Grants talk:Project/Swahili machine translation research

Project Grant proposal submissions due 30 November!

Thanks for drafting your Project Grant proposal. As a reminder, proposals are due on November 30th by the end of the day in your local time. In order for this submission to be reviewed for eligibility, it must be formally proposed. When you have completed filling out the infobox and have fully responded to the questions on your draft, please change status=draft to status=proposed to formally submit your grant proposal. This can be found in the Probox template found on your grant proposal page. Importantly, proposals that are submitted after the deadline will not be eligible for review during this round. If you're having any difficulty or encounter any unexpected issues when changing the proposal status, please feel free to e-mail me at cschillingwikimedia.org or contact me on my talk page. Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2018

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2018 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community comments period, through January 2, 2019.

The Project Grant committee's formal review for round 2 2018 will occur January 3-January 28, 2019. Grantees will be announced March 1, 2018. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

--I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 02:59, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Questions/Comments

Thank you for this proposal but I have a number of questions/comments:

1. "The first step in solving this problem is to test, on a small scale, the value of two main language tools that are readily available in commercial languages" Which tools do you mean?
2. And a related question. What commercial MT engines are you planning to improve?
3. In the current budget the server space costs are $40,000. Why is it so expansive?
4. The development of an actual translation engine is planed to cost only $8,000. Is this realistic? How did you estimate it?
5. You are planing to modify at least 20 English Wikipedia medical articles (which are a sensitive topic) in order to conduct your experiment. However I see no evidence that you have contacted the English Wikipedia medical community. This lack of outreach may easily doom your project.

Ruslik (talk) 17:51, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Swahili machine translation research

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?	5.3
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	4.5
(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?	3.8
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	2.8
Additional comments from the Committee: The project fits with Wikimedia's strategic priorities and has a potential for online impact. However its sustainability and scalability are questionable. The translation tool will need a continuous maintenance, which is not assured. The potential impact of the study could be huge, but that is not completely clear it would be. The approach is rather innovative. Impact can be large but the risk are substantial. In particular, there is no evidence that the MIT translation tool can be significantly improved to make its usable for translators. There is no evidence that the article simplification experiment will be permitted by the English Wikipedia community and that the necessary number of human translators will ever materialize. There is complication with the measurability of the project's outcomes. It is much too broad to examine whether or not creating language tools will increase content. There must be additional outreach to inform the community who would be the beneficiary about such tools. It is not clear if the scope can be accomplished in 12 months. The development efforts may be significant. The budget is not significantly explained or justified, and may be excessive. The sole participant has little Wikimedia experience. It is not clear if the project is officially supported by TWB. I am scared about the execution as plans are vague, budget is unrealistic (10k for hosting for example) The project can be completed in the timeframe. The budget needs more clarity regarding the timeline and details. No evidence of community engagement with either in English or Swahili projects. Such engagement is critically important. The proposal has not outlined specific activities or engagement to take place during the grant period. I don't see any endorsements, interaction with the community or responses to questions and the request is for $100k. The project does not looks like a realistic one to me. There is no clear plan and budget. No community engagement efforts and experience/skills of its sole participant are unclear. I am ready to consider a simpler pilot effort, which does not include the machine translation tool development. I'd delay this request till it's better worked through I love the fact that this could increase knowledge surrounding language communities outside of English, but it is a rather expensive proposal without a lot of detail in the budget or community engagement. The output would be research findings.

Opportunity to respond to committee comments in the next week

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal. Based on their initial review, a majority of committee reviewers have not recommended your proposal for funding. You can read more about their reasons for this decision in their comments above. Before the committee finalizes this decision, they would like to provide you with an opportunity to respond to their comments.

Next steps:

1. 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. We recommend that you review all the feedback carefully and post any responses, clarifications or questions on this talk page by 5pm UTC on Tuesday, May 11, 2021. If you make any revisions to your proposal based on committee feedback, we recommend that you also summarize the changes on your talkpage.
2. The committee will review any additional feedback you post on your talkpage before making a final funding decision. A decision will be announced Thursday, May 27, 2021.

Questions? Contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

@Rebecca.petras: Please see note above about the opportunity to respond to committee comments before they finalize a decision on your proposal. Please let me know if you have any questions. With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 04:40, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Round 2 2018 decision

This project has not been selected for a Project Grant at this time.

We love that you took the chance to creatively improve the Wikimedia movement. The committee has reviewed this proposal and not recommended it for funding. This was a very competitive round with many good ideas, not all of which could be funded in spite of many merits. We appreciate your participation, and we hope you'll continue to stay engaged in the Wikimedia context.

Next steps: Applicants whose proposals are declined are welcome to consider resubmitting your application again in the future. You are welcome to request a consultation with staff to review any concerns with your proposal that contributed to a decline decision, and help you determine whether resubmission makes sense for your proposal.

Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation has been undergoing a community consultation process to launch a new grants strategy. Our proposed programs are posted on Meta here: Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021. If you have suggestions about how we can improve our programs in the future, you can find information about how to give feedback here: Get involved. We are also currently seeking candidates to serve on regional grants committees and we'd appreciate it if you could help us spread the word to strong candidates--you can find out more here. We will launch our new programs in July 2021. If you are interested in submitting future proposals for funding, stay tuned to learn more about our future programs.

On behalf of the Project Grants Committee, KCVelaga (talk) 05:20, 1 March 2019 (UTC)