Grants talk:Project/NCTE/CCCC Wikipedia Initiative 2020-21

Reminder: Change status to proposed today to submit

Hello Drkill, today is the deadline for the 2020 Project Grants Round. If you would like your proposal to be considered for funding, the status= field of the Probox template will need to be changed from draft to proposed, per the instructions at the top of the application page. We have a strict deadline, so make sure to make this change by end of day today (February 20, 2020). With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:21, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Metrics and cofinancing

Given this project is mostly about serving your own community, I would expect a 50 % cofinancing at least.

It's impossible to conduct any such project without people who are already very experienced in Wikimedia projects. Have you studied past initiatives, for instance of the Wikimedian in residence kind, and which model are you going to replicate for hiring and organisation? Do you have plans to hire experienced Wikimedia trainers to achieve the goals you propose?

The metrics also need improvement.

• I don't see any content metrics. I understand that the project is focused on abstract training, however when it comes to Wikimedia the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so there needs to be some output on the wikis. Identifying the outputs will also be a useful exercise to assess the actual needs of the Wikimedia projects, for instance existing articles in need of improvement or other content gaps.
• Don't use the number of registered users, that's a completely meaningless piece of information. Better measure New active editors.
• When you say 100+100+100 participants, it's not clear whether it's going to be 300 unique participants, or whether double counting is going to be possible. How will remote participants be counted?

The costs appear to be on the high side for a training project for this number of participants. If you were one of those participants, would you pay 850 $ to get training on Wikimedia from someone who has a very limited track record of Wikimedia training? Nemo 12:41, 23 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) 16:41, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for CCCC Wikipedia Initiative 2020-21

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?	5.6
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	5.8
(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?	7.2
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	2.4
Additional comments from the Committee: While a lot of planning and consideration has gone into this proposal, it is difficult to see how it fits with the strategic priorities of knowledge as service and knowledge equity. While content relating to writing, rhetoric, literacy, and language studies could undoubtedly be improved, the grantees have not made a strong case outlining the social, political, and technical barriers to these content areas. Additionally, the proposal only focuses on English Wikipedia. The project is mainly focused on a specific target of 250 people. I don't see a huge impact to justify the costs. The project may fit with Wikimedia's strategic priorities. However its results may be sustainable in the long run only if a sufficiently big number of scholars become active Wikipedia editors as a result. I am not very clear on what this proposal is recommending, and as a result I am not clear on its impact potential. There is no concrete plan to follow up with participants after their program. The long term impact may be difficult to measure if there is no good follow up plan. Proposal and funding request is mostly to support a WiR position and educational activities which are two common approaches to improving content; as such they do not offer a lot of potential for the movement to capture new learnings. Usual program of wikimedian in residence. The project seems to be more innovative than iterative and I would say that its risks are comparable with its potential impacts. Much will depend on the way the project is actually executed. The results can be evaluated though. This proposal appears to be iterative, though it lacks community support and as a result its potential for iteration is challenged. Seems to be a fairly large project team with previous involvement with Wikimedia projects and ties to the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative. However I’m concerned both the budget and scope are too large - given this is a pretty recent initiative, I would be more comfortable with a less ambitious/more focused project plan, and with a budget that goes more towards supporting project activities rather than subsidized tuition and other participant costs. The project can be accomplished in 12 months or less but the budget seems to be a little bit excessive. I would look more closely at the costs of planned fellowships. The participants probably have necessary skills/experience. The project plan seems reasonable, but the scope is challenging. If they hire an experienced Wikipedian in Residence as planned and with the support of other experienced volunteers, they are likely to execute the project as planned. There is very little community support for this project. Given that this is a fairly recent initiative (established in 2019), I think what’s being proposed is a bit premature and more community engagement is needed at this time. I don't see any community engagement here. There has been little community engagement so far. Little evidence of community engagement. There is no significant community engagement and I don't think the proposal was announced in any relevant platform. I am not confident about the impact. 250 people is the potential group. As said for other projects including a salary, it would be nice to know how this salary has been calculated. Some concerns about the CCCC Wikipedia Scholars Program and the administrative costs (15%). I am willing to give this interesting project a chance provided that the fellowships costs are reevaluated. I believe the target audience for this, namely academics, is very under-involved in using, editing, and teaching with Wikipedia, and believe this audience should become a focus. However, this proposal is not clear that this will actually happen. 85,000 to recruit an average of 100 editors is too high. Since The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) would benefit more from this initiative, I think it should fund part of the budget. They should be able to fund at least 35% of the overall budget. 40,000 USD was budgeted for WIR for a period of 10 months. That's too expensive. It is not clearly how many hours they would be working per week or per day. There should be a breakdown of the number of hours they would be working. I honestly think the fund to create CCCC Wikipedia Scholar Fellowships to cover tuition for the 20 initiative participants be funded by CCCC. USD 2500 for award is too much. Can this be reduced by half? Why is it necessary to flew a lead facilitator and lodge them in an hotel? I believe they could consider doing a webinar or something like that to safe cost. I support any initiative to recruit expert editors but approximately 850USD per editor is on the high side.

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) 22:40, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Round 1 2020 decision

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

WMF has approved partial funding for this project, in accordance with the committee's recommendation. This project is funded with US$46,000

Comments regarding this decision:
The committee is pleased to support this project to establish a Wikimedian-in-Residence for CCCC to advance your ongoing efforts to incorporate Wikipedia into a professional context that supports equity and inclusion for diverse college students.

This partial award will cover the cost of the Wikipedian in Residence, as well as the associated fiscal sponsor administrative costs.

Prior to finalizing a contract, we ask that you provide a job description specifically outlining the activities of the WiR role (we are now making this request of all WiRs).

Please note that we consider funding for WiR activities to be short-term. Grant funding that the Wikimedia Foundation provides for WiRs is not intended to support ongoing workflows, but to leverage the partnership to build a sustainable platform that ensures outcomes long after the WiR has completed their service. Their work should secure long-term outcomes that do not depend on ongoing grant funding.

The committee has requested that you seek to share outcomes with CCCC academic community and with the Wikimedian community, perhaps through WikiConference North America. The Wiki Ed Foundation may have additional thoughts about how best to support extension of learning from this project.

Next steps:

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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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