Grants:Project/Rapid/Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton/Equipment for Matemateca digitalization/report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2016-17 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton/Equipment for Matemateca digitalization.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went? In the process... we are a little behind the schedule, all the photos have being photographed, the edition is behind the schedule, and we have a issue in a great part of the objects, the metrics have more months to be reached, as most of it is based in Wikimedia Commons evaluation, and this take time.

See the partial results commons:Category:Collections of Matemateca IME-USP

General explanation about the delay

I had a feel problems, taking the project after the negotiation, I had to create the grant with informations provided by the WCUGBR. And this was a issue, I had received the information that Matemateca (the museum) would provide around 200 objects, a great part would be objects illustrating perfect mathematical objects, and they also would provide light and studio equipment. In reality, they have around 50 objects of this type, and all the other objects are interactive ones, that requires videos to properly show they functionality, and no studio and light equipment.

In the first step I took 8 objects with different techniques needed to illustrate it, representing different types of objects presents in Matemateca. Just one type was purely photos, all the others video.

WCUGBR had copyright issue with MAV project; one OTRS volunteer create a over bureaucracy to let them upload files. Having this experience, they brought this over bureaucracy to this project. Back there, the OTRS volunteer told them that was necessary to the museum create a post in their official web site; Matemateca didn't had access to their, and this delays our uploads almost by a month.

The problem with the upload delay is that we do not realize until the first tentative of upload how painful is to do a massive upload of videos at Wikimedia Commons. Transcoding to WEBM take a while, it is mandatory to use third-party apps, and most of solutions provided by the community produce a very low quality media, and worst, great part of it is not reliable, and all of them are enormously slow, and requiring human supervision.

Trying to find solutions took a while, and at this moment the palliative solution is the video2commons, that is not good for massive contributions, it requires a manual upload, one by one, and it just transcode, and them open a basic upload after. It also have a not good interface, that also could delay the work...

And having videos as principal "product", not photo any more, we will have problems with the evaluation at Commons. VI do not accept videos, QI and FP do not receive as often video candidatures, as a result in QI, for example, is normal volunteers ignore video candidatures, probably for not being comfortable in evaluating it, or because it take more time, I don't know.

Another huge factor, I'm not as good filming as I'm photographing, so we have a step in the quality between them. To me produce a video the amount of time necessary is bigger them one person already with abilities in the area, and I can't fix in post, as I do with photos when necessary, as I do not have extensive knowledge in the area (I'm studying for this project) and I definitely don't have hardware to manage video files, as I do with photos. And I had the post production of the photos was have here...

Not having the studio equipment I had to improvise:

This was is an another problem, this lack of proper equipment and control creates a huge time in post production, also delaying the work. Home lamp is not close to be good for this type of photography, this created several light interferences, aberrations, busy backgrounds... and diminish possibility of variations.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
200 QI in the next 6 months	Around 40 QI at this moment (this number will increase in next days, as we already have more approvals, that's why the estimative.	Under the general delay, however pretty close to the metrics six months calendar.
100 VI in the next 6 months	2	Videos are not accepted in VI, and with all the delays and the time that takes to conclude a VI candidature, we are far behind.
20 FP in the next 6 months	1	With the delay, and community evaluating the images as "too similar" (lack of variety limited by the equipment) or having a only good quality in the video cases, this will take more time that predicted.
Generate at least 100 usable images for Wikipedia, Wikibooks or Wikiversity.	61 at this moment	Under the general delay, however pretty close to the metrics six months calendar.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?

The equipment suite well, I could already photography practically all the objects (just some redo needed now).

What did not work so well?

Video upload, my prioritization was not correct, I should do photos for the grant, and them continue with the digitalisation, recording videos.

What would you do differently next time?

I could better schedule, this is within my reach, the other points is out of my control (WCUGBR issues I do not interfere, the relation of Commons with video...)

A studio equipment could also solve most of the delays in the edition, I should have requested an individual grant with proper equipment in order to surmount all the barriers, not depending on partner.

Finances

All the equipment was bought by the WMF, nothing to report here.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project? I'm sure that we will reach our goals in the next months, except the VI, 100 VI will not be possible, their criteria are totally random, I knew that, that's why it's the half of QI, however having videos as the main product, this goal will not be reach.