Grants talk:Project/Maximilianklein/humaniki

Hello from Wikidata LGBT+

I am just browsing submissions for now. I expect to endorse this. We could use your team's input eventually in designing

• d:Wikidata:WikiProject LGBT/gender

Thanks Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:47, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, Round 1 2020

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for Round 1 2020 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community comments period, through March 16, 2020.

The Project Grant committee's formal review for Round 1 2020 will occur March 17 - April 8, 2020. We ask that you refrain from making changes to your proposal during the committee review period, so we can be sure that all committee members are seeing the same version of the proposal.

Grantees will be announced Friday, May 15, 2020.

Any changes to the review calendar will be posted on the Round 1 2020 schedule.

Questions? Contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 19:27, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Generally constructive, could use input from WMF Research and others

This sounds like a great project, and I think would be a real benefit to the Gender organizing community in the movement. We really don't have a granular enough framework for understanding our progress on biography coverage in the movement-- and these tools have become defacto monitoring for that change. This project would probably benefit form consultation with @LZia (WMF) and Isaac (WMF): who are leading WMF investigations into identifying and tracking knoweldge gaps more generally. Other folks that may provide good feedback or direct the right people to look at this include @MusikAnimal, Marcmiquel, and Rosiestep:.

Additionally, we are going to be working on the Gender Campaign tool as part of a more extensive campaign infrastructure project in the next year -- so surfacing the API from the datasets being developed for this tool, may make it significantly easier to deploy something gende-biography-specific activities within that broader campaign infrastructure (and might demonstrate an alternative model to using such a list building environment). We don't have a roadmap for that yet, so its not clear exactly how that would work. If this gets funded, I would like to make sure we have a close collaboration strategy. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 00:26, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for pinging me, Astinson (WMF). I've been in contact with both of the grant proposers, including discussions during Wikimania 2019. I'm very supportive of the work they're suggesting, as it will be helpful to the various communities that focus on gender, including Women in Red. The data that will come of this work will be useful for those of us who speak about Wikipedia's content gender gap. I have agreed to be an advisor. --Rosiestep (talk) 00:33, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping as well. Always happy to discuss! --Isaac (WMF) (talk) 16:30, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

We would of course be glad to work in close collaboration the researchers of knowledge gaps, that's very important to us, and can be part of our early participatory design phase built into the grant. In addition, as @Astinson (WMF): suggests, the API to augment list-making activities is really exciting too. Maximilianklein (talk) 16:51, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

A few questions/suggestions from Ruslik0

I have a number of questions/suggestions for the participants of this project:

1. The first sentence says: "Wikimedia projects hold several million bibliographies". I have re-read it several times and finally realized that it is "biographies" not "bibliographies"!
2. The project does not explain why merging two existing tools is better than creating an entirely new tool? Are the codebases of these tools so similar that merging them will be so simple?
3. The project calls for hiring "an data engineer with a passion for feminist technology" or someone who is "a better ideological fit to work on a diversity project then two people who benefit from white- and male- privilege". Why is this so important? This engineer is supposed only to help write the program code. The engineer should be qualified, of course, but what this has to do with ideology?
4. What types of gaps (in addition to the gender gap ) will this tool help to analyse?
5. The role of the paid adviser is not clear to me. What kind of advise are they supposed to provide? The adviser as I understand is not going to be someone with a technological expertise?

Ruslik (talk) 20:16, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Hello Ruslik! A partial answer:

1) This one is my fault, I fixed it. Thank you!

2) In fact, we are merging two projects, that will result in a new tool. Some code from the old tools may be reused (for instance some parts in the parsing of Wikidata dumps with the Wikidata Toolkit).

4) You can have an insight with the mock-ups. At the moment, the idea is to have 7 dimensions (Wikimedia project, country of citizenship, occupation, year of birth, Wikidata property, gender, and date) that you will be able to combine to create specific sets that you want to work on. For instance, you will be able to compare the number and the percentage of biographies for people with a specific country of citizenship across all Wikipedias. You will also be able to examine data quality, like the percentage of Wikidata items with an image and compare this across sets.

Cheers, Envlh (talk) 12:12, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

These mockups indicate excellent appreciation of the types of analysis needed for future progress.--Ipigott (talk) 07:36, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Is there something that couldn't be done with existing tools? It doesn't make much sense to spend foundation resources on building tools ontop of Wikidata Query Service while that service does need additional funding to keep running and already provides the suggested stats. Jura1 (talk) 15:57, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Re 4: Why specific software for these "7 dimensions" and not software that can be used for other properties of other items? MrProperLawAndOrder (talk) 01:23, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Lack of community notification(s)

Is there a reason why there is a "TODO" in the proposal? I don't recall this being brought up on Wikidata Project Chat. Jura1 (talk) 15:59, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

It seems the grantee isn't even actively involved in Wikidata. This might lead to the proposed duplication of existing tools. Jura1 (talk) 15:59, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

I replied to these concerns in the section Aggregated feedback from the committee for WHO. Envlh (talk) 08:58, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Duplicates Wikidata Query Service?

It seems to me that some of these things are already done with Query Service. Jura1 (talk) 15:59, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Jura1, could you please elaborate on which features you are referring that are now available with WDQS? I built this tool because WDQS could not process some of the larger questions (in terms of query-complexity), but things may have changed since then and I would love to know so that we could save even more effort. Maximilianklein (talk) 16:40, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

@Maximilianklein: could you elaborate on what can not be done with WDQS and why the project is not a project for any kind of data, but restricted to some specific areas of interest related to data about humans? MrProperLawAndOrder (talk) 01:14, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Hello and thank you for your questions.

• The scope of the project is to study biographical content in Wikimedia projects, not Wikidata items.
• We want the tool to be usable by people who don't know SPARQL. We also don't want people needing to rewrite SPARQL queries to have access to the features.
• Several things are not doable by WDQS at the moment. WDQS only provides current data in Wikidata, it does not allows you to dig in previous states of the project (for instance, you can't explore the evolution of numbers of human beings in Wikidata). Also, the user interface of WDQS does not allow you to easily drill-down or drill-up to change the scope of the sets you want to study (for instance, in this page, you only need to click on the name of a country to filter by a specific country, without having to rewrite or modify a SPARQL query).

Envlh (talk) 08:58, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Use of World Heath Organization's abbreviation

In most places the "WHO" is reserved for use by the UN organization. It seems odd to call that grant "WHO". Jura1 (talk) 16:03, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

@Maximilianklein: Agree with user:Jura1, when I saw the name, I thought it is related to the UN organization. MrProperLawAndOrder (talk) 01:16, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

I replied to these concerns in the section Aggregated feedback from the committee for WHO. Envlh (talk) 08:58, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for WHO

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	7.5
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	7.3
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	8.0
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	5.5
Additional comments from the Committee: The project fits with Wikimedia's strategic priorities. In particular it may help to close the gender gap. The tool itself can be adopted for other purposes, in my opinion. This project provides more groundwork and information to aid in further investigations and content development. I would like to know more about how the proposers would engage with community to promote the use of their tool. The approach is iterative: merging two existing tools and expanding their capabilities. The risk are low and potential impact is appreciable. The measures of success are realistic although they should be expanded to better capture how how many Wikipedia editors really use their statistics. The use of this new tool will be able to be seen from access, general use, and use for informing further study. The grantees seems to have sufficient experience about tooling in Wikimedia projects. I see a lot of money to develop the project and it's a little risky about the capacity to reach all goals in the planned time. This may derivate in other project in the future with the same characteristic. I think that the grantees have necessary qualifications for execution of this project and the budget is realistic. However, the role of the advisor, who is supposed to receive $4000. The project can be accomplished in 12 months or less. I have faith in the team to be able to implement such a process to hire the needed individuals and deliver the product. I appreciate their awareness of how privilege and status can create gaps. This increases my appreciation for this project! The grantee and his team appear to have the expertise to execute the project. I see a particular endorsement from French community. I see a lot of interest about the data and how it could help to look for more human indicators. The community engagement has been quite limited so far. It should be expanded. The community engagement is not critical to the success of this, but I would like to see how they could promote use of their tool. I don't see enough engagement with the relevant projects e.g Wikidata. I believe the Wikidata community should be notified to be sure that this is not duplicating existing tool. I don't have a clear vision about the benefits of the project because this tool create a wrapper from other tool to create new ways to find information. The costs seem too high, and before COVID-19, the reason to travel to Wikimania was unclear. I am going to recommend funding this project. However the money allocated for travel should be removed as there is now zero chance that it will be used. In addition the role of the advisor should be clarified or it should be removed from the project. 50USD/hr is high. It's the highest I have ever seen in this round. Can this be reduced to 40USD/hr? The grantee mentioned in one of his response to a question asked on the proposal's talk page that "Some code from the old tools may be reused ". I believe this should take care of some hours that may be needed to write the code from scratch. Most of the codes needed are already available in Denelezh and WHGI. I think they should be able to spend less than 300hrs in writing new codes (at most 300hrs). It isn't clear from the proposal what kind of advise the advisor would give them. They have also not been able to justify what the advisor would spend 80hrs contributing to the project and why they should be paid the sum of 4000USD. The project name/title is misleading. WHO is reserved for the UN organization. The name should be changed.

This proposal has been recommended for due diligence review.

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal and recommended it for due diligence review. This means that a majority of the committee reviewers favorably assessed this proposal and have requested further investigation by Wikimedia Foundation staff.

Next steps:

• Aggregated committee comments from the committee are posted above. Note that these comments may vary, or even contradict each other, since they reflect the conclusions of multiple individual committee members who independently reviewed this proposal.
• If you have had an interview with a Program Officer, you may have orally responded to some of the committee comments already. Your interview comments will be relayed to the committee during the deliberations call.
• You are welcome to respond to aggregated comments here on the talkpage to publicly share any feedback, clarifications or questions you have.
• Following due diligence review, a final funding decision will be announced on May 29, 2020.

If you have any questions, please contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 22:30, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback, this is very useful! I would like to comment on a few points:

• The approach is iterative: merging two existing tools and expanding their capabilities. The risk are low and potential impact is appreciable. The measures of success are realistic although they should be expanded to better capture how how many Wikipedia editors really use their statistics.

Measuring the usage of these tools has always been difficult. Personally, for privacy concerns, I don't want to directly track users with tools like Google Analytics. One idea could be to start something like a press review, as both tools were cited in several articles and presentations, inside and outside the Wikimedia movement (for instance: "whgi.wmflabs.org" on Wikimedia Commons, "denelezh.org" on Wikimedia Commons).

• I don't see enough engagement with the relevant projects e.g Wikidata. I believe the Wikidata community should be notified to be sure that this is not duplicating existing tool.

The Community notification section of the project grant (with the TODO) is not up to date and several communities has been notified. Specifically, Wikidata community has been notified:

• At WikidataCon 2019.
• In its weekly summary, which is sent to the Wikidata mailing list, to its Project chat, and to everyone who subscribed to this newsletter.
• By email to Lydia Pintscher and Léa Lacroix at the beginning of the year. I think I can say that Lydia's reply was positive.
• A banner has been displayed on Denelezh for several weeks in February and March with a short explanation and a link to this project grant.

I'm confident that there is no similar project active in the Wikimedia movement at the moment. We have some documentation about similar projects. In an email dated April 1st, 2019, Léa Lacroix stated about WDCM Biases Dashboard that "no further development or new features will be added. Only maintenance will be done on this board.". Also, Goran S. Milovanović, the data scientist who built WDCM, endorsed WHO grant.

• The project name/title is misleading. WHO is reserved for the UN organization. The name should be changed.

We totally agree with that. This name is temporary and was chosen before the pandemic, as some sort of pun like "Who is in Wikimedia projects?". We still don't have decided on a definitive name, but we are looking for a friendly name (not an acronym) which is easy to remember (not like Denelezh).

We are still processing your feedback (including the points I commented) and we of course intend to take them into account (Max already replied directly to you about some of them). Envlh (talk) 07:00, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Round 1 2020 decision

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for a Project Grant.

The committee has recommended this proposal and WMF has approved funding for the full amount of your request, US$35,500

Comments regarding this decision:
The committee is pleased to support the integration and improvement of two actively used statistical tools tracking the gender gap.

We would like to see you continue to coordinate with Alex Stinson about integration with any gender-focused campaign tools developed by the Wikimedia Foundation. We would also like you to prioritize consultation throughout the life of the project with gender equity oriented groups like Women in Red and others, in order to make sure the updated features will be developed in response to the needs of such groups.

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
2. Review the information for grantees.
3. Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
4. Start work on your project!

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