Talk:Wikicite/e-scholarship/Timmylegend

Dear Timmylegend, Thank you for making this application.
I have a few questions about it - feel free to update/edit your application if you wish, up to the deadline on October 1.

In your proposed project, you have stated that work would be for 3 people, over 4 days, to add footnotes to articles in English Wikipedia about African content. This is a worthy goal - like you say, the quality and quantity of these are low in Wikipedia now and should be improved. As the criertia of the project states: "Projects which focus on content and communities which are historically underrepresented in Wikimedia projects will be given priority." However, this is a very short and simple description for a project that proposed to be 'worth' 12 days of work (4 days each).

As it states on the scholarship description page ('eligibility' section): "Projects which are not applicable include: - "Normal editing" and content contribution tasks, if they are things which the applicant would normally do as a volunteer." That is: the e-scholarship system is intended to support people to do projects which might previously have been given travel scholarships to a hackathon, or a specialist research-library etc, but because of COVID they must remain home. It is not intended as a project to pay for normal editing activities.

Therefore, in order for your project to be eligible for an e-scholarship, it is important to explain in the application: what kind of content you propose to improve? What is the scope? What are the particular expertise of the people proposing to do the work? And, with a project value of so many days' work, it would be important to explain if you have a particular target for completion (e.g. a list of unreferenced articled which are high importance); or if the work you propose to do is particularly difficult (e.g. the references have never been available as open access before).

I hope this information is helpful, and look forward to seeing any changes to your proposal as a result of this feedback. --LWyatt (WMF) (talk) 16:34, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Hello LWyatt (WMF) A lot of Nigerian articles don't have enough and proper citations from reputable sources and we look to fill in the gap by sourcing for and getting credible sources for these articles. We look forward to adding over a thousand references to different Nigeria articles. All team members will be working on the same activity as well. Timmylegend (talk) 16:49, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Dear Timmylegend,

Yes, I agree that Wikipedia articles relating to Nigeria - and African culture, language, and history in general - do suffer from fewer references. It is desirable to address this gap! However, as I stated in my earlier comment, the e-scholarship program is not intended to provide funds to support "normal editing" activities. Adding footnotes is the kind of thing which is fundamental to Wikipedia, yes, but it is also important that Wikipedia is fundamentally a volunteer activity. The description you have provided states that you will work on "A lot of Nigerian articles [which] don't have enough and proper citations from reliable sources", and that you will adding "adding over a thousand references to different Nigeria articles". This is unquestionably a worthy goal - but it is not a clear project. I asked in my earlier comment about what "kind" of article (is there a worklist? How is it defined?) and what kind of reference (are there particular sources which are hard to access normally, that you can access for these few days in the proposal?) LWyatt (WMF) (talk) 16:04, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Hello LWyatt (WMF) We would be working on a list of settlements (villages, towns and cities in Nigeria), by adding vital spatial information and references. Timmylegend (talk) 17:38, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Dear Timmylegend, that is an interesting scope of work. Can you provide a work-list for this? That would enable the community in general (as well as the grant reviewing committee) to see the size, and the completion-progression) of your proposal. Howver, you have not [yet] addressed my other two points: regarding what kind of reference material you are proposing to use; and why that reference material and/or the project in general constitutes something qualitatively different from "normal editing" activities. Sincerely, LWyatt (WMF) (talk) 17:38, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Hello LWyatt (WMF)

• We would be working on a list of settlements (villages, towns and cities in Nigeria), by adding vital spatial information and references such as road codes, Zip codes, postal code, districts,

when they were founded.

• We intend to work on articles in this category and lists

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Nigeria_geography_stubs
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_villages_in_Nigeria

• The reference material to be used are government data which are not readily available and sorted, we would be making use of data from the Nigerian Postal Service, Nigerian Bureau of Statistics. This reference materials are not readily available online and accessible to use, it involves taking extra efforts and time to study and extract the required, relevant and necessary data. Timmylegend :(talk) 11:59, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for this added detail Timmylegend. Can you please ensure that all this context and information is included in the main proposal - not only here on the talkpage. This will make it easier for the committee to review your proposal in one place. The deadline is 1 October, so you can edit your proposal until then. Also, it is very helpful if there are other community comments in the 'endorsements' section, if you would please share your proposal to the local community so they are aware of it. Sincerely, LWyatt (WMF) (talk) 06:49, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

question about sources

Dear Timmylegend (talk · contribs), thanks for your proposal! I agree it would be wonderful to add more sources to these articles. You mention that the relevant publications are not easily available online. Are they available in paper? Do you have access to them or will you need to obtain access to them through a library? If so are you sure you can get the sources you need? If possible, it might be very interesting to document information about the sources themselves, or even digitize them if possible. -- phoebe | talk 18:18, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Hello Phoebe (talk · contribs), The data are available on paper in some libraries, bookstores, government institutions and some parastatal. We are certain through our existing personal relationship with some persons that are in possession/custodians of those data we will get it.

Digitizing them will totally be another conversation for another scenario, because we don't know the copyright infringement or restrictions we might face or come upon.Timmylegend (talk) 14:58, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, basically what Timmy said. And some will require payment, a lot of papers and publications that have been produced prior to advent of internet are not readily available online. Digitizing them is costly adventure that will require big planning. But of course, we can document the sources and their nature in our report. – Ammarpad (talk) 04:52, 9 October 2020 (UTC)