Grants:Project/Swymm

statusineligible

Project Grants

Swymm

summarySwymm is an interactive, crowdsourced timeline of all history that allows users to discover historic narratives instead of simply consuming pre-written narratives. Unique design and features enable professional academic research in comparative history and rapid, high-quality submission of new data.

targetWikidata

type of granttools and software

amount$100,000 USD

type of applicantindividual

grantee• 0x73DB07

contact• t3db0t@gmail.com

this project needs...

volunteer

affiliate

grantee

created on21:03, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Friendly space expectations

Project idea

What is the problem you're trying to solve?

Wikidata's set of event data is currently lacking a large amount of useful historic and event data, especially at high time resolutions, and does not have a fast, easy-to-use mechanism for submitting and improving data.

What is your solution?

Swymm is not only a visualization of and search platform for large amounts of event data, it provides an interface designed specifically to edit and submit new data rapidly and effectively. Wikidata integration would allow vetted user submissions to be automatically promoted to Wikidata's database and connected to other entries in the graph.

Project goals

• Provide an easy-to-use, effective method for improving and submitting event data in Wikidata
• Develop an initial network of authorities in a variety of historical subject matter
• Via the above, significantly add to and improve Wikidata's database using a unique data quality algorithm

Project impact

How will you know if you have met your goals?

1. During your project, what will you do to achieve this goal? (These are your outputs.)
2. Once your project is over, how will it continue to positively impact the Wikimedia community or projects? (These are your outcomes.)

All goals will be met if 15 or more expert contributors and authorities in their fields are able to quickly, accurately and effectively create and improve at least 1000 event entries each over the course of a 1-month research period, for a total of 15,000 new high-quality datapoints.

If all goals are met, the platform will be launched to a wider audience, enabling orders of magnitude more high-quality event data.

Project plan

Activities

• Develop front-end software
  • Retain experienced front-end developer
  • Develop crowdsource infrastructure:
    • User accounts
    • Karma system
    • Extremely fast and efficient submission/editing UI
    • Peer review pipeline
• Develop back-end software
  • Retain experienced full-stack developer
  • Expand and improve database infrastructure to accommodate larger amounts of data and more connections
  • Develop pagerank, quality index and tag clustering algorithms
  • Develop data transformations & migrations as necessary
• User outreach and network development
  • Reach out directly to academics and professionals that have already expressed interest in the platform
  • Obtain further recommended contacts
  • Develop "trust chain" invitation mechanism to allow
• Gather user feedback on an ongoing basis via in-person interviews and online surveys
• Continuous design review, UI improvement and integration

Budget

• Visual & UX designer: $4,000 USD
• Front-End Software Development: $40,000
  • 2x developers at $100/hr for a 2-month project sprint
• Back-End Software Development: $40,000
  • 2x developers at $100/hr for a 2-month project sprint
• Project Management: $10,000
• Software Fees (hosting, licensing where necessary): $2,000
• Contributor outreach (interviews, surveying, travel): $4,000

Community engagement

• Reach out to an initial network of 15 authorities on diverse historical subjects, such as medievalists, historians and ethnographers, to submit and improve data
• Submit public speaking proposals to conferences and related events
• Grant-writing and funding

Get involved

Participants

• 0x73DB07 (Ted Hayes) - Creator, designer, research & developer
• Loz Tunnicliffe - Software developer
• Caroline Sinders - User experience researcher
• Christopher Richards - PhD historian

Community notification

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Endorsements

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