impact on the South African competition. As for Wikidata, I am not so sure what you mean? What role will Wikidata likely have in future WLM?--Discott (talk) 11:34, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

There will not be any bot for this year's contest and the idea is to move the data in Wikidata. Basically this is a change management that will have (surely) an impact in all national contents deepening on the relation that these contests have with the central repository of the data. The international team had in charge two important tasks: the setup of the campaigns and the management of the centralnotice. Do you have something able to setup them? --Ilario (talk) 09:59, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Human resources

Thanks for the submission. The request with all these activities seems to be very promising and challenging for the period to come. Given the budget, the planned activities are realistically achievable, but, unfortunately, we do not have evidence on the human resources that you have for all these activities. So, my questions are the following:

1. How many people will work on all these activities? How many of them will be volunteers and how many paid staff?
2. What are the ways the people will be engaged in these activities? Do you plan to group them into teams? If yes, what is the size of the team for each activity? If no, what other way you plan to use to manage your human capacities?
3. How do you plan to pay the project management fee(s)? Do you intend to commission people who will get involved only for some activities or for all of them? How many persons do you plan to commission? What is your strategy in matching volunteers and paid staff?

Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 10:41, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

WMF comments

Hi Theresa, Douglas, and the rest of the WMZA team. Thank you for your efforts in revising this grant request for a 6-month PEG. We appreciate your understanding and flexibility with the process. We understand that this request is to continue a number of programs already in the planning stages and the next request (Dec-June) will be focused on developing and implementing a new strategy for outreach to active/new editors based on the results of your survey and other community insights. We have a number of comments/questions on the proposal and look forward to your responses.

Thank you Alex, I have replied in Teal below.--Discott (talk) 19:13, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Administrator

As the Administrator position will be moving from full-time to half-time, it would be good to get a better sense of what the priorities are for this transition period. The current list in the proposal is comprehensive of the past duties she fulfilled. What are the priorities these next 6 months and what will she be actively working on? What day-to-day admin work will now be shared amongst board members?

Now that the Administrator is a part-time position she will not be responsible for the following activities (these have been struck-off the list on the main page).

• Compilation of grant reports (to be done by board members with some assistance from the Administrator)
• Complication of grant applications (to be done by board members with some assistance from the Administrator)
• Survey, Metrics & Evaluation Management (to be done by board members)
• Request for Geobanner notifications (to be done by board members)
• Africa community facilitator (will not be done in the future)
• Liaison with stakeholders (to be done by board members)
• Africa outreach coordinator (will not be done in the future)

Thanks for providing more detail on what activities will now be done by the board members or stopped completely. Considering board members will be taking on more responsibility, we understand if there is a decrease in the number activities and increase in programmatic focus. In terms of the Africa community work more broadly, are there other community members, whether within South Africa or in other countries, who are interested in taking up this work? Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:49, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Not that I am aware of but I will ask Theresa or Dumi if they might know of anyone. I will also put out a call to see who might be around to step in. The most likely people I suspect to put them selves forward for this responsibility would most probably be one of the Tunisians but honestly that is just a guess.--Discott (talk) 07:39, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

WLM 2015

1. The notes attached to the metrics table seem to be missing. Also, the bytes number seems very high. Please note that bytes are only for articles and not for images/media. See the Global Metrics bytes added/removed Learning Pattern for more information.
2. It's great to see that you are diversifying strategies for getting new participants and continuing to increase the quality of images submitted. We especially like the addition of a prize for best use on Wikipedia. Will you also be doing an editathon or event to support new users with integrating their photos on Wikipedia or other projects? Please add a metric around the number of images used.
3. Are the costs for flights, car rental, and hotel for the winners of the competition?
4. What is the breakdown of the prizes awarded (please add to the notes section of the budget)?
5. Our understanding is that this will be the last year WMZA participates in WLM for the foreseeable future. Your number of expected participants and images is basically the same as last year and this is the last year of outside funding for the project. Please confirm.

My answers for WLM 2015

1. Corrected the bytes number, the original number was indeed the number for submitted media and not articles. This has been correct and notes have been added to the metrics.
2. Yes, during the two workshops being conducted with ORMS and the outreach activities done in rural town with Heritage Western Cape a key part of these activities will be a short upload marathon at the end to both teach participants how to enter the competition as well as get them to submit entries they would have taken that day.
3. Yes & No. The majority of costs for accommodation and transport will be for winning participants in the competition. However we would like to be able to bring down at least two WM ZA board members from Johannesburg so as to both participate in the award ceremony as well as attend the WM ZA AGM that will be held at the same time. This will allow us as a chapter to save on transport costs.
4. Prize categories have been added. There is a difference of R3,000 between the current prize total (R21,000) and the prize total in the budget (R25,000). We plan to either increase the value of existing prizes with the outstanding R3,000 or use it to create a new prize category such as "most uploads" or "most heritage sites covered" or "best new article on Wikipedia about a South African heritage site."
5. No. This will be the second last WLM event we plan to host. According to our existing MOU with our project partner Heritage Western Cape (signed in 2014) we will conduct one last WLM event in 2016 in addition to this one. We are however beginning to see diminishing returns on WLM and therefore plan not to host it again after 2016 unless something unexpected happens.

Just to clarify, in question #2 I was asking about an editathon where participants or other editors (who did not contribute photos) get together to work on articles and add photos, not just learn how to upload to Commons. Is this something that the community would be interested in and could be integrated into the plan? Also, we would suggest keeping open the possibility of rethinking WLM based on this year's results. We don't think it's a good idea to commit to doing it again next year if there continue to be diminishing returns -- no partner wants to continue to fund projects that may have seen their peak of engagement and we'd be happy to discuss other ways to channel this interest and energy (and provide guidance on how to negotiate with Heritage Western Cape, if needed ). Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:49, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

That (an edit-a-thon to create or improve articles using submitted content) is a good suggestion and is something I think people might be interested in. It is also, so I suspect, the sort of thing that would not likely cost any or very little additional money. The only cost would likely be for food and drink which should be less than R1000 which means I could just take from the existing catering budget. My suggestion would be host such an edit-a-thon in October. Shortly after WLM has concluded. I am certainly open to rethinking WLM based on this year's results (or other factors). The easiest option for us would be to keep things as are but I have been thinking about running a Wiki Earth competition next year instead. Either way unless some one else wants to manage WLM in South Africa I want to stop my involvement in it after next year's event.--Discott (talk) 08:04, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Joburgpedia

1. It would be helpful to have an update on progress made the first half of 2015. How did the 2 editathons and writing contest go? Are there updates on the partnerships?
2. We understand the main goal is to "increase Wikipedia coverage of iconic buildings around Johannesburg". In the last grant discussion, we talked about the need to have a better understanding of the progress that has been made in terms of this goal, the remaining quality and content gaps, and the strategy targeted to fill those gaps. We are still missing this information and the project implementation page only includes details on Phase 1.
3. Similarly, we had suggested doing a content review in preparation for the JHF WiR to make sure their time is used most effectively. Did you decide to do this? If yes, what progress has been made?
4. We agree that there is a ton of potential content to be gotten from the partnership with the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation. However, the current plan shows a mismatch in goals between a more general outreach strategy (lots of events, school program, and metrics around new editors/female editors) and the traditional role of a WiR to be a liaison between the GLAM institution and active community. To fund the residency, we need to see 2-3 active editors who are supportive of Joburgpedia and interested in writing articles about the content that the WiR releases. It is not the role of the WiR to write articles themselves (as this runs the risk of paid editing) but to release content for others to use.
5. In terms of the outreach activities, please provide an update on the editors that were involved last year. Of the 19 new users, how many are still editing or engaged with the project otherwise? We would like to have a better understanding of how these new users are continuing to stay engaged.

I am removing this component from this grant request and requesting that it be moved to a new PEG request as these questions would likely take some time to answer and I am not best positioned to answer them. --Discott (talk) 19:13, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Afrikaans

1. We're very excited to see increased activity with the Afrikaans community and appreciate the efforts Theresa and Deon have put into engaging and activating this community.
2. It's great that you're hoping to engage students more in this competition. Beyond publicizing in Beeld, can WMZA connect with a focused number of schools directly? The previous writing competition aimed at students encountered a number of challenges and was ultimately unsuccessful. What will the chapter be doing differently this time in terms of organization to insure better success?

We agree that previous attempts to launch a writing competition have not met our expectations in terms of participation, content edited etc. Launching a similar competition on the Afrikaans Wikipedia (for the first time) is not only a high priority, but we want to make sure that we do it right. On 12 August, both Theresa and Deon will be attending a meeting in Pretoria with various stakeholders (currently 9 representatives from various organisations) to discuss not only the competition in detail, but also increasing content on the Afrikaans Wikipedia. We want to use this session to brainstorm various ideas, approaches and strategies. These individuals have expressed great interest in joining hands to increase this Wiki.

One of the stakeholders - a Prof at the University of the North West - has even attempted a similar Wikipedia writing contest as part of his class but this too wasn't very succesfful. Unfortunately I do not have the names of all the individuals who will be attending. They have been invited by the Virtual Institute for Afrikaans and will also be paying for the workshop. These are the list of people who are already on board :

• Wikimedia Belgium
• Beeld
• Maroela Media
• Virtual Institute for Afrikaans
• Dagbreek Trust

We believe that these organisations can give us access to other organisation who have the aim of promoting Afrikaans as well.

I think that after this workshop, we will be in a better position to give the Foundation the direction which we intend to follow on this competition.--Humetheresa (talk) 06:04, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

1. The budget for the competition seems quite high compared to other similar contests across the movement. Please provide more details on the event launch, printed material, roadshow, project management fees, and breakdown for prizes and judging fees.

As this is our first project as part of reaching out to the Afrikaans community, it has been very hard to put this budget together. We agree that although it is higher than other similar projects, we have compiled this budget with not only the competition in mind, but also to promote the Afrikaans Wiki as much as possible on various platforms. Although well-established, this community has not seen efforts from the Chapter to promote their language Wiki. The budget tries to address these needs as well as cater for the competition as follows :

Budget Line Item	Notes
Event Launch and Outreach Activities	Should we decided that this competition will be aimed exclusively at learners - both at secondary and tertiary level, we will have to engage through partnerships (which we believe will happen on the 12th) to effectively introduce the competition to schools and to get the learners on board.
Printed Project Matter, Press Kits and Telecommunications	Although we have two Media houses on board, we have allocated an amount for general advertising, communication and liaison with schools
Roadshows	We have made provision for not only introducing the competition to the target audience, but also allow for workshops where learners can interact with Wikipedia as a whole and see the benefits of using it as a tool in their education system
Incidental Costs and Contingencies	Various costs not budgeted for
Project Management	Project co-ordination by Deon
Winning Prizes	We would like to offer various prizes for individual participants as well as the institution that they represent. We have a commitment from Wikimedia Belgium to offer a prize as well. Our initial thoughts are 1st prize, 2nd prize, 3rd prize, Best Use on Wikipedia.
Judging	The aim is to get experienced Afrikaans editors to judge the competition but it would be a good idea to involve the other partners as well. This is not a guaranteed expenditure as some of the partners (after the meeting) might agree to do this voluntarily.

--Humetheresa (talk) 06:17, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

1. Please note that the Learning & Evaluation team has just completed a Program Toolkit for Writing Contests that will be a useful reference.

Thank you for this, we will certainly look at it--Humetheresa (talk) 06:17, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for this additional detail. As mentioned above, we are really excited about the recent engagement of the Afrikaans Wikipedia community and all your efforts to support its development. We also want to make sure this first activity supporting the community is a success. We encourage you to focus on the writing competition as the main strategy, with additional targeted outreach to schools and students. Larger launch/outreach events and general workshops have not proven to be very effective at engaging or sustaining new users. As Kacie Harold discussed with Deon at Wikimania, we suggest following the below steps for a successful contest aimed at engaging students:

1. Identify a core number of schools where you have already established contacts with faculty members. Contact those schools/faculty on a one-on-one basis.
2. Choose a theme for the contest based on that faculty's expertise and the classes they teach (science, history, art, etc.)
3. Conduct all the promotion online -- through social media, banners visible to non logged-in users, radio, faculty mailing lists, campus announcements, etc.
4. Engage active Afrikaans Wikipedians who can help mentor and follow-up with contest participants both on-wiki and on social media.
5. If you are using this contest as a pathway for a more formal Afrikaans education program, you can set up multiple editing workshops at the targeted schools/universities.

A few other comments/suggestions:

1. What is the targeted age group and what wiki experience will they have? We've found that for secondary students with no experience, translations can be easier than writing new articles. If they are university students, then there is a higher potential for creating new quality content.
2. Contests that target new editors or students often find success either through 1) targeting a few schools to work with where there are good faculty contacts (as suggested above) or 2) as part of an education program where the contest is the culminating activity of the semseter (after students have already learned how to edit).
3. If students are the target participants, the prizes do not need to be so high. A few hundred dollars for the top prize and lower for others. Certificates have also seen to be a good motivation for students rather than cash prizes.
4. We realize the judges have been compensated for photo contests previously, but this is not common for writing contests. For example, often times faculty members can help review a few articles and then Wikimedians can judge for encyclopedic style. We don't believe paying judges will be necessary.
5. We also understand there may be a need for project management fees, but with a more narrowly scoped project with mostly online activity, we expect this budget to decrease.

As noted above, the Program Toolkit for Writing Contests has a lot of great information. We also recommend looking at the Program Toolkit for Education and specifically the information around working with institutional partners since you are hoping to partner with schools. We're happy to discuss further about how best to organize this first activity. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 00:11, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for this feedback Alex Wang (WMF). Deon and myself will study these documents and will be able to provide a clearer picture after our meeting on the 12th where we will most certainly raise these issues. Can I ask that I get back to you on this after our meeting? Thanks --Humetheresa (talk) 06:31, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Partnerships

Conhill Education Programme: “They are involving 50 schools to collaborate on Wikipedia”. Can you please provide more details on this partnership and what collaboration with the schools specifically includes?

Request for grant extension

Hello, a quick update on the status of this grant. We have concluded the Wiki Loves Monument 2015 competition and have concluded all line items of the Core Administrative Budget component except for the Accountant line item. As such I need to request and extension for this grant as the accounting component has not yet been concluded for an additional 3 months to allow the accountants to continue their work? Additionally we have some money unspent from the Wiki Loves Monuments component of the grant. As such I would like to request if around R2000 from the R8772 left over from the travel budget could be reallocated? I would like to know if we could spend that money on catering for the Art + Feminism edit-a-thon(s) that we are hosting here in Cape Town in early March? Thanks,--Discott (talk) 18:00, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Discott. It was great to catch up today! We will extend this grant until May 31st. The report will be due July 30th, but the sooner the better since the majority of the activities are already complete. It is fine to use ~R2000 in unspent funds on the Art & Feminism editathon. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Alex, just wanted to let you know that we have paid a total of R2595 on catering (R1265 for the 2 March 2016 and R1330 for the 9 April 2016 event) for two Art+Feminism edit-a-thon events here in Cape Town. One on the 2nd March 2016 and a second one on the 9 April 2016. Each event was catering for around 30 people. Cheers, --Discott (talk) 19:31, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Discott. Thanks for the update! Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 21:51, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi AWang (WMF), just wanted to update you on two things. There were two additional catering costs for both Art + Feminism events that I forgot to include in the last update totalling R387 (= R160 + R227). The other one is progress on the report from the accountants. I have emailed them to get a solid date for the completion of the report they must send us and so far haven't received a date however I still expect to have the report completed by the 31st May 2016 deadline.--Discott (talk) 19:32, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi Discott. Thanks for the update! Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 19:47, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi Alex. I have requested the chapter to pay for my Transport parking and transfer fees for my FDC meeting. This will be credited back upon reimbursement, at the end on May 2016. This is simply for tracking and records purposes.--Thuvack (talk) 12:32, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

@AWang (WMF): I would like to know if I can use an additional R2,000 from the R5,790 (= R8,772 - A+F expenses (R2,982)) left over from WLM travel budget for catering for our Metal edit-a-thon on the 21st May 2016?--Discott (talk) 12:30, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

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Hi Discott. I love that you're organizing an editathon about metal in South Africa! Yes, it's fine to use remaining funds for catering. Please be sure to include these extra activities in your final report. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 03:07, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi AWang (WMF), I have started work on the draft of the report for this grant which you can see here. I however will require extra time to compile this report as a) it is more complex than reports I have written before comprising of two separate activities (WLM and Core Admin/accounting report), b) I am still digesting the report the accountants sent me on the 24 May 2016 and there are some corrections I would like them to make before making uploading it to Commons, and c) I am a bit snowed under at work for the next week. Would it be possible to extend the submission deadline for this report until the 13 June 2016? BTW, I am happy to report that the Metal edit-a-thon was a success and I have just arranged with the American Corner in Cape Town to host an edit-a-thon every 3rd Saturday on every second month starting in November this year until the end of 2017. We will also host two additional edit-a-thons at the same venue on the 3rd Saturday of July and November 2016.--Discott (talk) 15:45, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi Discott. I definitely understand an appreciate all the efforts you continue to put into reporting and managing the chapter admin issues. We'll make 13 June the new report due date. Let us know if you'll need more time than that. Great to hear the metal ediatathon was a success! Had fun looking at the event page and photos : ) Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 02:45, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi Discott. I just realized that with the extended end date, this report is not due until 30 July, as written above. So you're all good! Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 02:47, 4 June 2016 (UTC)