Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Bay Area Wikipedians:New Generation (ID: 22640981)
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Applicant Details
edit- Main Wikimedia username. (required)
e_mln_e
- Organization
Bay Area Wikipedians User Group
- If you are a group or organization leader, board member, president, executive director, or staff member at any Wikimedia group, affiliate, or Wikimedia Foundation, you are required to self-identify and present all roles. (required)
N/A
- Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)
Main Proposal
edit- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.
Bay Area Wikipedians: New Generation
- 2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.
2025-04-14 - 2025-04-14
- 4. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
United States of America Events will be hybrid or online. Previous events from this project have engaged participants in Japan, Colombia, the US, Canada, Germany, Spain, France and the UK
- 5. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign, project, or event? If so, please select the relevant project or campaign. (required)
Not applicable
- 6. What is the change you are trying to bring? What are the main challenges or problems you are trying to solve? Describe this change or challenges, as well as main approaches to achieve it. (required)
While Bay Area Wikipedians have been organizing in one way or another since the mid 2000s, the Bay Area user group ceased activities during the 2020 Covid pandemic. Since September 2022, a small group of Wikipedians has been meeting every month to network, collaborate, and develop new projects. In the last year, we have onboarded 6 new editors, organized a Wikipedia Day celebration, two editathons, collaborated with two local universities to run workshops on new editing tools, and organized a Wikicommons contest. We have hosted two guest speakers, and all our events have been free and open to the whole community. From 4 regular participants, we grew to 16 regular attendees.
We need support to grow and expand our activities. Our capacity for organizing is limited by our reliance on community members' donations to pay for all expenses related to events, including communication and promotion, learning materials, food and beverages; and was made possible by finding a space willing to host us for free. Neither are sustainable.
While we have secured sponsorship for certain aspects of our activities (in particular food), we have the ambition to become the point of contact for potential new editors, knowledge organizations, communities and expand our public outreach. This requires being able to cover basic expenses for our events, as well as for communication: stickers, flyers and printables go a long way to engage the local community.
Please note that we have attempted to be hosted at the Wikimedia Foundation offices for the last two years, but have not been successful despite many Wikimedia employees being involved. Logistics and space fund would enable us to have a regular and sustainable place to meet at.
- 7. What are the planned activities? (required) Please provide a list of main activities. You can also add a link to the public page for your project where details about your project can be found. Alternatively, you can upload a timeline document. When the activities include partnerships, include details about your partners and planned partnerships.
For this next year, we plan to:
- continue to provide a monthly workshop for established and new editors, as well as organizations interested in collaborations (April 2025 to April 2026). These meetups would be hosted by non-profit feminist hackerspace Double Union for people identifying as women, trans or non-binary. This would enable us to onboard and mentor more editors with diverse gender identities;
- host a monthly meetup focused specifically on technical aspects of Wikimedia projects. Several of our members contribute to mediawiki development and maintenance. They would host a coworking and new contributors meetup monthly (April 2025 to April 2026);
- run Commons Photowalks around the Bay Area to increase awareness of the various Wikimedia projects and ways of contributing, with the aim to build a larger community able to run regular satellite events in addition to the San-Francisco based monthly workshop (June, July, August, September 2025);
- organize larger events open to the public (Wiknic, Wikipedia Day);
- systematically reach out to Bay Area historical organizations (such as the Computer history museum, San Francisco Historical society, Chinese Historical Society of America Museum, GLBT historical society) to identify opportunities for collaborations going forward (October 2025 - April 2026);
- organize "Ask Me Anything, I'm a Wikipedian" sessions at local library branches (April 2025 to April 2026).
These initiatives build on our current strengths and networks. The primary goal is to continue growing our membership and the number of Wikipedians in the area, while we continue to develop our capacity as a user group and develop a long-term strategy to better serve local communities and knowledge organizations.
- 8. Describe your team. Please provide their roles, Wikimedia Usernames and other details. (required) Include more details of the team, including their roles, usernames, Wikimedia group, and whether they are salaried, volunteers, consultants/contractors, etc. Team members involved in the grant application need to be aware of their involvement in the project.
e_mln_e, Emeline Brule, volunteer as Bay Area Wikipedians User Group (BAWUG) organizer ElanHR, Elan Hourticolon-Retzler, volunteer as BAWUG organizer AudioDude, Travis Briggs, volunteer as BAWUG organizer
Other members will be involved on a ad-hoc basis, as has been the case in the last two years.
- 9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities? (required)
We have three target participants:
- local communities already engaged in knowledge, data, technical and archival work;
- general public through photowalks and Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions
- and a particular focus on developing a local group of women and gender diverse editors
We will, as we have so far, advertise the events through a geolocalized banner on Wikipedia, as well as through the social media and public newsletter of Double Union. AMA sessions will also be advertised by the library branches.
All participants to our meetup are invited to join the Sf bay area mailing list to receive invitations to follow-up meetup and remain connected to the community, getting feedback and asking questions.
This year, we have mentored 6 new editors in creating their first pages by reviewing their drafts and they have become regular editors. Monthly meetups and social events are effective in keeping new editors engaged.
- 10. Does your project involve work with children or youth? (required)
No
- 10.1. Please provide a link to your Youth Safety Policy. (required) If the proposal indicates direct contact with children or youth, you are required to outline compliance with international and local laws for working with children and youth, and provide a youth safety policy aligned with these laws. Read more here.
N/A
- 11. How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community.
Discussions of our planned activities can be found in notes from the BAWUG monthly meetups: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/bawug They were discussed during monthly meetings, with several members and organizers taking the lead on contacting partners and reporting to the group. We have contacts with different organizations to advertise and support events, including the San Francisco Historical Society and four library branches. The board of Double Union has accepted to host our events and advertise them to their members and extended community if funding can be secured.
- 12. Does your proposal aim to work to bridge any of the content knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Other Important Topics (topics considered to be of impact or important in the specific context)
- 13. Does your proposal include any of these areas or thematic focus? Select one option that most applies to your work. (required)
Open Technology
- 14. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Gender Identity
- 15. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select one that most applies. (required)
Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement
Learning and metrics
edit- 17. What do you hope to learn from your work in this project or proposal? (required)
While we have been successful in reaching out to and mentoring new editors, we have not focused on tech so far. This is a missed opportunity given the Bay Area's status as a tech hub. We hope to learn how to best reach and engage technical contributors. We also want to learn how to best evaluate such a capacity-building initiative. It is harder to track the number of changes since they might be happening on different platforms and are not tracked by dashboards. We will track the number of attendees to the meetup and do a narrative report on their contributions.
- 18. What are your Wikimedia project targets in numbers (metrics)? (required)
| Other Metrics | Target | Optional description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 200 | Our meetups usually welcome 10 to 20 contributors as of late. Our wikipedia day event was attended by 70 people. We hope to engage at least 200 more people across all activities. |
| Number of editors | 12 | We have onboarded 6 new regular editors across our events this year (we do not yet know about the impact of Wikipedia Day, during which we created four new accounts https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Sequoia_Fabrica/Sequoia_Fabrica_Celebrates_Wikipedia_Day_2025/home)
As our numbers have grown, we hope to onboard at least twice as many new regular editors - and to enable at least 40 people to contribute to wikicommons through the photowalks at least once. We have als |
| Number of organizers | 3 | Three main organizers, with more volunteers as needed (we had, for instance, 12 volunteers for Wikipedia Day) |
| Wikimedia project | Number of content created or improved |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 100 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 100 |
| Wikidata | 300 |
| Wiktionary | |
| Wikisource | |
| Wikimedia Incubator | |
| Translatewiki | |
| MediaWiki | |
| Wikiquote | |
| Wikivoyage | |
| Wikibooks | |
| Wikiversity | |
| Wikinews | |
| Wikispecies | |
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
- Optional description for content contributions.
Our members are all regular editors and have created or improved at least 30 pages in the last year during the meetups (that we know of). Through hosting Wikidata games events and supporting uploads to Wikidata thanks to our Wikidata volunteer ElanHR, we have also contributed to this project. We have not tracked this closely (the pages estimate is based on five regular members' recent contribution pages), but will establish a baseline this year.
- 19. Do you have any other project targets in numbers (metrics)? (optional)
Yes
| Main Open Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Diversity of editors | Aim for non-men identifying contributors to represent 30% of our new editors | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
- 20. What tools would you use to measure each metrics? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support. (required)
We will collect demographic data through an online form from willing participants.
Financial proposal
edit- 21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
- 22. and 22.1. What is the amount you are requesting for this proposal? Please provide the amount in your local currency. (required)
4500 USD
- 22.2. Convert the amount requested into USD using the Oanda converter. This is done only to help you assess the USD equivalent of the requested amount. Your request should be between 500 - 5,000 USD.
USD
- We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
No
Endorsements and Feedback
editPlease add endorsements and feedback to the grant discussion page only. Endorsements added here will be removed automatically.
Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:
- Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
- Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
- Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
- Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
- Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).