Grants talk:Project/Whose Knowledge/Whose Knowledge?/Final

return of unspent grant funds received

Hello Seeeko and team, Just wanted to note here that WMF has received your return of US$2,534.36 unspent funds. Thank you! -- JTud (WMF), Grants Administrator (talk) 02:08, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks! Siko (talk) 05:09, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

On starting small

I'm glad to read «start with a small set of content to focus on learning». Do you also mean, focus less on creating new articles about living people and more on improving existing articles? --Nemo 09:51, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

No, by starting small we don't mean to distinguish between new and existing articles - that choice is driven by the priorities of the communities we work with. In some cases (e.g. EN:WP), we've actually found that long time editors were more protective of existing articles and most resistant to incorporating new editors and perspectives there, so working on new articles can actually be a better starting point in some cases. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts! Siko (talk) 16:56, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Content examples

It's very hard to reach any example of content created as part of the project, from this report, but I suppose it's still a draft. Looking at one of the article lists I'm happy to see that non-English Wikipedia articles were also worked on: focusing exclusively on the English Wikipedia would have been a recipe for self-destruction. For some knowledge formats, you may also need to consider using a sister project like Wikibooks. Choosing a more compatible Wikimedia projects helps reduce friction and stress while increasing impact. --Nemo 09:51, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Agree, working in different languages and projects is really important! (and it's true that English Wikipedia can definitely be one of the most stressful wikis to work in). Those choices have to be driven by the priorities of the communities we support, though, and many marginalized communities do want to see their knowledge on English Wikipedia too (where it very often does rightfully belong). So that will always be a balance to walk in that regard. Siko (talk) 17:01, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Understood. Sometimes the desire to have something on Wikipedia is disingenous (e.g. some might think it gives visibility to certain information, while in fact poorly connected articles may end up receiving only a handful pageviews per month), so it takes a lot of consideration and balance as you say. --Nemo 17:23, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Report accepted

Dear Seeeko and Anasuyas,

Thank you for this Final Report. I am accepting it now, with apologies for the delay in getting comments and approval officially posted.

• This is (predictably!) a thought-provoking and engaging report. I appreciate the way you bring in quotes to highlight the voices of the people you partnered with to make the project happen, thumbnailing complex issues (like citing oral history or questioning who defines knowledge legitimacy) that are especially important for the Wikimedia movement to wrestle with as it aspires to knowledge equity.
• Thank you for linking to the Dalit and Okvir knowledge maps. I am curious if you have insight into how these maps have been used since their creation. Also curious what you see as the most desirable outcomes achieved from these lists, from your perspective.
• Right now there is an implied hypothesis in the Wikimedia Foundation that the creation of lists of missing knowledge is an especially important priority for moving Wikimedia projects toward greater knowledge equity. I am curious what you have learned about what makes the creation of such lists successful, in terms of how the lists are created (for example, community-sourced lists versus software-generated lists), and in terms of other steps that might need to happen before, alongside or after their creation to sufficiently support desired outcomes. Do you see there being risks that you've had to manage around the creation of such lists? Would love to see the Wikimedia Foundation benefitting from any wisdom you've gleaned as you move through this work.
• I would love to know more about what you learned through your efforts to move toward a database. Again, knowing that the Wikimedia Foundation is considering investing resources into generating more lists, I wonder what you learned about what is most useful to gather, what to leave out, how to structure so it make sense to Wikipedians, or to marginalized communities themselves, where this does not easily intersect. What kind of customization did your communities wish for in a database? I would love to see if we can flag some of these learnings for staff thinking about tools for the future.
• You mentioned that the Okvir group learned from both the successes and backlash from Dalit History Month effots. I would love to know more about what the takeaways were and whether any of this could serve as supports for other groups with parallel goals.
• Acknowledging up front that I am not a strong reader of data visualizations, I wanted to ask you about your visualization of the Dalit History Month outcomes, presented here. Wikipedia articles improved from beyond the worklist appears to be the biggest category, and Wikipedia articles improved from the original worklist the smallest category. Can you share about how you interpret this? What does it say about the value of the worklist? What was it's role in the project? Why do you thin there were more articles improved from beyond it than from it?
• Thank you for including the videos. Again, I love that you are bringing in the voices of participants directly. I haven't watched these videos yet and don't want to hold up approval of your report to do so, but I will watch soon and perhaps come back with more questions. :-)
• In your report, I especially value your link to Redefining Quality Markers with Dalit Perspectives on Wikipedia. Thank you for highlighting so clearly the conversation about markers of evaluation, versus content, something that remains invisible when the conversation stops at content gaps. I love that you are focusing on the significance of the lack of the perspectives of the marginalized communities in this markers, and consequently making it possible to talk about not just what is missing, but who and why. I wonder if you have framed these findings in language that could serve as principles? These are implied but not explicit in this doc, and I ask just because I am looking for ways to make it easier to bring these findings into discussions I am part of that need these insights. Sharing here what I am taking away from this document:
  • The importance of seeking to understand how patterns of descriptive language tied to a marginalized community may be experienced as harmful by members of that community; seeking to minimize harm (i.e. how might we be introducing microagressions, or worse, that make articles feel malicious to members of the very community the article is about?)
  • The importance of generating categories that are useful to marginalized communities to discover and organize information about themselves
  • The importance of prioritizing images for articles about people from marginalized community - the importance of visibility
  • The importance of prioritizing references that are written or spoken by members of the community.
• Thank you for these resources. Thank you for summing up the multiple experts and allies approach. Thank you for laying out all of the project resources. Lots of richness here.
• The quote from Selvi2017, new editor, brought tears to my eyes. So moving and powerful. Thank you so much for the work you are doing, and for being willing to do it deep and slow.

We continue to learn so much from you and your partners. We are so lucky to have you in this movement.

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 18:02, 6 March 2020 (UTC)