Grants talk:Project/Rapid/AlmaMaK/OER tool and documentation

Hi @Iridescent:

I'd really appreciate your feedback on Help:Adding_open_license_text_to_Wikipedia. I've shown the page to at least 100 experienced Wikipedia contributors and improved it through their recommendations.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 11:27, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Relation to Grants:Project/UNESCO/Wikimedian in Residence at UNESCO 2019-2020

Hi AlmaMaK and John Cummings. The main activities under this proposal related to Help:Adding open license text to Wikipedia and developing case studies appear to be part of the proposed work plan for the recently funded Wikimedian in Residence at UNESCO 2019-2020 Project Grant. We generally do not provide additional funding through Rapid Grants for a project that has been funded through another grant program we maintain, but I would like to understand more about why this additional funding is important and why these tasks cannot be accomplished through the Project Grant alone. And, if I have misunderstood the scope or relation of this work to the Project Grant, please let me know. Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 16:03, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi Chris,

Thank you very much for the message. We have created a graph to help clarify the extra work this grant application includes, which is not covered by the other grant. In this graph, the work done by myself (and the reason for this grant application) is shown by the boxes in blue and the work covered by the other grant is shown by the boxes in red.

As an analogy, the way we think about this central place in the middle of the diagram (unsure if this would be materialised through creating a different site or simply sharing knowledge between the projects) is a little bit like a car recycling plant (I think you would call it a junk yard?). Following this metaphor, this place breaks down a car isolating metal (Wikipedia), glass (Commons) and plastic (Wikidata).

I hope this makes sense to you. Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Best, Alma and John

--AlmaMaK (talk) 09:56, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

@AlmaMaK and John Cummings: Thanks for these clarifications-- the recycling plant metaphor and diagram are helpful in understanding the nature of the proposed work. The central place described in the diagram is fairly fundamental to the success of the project, in that it will support analysis and decisionmaking by users for incorporating the contents of UNESCO publications into Wikimedia projects. Furthermore, the general form this central place will take has not yet been defined, but my understanding is that it would be designed through the research portion of this project:

The research portion of the project will include working the community, Wikimedians in Residence and other groups to understand what is wanted by the community and what might be technically possible. This will include building on the work done on Help:Adding_open_license_text_to_Wikipedia on which text is suitable and what adaptation needs to happen to make it suitable for Wikipedia. I’m able to work in English, German, Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish allowing me to communicate with multiple language communities and to provide the tool in many languages. We are starting with English Wikipedia because it comprises the largest amount of existing infrastructure for using open license text and the largest audience and number of volunteers.

In order to make a funding decision, I have a few other questions about the proposal:

• Other than Wikimedians-in-Residence, what groups or audiences are expected to use this tool?
• In what ways will you be communicating with or inviting feedback from these groups?
• Can you describe what the assessment process of this tool is likely to be? It is difficult for me to understand what this process will look like for the user, or what information could be reported back to the user to support integration after assessment.

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:56, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi @I JethroBT (WMF):

Thanks very much for your reply, to answer your questions:

Other than Wikimedians-in-Residence, what groups or audiences are expected to use this tool?

Anyone who wants to reuse content from an external publication. We think most probably the people who will use it most will be contributors in areas where a lot of open license content is created like science. E.g the tool could be used to systematically extract useful graphics and data from PLOS publications for a specific field of science. We think it will be especially useful for people who contribute to multiple projects e.g Wikipedia, Commons and Wikidata.

In what ways will you be communicating with or inviting feedback from these groups?

We will try to work with both potential end users who will be able to describe what they would like to achieve and also with information professionals like librarians with a lot of experience in organising information:

• Thematic user groups e.g Wikimedia and Libraries User Group
• Facebook groups including Wikipedia Weekly, GLAMwiki Global etc
• Wikiprojects, especially for subject areas with a lot of open license content e.g biological sciences
• Perhaps an RFC (although we are aware this isn't the ideal format)

Can you describe what the assessment process of this tool is likely to be? It is difficult for me to understand what this process will look like for the user, or what information could be reported back to the user to support integration after assessment.

The process will be independent of specific tools and focus on documentation of what has been done (like how Wikidata:Dataset Imports works), but we will provide lists of tools that could be used. This approach will allow people to use what works for them and allow people to innovate e.g if a tool was created to strip images from a publication automatically we could adopt that without having to reorder everything. We are unclear at this point if the existing tools on Wikimedia could be used for this basic process e.g annotations on Wikisource or Commons. We think it is sensible to focus on making it as easy as possible to do and could include using FormWizard like Wikidata:Dataset Imports does.

As an example of a process John took text and images from an FAO publication and integrated them into Wikipedia:

• Annotated the publication in English on Google Docs including where the text was added to English Wikipedia articles
• Uploaded the publications and the graphics from the publications to Commons
• Added the Commons category to BaGLAMa2 to see where the images were used
• Set up a link to see how many people were reading the text on Wikipedia
• Wrote an email to FAO to summarise what he had done (which could just as easily be added to a public page.

The process will most probably have at least the following steps:

• Analyse what is in the publications and annotate which projects the different content could be used on
• Import the content
• Document where content is imported into different projects
• Make clear what is still could be used
• Provide some kind of metrics link to see where the content is used live (to see if the content has been used in further places or removed)

I hope that this answers your questions, please let us know if we can provide more information.

Thanks very much

--AlmaMaK (talk) 14:43, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

@AlmaMaK and John Cummings: Thanks for responding to these additional questions. I can appreciate that there is some uncertainty around what processes do or do not exist to support some tasks to support integration (like annotations), and understand that some of the work in this project will involve clarifying that. It's helpful to know what processes the tool will be covering and where other, existing tools will be provided for guidance.

I am still concerned that the Rapid Grants program is not an ideal fit for this kind of work, partially because the scope of this project is large (in that it involves several tasks involving outreach to communities and UNESCO agencies, research, and on-wiki page building), and partially because we are already actively funding work that is very closely related. More generally, Rapid Grants is not designed to supplement Project Grants where additional work is needed, and will not be sustainable if broadly used in this manner. However, I think you have made a good case for how this work maps onto the existing Project Grant, and why it is important, particularly in light of the community feedback you received on what Wikimedia projects could stand to benefit most from developing and encouraging usage of the OER tool.

I am approving this proposal for funding, but with the understanding that we will be unable to provide additional Rapid Grants related to integrating content from UNESCO publications or building case studies for UNESCO agencies until these projects have concluded. Thanks again for your hard work on this proposal and for your effort to support the integration of an important source valuable and freely-licensed content for Wikimedia projects. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 21:10, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Dear all,

I kindly ask you for an extension of the deadline due to two circumstances. First of all, I was invited to work as a full-time project intern for German Heinrich Böll Foundation until 15 September 2019 to co-organize the "Congress of Young Europeans“ with 70 young activists dedicated to climate and democracy, which took place in Marseille, France, 4-7 September 2019. This was a great opportunity to me and turned out to be a very busy and insightful time in which I had difficulties to work simultaneously on the Wikipedia project. Second, I became a student to the London School of Economics this week (since 23 September 2019) in order to pursue the MSc in Inequalities and Social Science for 12 months.

Based on these circumstances, I kindly ask you to extend the deadline of my grant project until 15 Sept 2020 in order to achieve a high quality result. I am sure that my studies can very positively contribute towards the development of the OER tool since I have access to a wide ranging pool of publications and gain training in the analysis and evaluation of high quality publications. Most importantly, this Master relates directly to my concern regarding the rapid grants project and Wikipedia: to make knowledge accessible to everybody in order to reduce inequalities and strengthen social mobility.

I thank you very much in advance for your understanding. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best, Alma --AlmaMaK (talk) 16:14, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Regarding Project Extension

Hello AlmaMaK, congratulations on the conference and joining LSE! Thank you for letting us know the situation. Unfortunately, we require our grants to be completed within 12 months for rapid grants and this would make it longer than that. If you're able to complete the grant by May 1, 2020 and complete reports by May 31, 2020 which will still be within this fiscal year for us (June, 2020 is when our fiscal year ends) then we can approve the extension. If that's not possible then perhaps it would make more sense to return the funds to WMF and apply again once you're done with your other projects for the year. Does that work for you? Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 21:39, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Dear WJifar (WMF),

Thank you very much for your comment and for offering me to extend the deadline to May 1, 2020 (including the report submission until May 31 2020). This suits my plannings and will work for me. Best regards, --AlmaMaK (talk) 12:32, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Hello AlmaMaK, thank you for letting us know. We've made the date adjustments on our end as well. Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 23:21, 21 October 2019 (UTC)