Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Wikipedia Training in Cyprus (ID: 22896026)

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello ShahenWasHere, and thanks for your proposal supporting Wikipedia training for communities in Cyprus. Please see my initial questions below:

• Please contact Wikimedia Community User Group Cyprus about this proposal, as the activities are taking place in Cyprus, and confirm that there aren't any expected conflicts between these activities and their expected programmatic plans over the next year. I suspect there aren't any, but please follow-up with them to confirm. The User Group will also be engaged with supporting workshop activities over the next year in the country (see their General Support Fund activities). Also, it may be worthwhile to see if they are willing to collaborate with your User Group on this project as well. If supportive, I can help connect you to their User Group.
• The proposal doesn't contain any content-related metrics for its outcomes, but includes a lot of activities supporting participants to generally edit. Why have these metrics not been included, especially if specific goals have been set around general participation?
• The proposal mentions that some of the training will focus on article creation. Given that this audience is likely to consist of new editors, and the length of the training and that it covers other topics as well, I am concerned that it may be too difficult to expect participants to be able to create new articles in a relatively short period of time, and in past funded work, efforts to train newcomers to have the skills needed to create new articles has usually required more time than a week. Instead of focusing on new article creation, what do you think about supporting participants to focus more on improving existing articles? Alternatively, I have also seen successful workshops where a group collectively works on creating one or a small number of relatively high quality articles together, with support from experienced mentors.

Please let me know if you have any questions or needs for clarity around proposal feedback. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 00:08, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Hey there, @I JethroBT (WMF)! Thank you for your thoughtful feedback and questions. Below are our responses to the points raised:

Contacting Wikimedia Community User Group Cyprus

We will reach out to Wikimedia Community User Group Cyprus to ensure there are no conflicts between their activities and ours. However, we are confident that there will be no overlap, as our activities focus specifically on the Western Armenian-speaking community and Armenian schools. To our knowledge, Wikimedia Community User Group Cyprus does not run programs or projects in Western Armenian or collaborate with Armenian schools. This makes our initiative distinct and non-conflicting with their programmatic plans. That said, we are open to discussing potential collaborations or aligning efforts with them to enhance the impact of our respective activities in Cyprus. We appreciate your offer to help connect us! Who should we get in touch with? :)

Content-Related Metrics

You are correct that the current proposal focuses on general participation metrics without detailed content-related goals. We will adjust our proposal to include specific content-related metrics, such as the number of edits made to existing articles, improvements in the quality and scope of Western Armenian content, and contributions to Wikimedia Commons. These metrics will allow us to better measure the project’s outcomes and demonstrate its tangible impact on Wikimedia projects.

Focus on Article Creation

We understand the concerns about the challenges of training newcomers to create new articles within a relatively short timeframe. Improving existing articles is indeed an effective way for participants to build confidence and develop the skills needed for meaningful contributions. However, we also want participants to feel a sense of responsibility toward articles they create. To balance these goals, we propose a mixed approach: starting with improving existing articles to develop foundational editing skills and gradually moving to collaborative efforts to create new articles under the mentorship of experienced editors. This approach ensures a comprehensive learning experience while fostering a sense of responsibility and long-term engagement with Wikimedia projects.

Thank you again for your helpful feedback and support. We are committed to refining our proposal based on your recommendations and will provide updates soon on our outreach to Wikimedia Community User Group Cyprus. If there are further suggestions or questions, we are happy to discuss them to ensure the success of this initiative.

Thanks again! :) ShahenWasHere (talk) 09:50, 24 December 2024 (UTC)