Grants talk:Project/Rapid/UG NWR-Hist/Aerial photography equipment

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello Красный and thanks for your proposal to support obtaining aerial photographs of notable places within your region. Here are my comments and questions:

• The grant period is set for two years, but we are generally only able to support a grant period of up to one year. Could you adjust the grant end date for 10 November 2022? You may adjust your metrics accordingly.

  Done. Красный^{wanna talk?} 12:01, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

• Would you be able to provide more details about some specific locations and places you intend to document using your drone?

  It's not about some specific locations but more about "we'll take the drone in any of our expeditions, so we'll have an ability to make drone pictures of anything we want". But I already have few places in mind like Nyenschantz fortress that is dug out now and about to be demolished, all elements of Forts of Kronshtadt, that is scattered across the bay, or, for example, Pogankiny chambers that I'm writing article about now. Also it can be useful to take pictures of some high-leveled architectural details, like at Moscow Triumphal Gate or make top-down perspectives of urban squares. Красный^{wanna talk?} 12:01, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

• Does the North-West Russia Wiki-Historians User Group maintain a list of notable places that need to be documented and don't yet have images on relevant Wikimedia projects?

  No, we don't, but we have lists of cultural heritage monuments made for WLM and maintained mostly by our UG members in our regions. We use these lists to prioritize photographic objects on each expedition. Красный^{wanna talk?} 12:01, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

• What plan does the user group have beyond uploading images to Commons? This is important, because simply uploading high quality content to Commons does not make that content necessarily visible to communities or readers. What will you and your user group be doing to ensure that the content is used productively?

  In addition to the fact that we write articles in Russian and English Wikipedia and Russian Wikivoyage by ourselves, we're planning to make a writing contest in the February 2022 as we've done in 2020 and maybe another one in 2023. Красный^{wanna talk?} 12:01, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

• Our goal is to have our own drone. This is not a goal, but is a step that may be important to support a goal. When thinking about goals, you want to think about things that have direct impact on Wikimedia communities and projects. In this case, one goal is capture more high quality aerial photos of notable places and locations.

  Thank you for the correction. I put it wrong. Красный^{wanna talk?} 12:01, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

• However, this is a well-defined goal: Since October 2020 two of UG members learned how to use it and we're planning to teach more to give our subdivision in Petrozavodsk and members in other locations an opportunity to make high quality aerial photos. I think this aspect of your project is especially interesting, because the use of drone technology is a complex skill that has a lot of potential value for building high quality content. Because the grant period for this project is longer, I'd like to request that you provide some more specific activities and metrics in the impact section around this training aspect of the project: Where do you plan to support training? What new skills will participants learn? How many training sessions would you like to support? If you need funding support these activities (e.g. travel costs, food), I think you should also consider increasing your budget to adequately support these needs.

  We're planning to make a UG gathering around the New Year (place is still under discussion), so I think there's no need of additional funds in that Rapid grant request — I'll make a learning sessions during that meetup. All of financial needs that we'll have would be covered by Wikimedia RU or (in case of lack of funds available at WM RU) by another separated funds request here. Красный^{wanna talk?} 12:01, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

  @Красный: Thanks for this clarification. For now, would you be able to incorporate this plan into the impact section? Specifically, that you intend to conduct a learning session, and that you provide a rough estimate of the number of participants you hope will be able to participate? It is OK if you are not sure exactly how many people are interested, and I think providing a minimum estimate would be fine, but I would like this work around training to be evaluated and captured (even if additional funding might be needed later), because this is an equipment purchase (as opposed to a rental). I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 15:01, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

  Done. Красный^{wanna talk?} 15:54, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

• Because this is an equipment purchase, I'd like to understand how you are thinking about maintaining and sharing the drone with others in the User Group or general community. For example, would you be willing to prepare a way of tracking who is using the equipment and for what purpose here, such using a logbook like this one?

  Sounds good, I thought about something like that, but with that example you gave it's easier. Красный^{wanna talk?} 12:01, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 05:46, 15 October 2021 (UTC)