Grants talk:PEG/Yvonne Oluoch/Edit-a-thon campaign for Kenyan influential women

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

GAC members who support this request

1. --Ilario (talk) 09:02, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

GAC comments

I think the most interesting part of the project is its potential outreach effect. Therefore the measure of success should rather be a number o people who are converted into regular Wikipedia editors. An effect measured by number of articles during the events is not that impresive. I mean spending around 4000 USD in order to have around 400 new articles is not very impressive, but having 10 new, regular woman Wikipedians in Kenya is the real value worth spending that money... Polimerek (talk) 22:45, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Community comments

I strongly support the aims of this project. It's excellent to see a list of targeted subjects—that has been missing from so many PEG applications.

What currency is the budget in? Please let's not have to ask in subsequent PEG applications.

If US$, I disapprove of spending so much money on banners. And are they made of gold, at $180 each? It's an online enterprise, so these physical things don't seem an effective use of funds. I'd rather spend the money on social-media advertising for the event.

T-shirts: well, I just disapprove of buying clothing. If people need to be bribed to attend with a t-shirt, they shouldn't bother.

Could we have the bank fees separated from the "inflation" proofing?

I seem to have missed what WMF sites are being targeted. Which languages? And I'm ignorant of local languages in Kenya—could you educate us a little on WMF and these languages? Or is it all to be in English? Tony (talk) 08:22, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

WMF comments

In our experience, funding editathons or education programs where no one has editing experience is not an effective way to grow content or to recruit new active editors. Unfortunately, we cannot fund the proposal at this time, however we very much want to support you and your team to develop a program to focus to improve coverage of significant Kenyan women.

What do you think about starting this project on a much smaller scale, and creating a learning circle with your organizing team and perhaps a few other interested people from the women in tech conference? We can help connect you with experienced editors in other parts of the world to develop a training plan for your small group, and perhaps to act as mentors by email, chat or video as needed. We can also provide you with letters of support if that will help you get access to space to host editing meetups. Once you and a few other members of your team have an editing history, we can consider funding a larger program that includes editathons at schools. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 00:48, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Need help finalizing?

Hi Yvonne Oluoch. Thanks for starting this draft. We are now accepting proposals during the Fall 2015 open call of the Individual Engagement Grants program. If you would like help developing your project plan for submission, I wanted to let you know that we're hosting a few IEG proposal help sessions this month in Google Hangouts. We're happy to provide individualized help with your proposal.

Please do indicate here if you would like to finish this proposal and submit it for the current open call, or if you would prefer that it be moved to the "withdrawn" category for now.

Best wishes, --Marti (WMF) (talk) 19:31, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi again, Yvonne Oluoch. Since I haven't heard from you, I'm guessing this project is no longer on your radar at this time. I'm going to plan to move it to the withdrawn category this Friday (September 25, 2015). Please let me know before then if you are still actively working on this draft and I'll leave it in place. If you have questions, we're having office hours this Tuesday. Cheers, --Marti (WMF) (talk) 20:10, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Moving to Project and Event Grant

Hello Yvonne, your project is better suited for the Project and Event Grants program since it is requesting funds for expenses related to an offline event. It will be moved there shortly. Kacie Harold (WMF) will be in touch soon to offer support with submitting a PEG proposal. Warm regards, --Marti (WMF) (talk) 00:05, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

My thoughts

Just some unsorted thoughts while reading the grant proposal. None of these are intended as criticism, merely as suggestions or remarks about the great idea of staging a campaign like this in Kenya:

• Ting Chen has been to Kenya to launch the "Wikipedia for schools" project. His input about the proposal should be valuable.
• The idea as such is wonderful: getting more women editors - being present at many different events - increasing edits from an underrepresented country - a big group of people willing to help.
• Several issues have been raised on the talk page. The most serious problem with the whole project in my eyes is summed up in what KHarold said: "In our experience, funding editathons or education programs where no one has editing experience is not an effective way to grow content or to recruit new active editors"
• None of the participants appears fit enough to teach contributing to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, so what can they teach them? To upload photos, but what about explaining the scope of pictures wanted, about licenses? That Wikipedia is editable by everyone, but what about formatting, guide lines, what is a good source and what not? Who will teach them that?
• The "Risk" assessment is inadequate, the costs section should state more clearly which currencies we are talking about.
• And for a project this size I would wish to look at outcomes of past smaller projects by the participants.
• Looking at some grant proposals from Ethiopia and Kenya they are all very enthusiastic but planned much too big. Of course "bigger is better" may not be completely wrong, but the risk of failure is always bigger in bigger projects. The bigger the project the more experience is needed, especially if you have some delay und something goes wrong.
• Why not see attending a slot in AWTC as a single project? Then do 1 campus edidathon as another single project and list and discuss all the findings about the editathon 3 months later to see how good we are in reporting the overall effects and what we can learn from the event and make better next time? --Gereon K. (talk) 09:33, 12 November 2015 (UTC)