Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2015-2016 round 2/Wikimédia France/Proposal form

Number of individuals

10 000 is a lot, do you plan to reach that number with the MOOC? Nemo 15:41, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

MOOC

With "wikicode" do you mean wikitext or what? Nemo 15:41, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it's wikitext. Thank you, GuillaumeG (talk) 23:02, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Certification

Would be useful to link/state what kind of certification you're talking about. While reading, my first thought was something like ISO 9000, but the image caption mentions "IDEAS" so I found http://www.ideas.asso.fr/associations/wikimedia-france/ which looks like the French equivalent of Charity Navigator. Nemo 15:50, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Good point, I linked to fr:Comité de la Charte, and added the link to the page you mentionned for IDEAS. Thanks! Jean-Fred (talk) 20:25, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a very helpful link even for a fr-0.25 speaker! Nemo 22:32, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

No problem :) I’d be happy to write a stub in English, but not sure whether it is notable for en.wp ;-) Jean-Fred (talk) 09:49, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you

I write this as a member of the Funds Dissemination Committee. Thank you, Wikimédia France, for showing such leadership in publicly sharing your process with the global community. As a broad community, we have come to recognize the value and importance of transparency, and this is an excellent example. I will be looking forward to reading the "final" version in the near future. Risker (talk) 22:28, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Budget

Can you please share with us a digital budget? the scanning is very low, and it don't give us the option to use google translate in order to understand it (an English version will be much more appreciated) --Itzike (talk) 21:54, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

We are working on it Itzike, where should we publish it then? ShreCk (talk) 19:21, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

ShreCk, instead of the current one... --Itzike (talk) 17:05, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Done ;-) Cyrille WMFr (talk) 13:18, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Operating expenses

Hello Schiste, I was wondering if you could clarify about your operating expenses, which I noticed were zero in Table 7. I was wondering if "Focus 9 (administration): 195,444 Euro" listed under the Program costs in Table 6 were actually those operating expenses? This ~195,000 euros seems inline with the operating expenses listed in your 2014-15 proposal of ~206,000 euros. Thanks for clarifying! -- Shouston (WMF) (talk) 23:05, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Because of our labelling, we are forced to revise our accounting division. Therefore, the amount of operating expenses (in 2014-2015) does not exactly that covers the Focus 9. Specifically, the Focus 9 corresponds to the cost of rent, phone and Internet, electricity, and advice (certified accountant, auditor, lawyers, etc.). Cyrille WMFr (talk) 15:30, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Questions and comments from FDC member Risker

Thank you very much for this proposal. I appreciate that you took the time to carefully discuss how you addressed the FDC recommendations from last year, and incorporated general FDC recommendations and those directed to other chapters in your plan. This was very helpful in setting the stage for the proposal. I have a few questions and comments.

• Could you provide more description of the ComeOn! tool? A link to an existing page (even one in French) would be fine. Am I correct in understanding that this tool is in development now? Is the ultimate goal to make it available as part of the overall Wikimedia community's toolkit?

• Training is addressed as part of many of the planned activities, but you also have a separate "training" activity in the plan. This part of the plan seems to be focused on what you are calling "awareness-raising sessions". What kind of topics will be covered in this "awareness-raising"? The description makes it sound as though its purpose is to have two-day recruiting sessions, but I have the feeling I am missing something here.

The awareness-raising sessions are dedicated to the volunteers of Wikimedia France. We would like to have a real and strategic plan to reach out to our current volunteers as well as new ones. So we will follow two strategicals axes:

Awareness sessions : we will organize training sessions for the volunteers about the tools and resources the association developed to help them contribute to the Wikimedia projects. We also would like to focus on new volunteers. We realized that a lot of volunteers lack basic knowledge/understanding about Wikimédia France, about what we can do for them and what tools / resources are already available for them to use. We would like to organize one or two “onboarding days” per year dedicated to these new volunteers.

Trainings : we recently created a trainings portfolio with 7 training themes not only for our volunteers but also for other stakeholders (partners, companies...). It is a way to structure and formalize our skills and our added value. In this field, we will reach out to companies and trainings centers in contact with various audiences like journalists, teachers, researchers...

• Comment: Good work with the WikiMOOC. Please note that the link to the "project page" mentioned in this section leads to a non-existent page; I suspect it will be okay with the Grants staff if you fix the link.

English version : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Aide_et_accueil/WikiMOOC/Pr%C3%A9sentation/en

• I note the focus area on research into Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, which seems to align with the strategies outlined by the WMF/broader movement. Will you be working with researchers to ensure broad dissemination of the research and/or encouraging them to publish in broadly accessible journals? I am sure that this research will be of considerable interest across the movement. Are there current research projects that have already been completed and accepted/scheduled for publication during the next campaign? My experience is that it can often take more than a year to go from research to publication.

We have two axes of work regarding research :

Reach out to researchers, and make them aware that they can have access to data and then to exploit them

Support the researchers in their research work. We recently mailed Dario from the Research Department of the WMF about the NDA agreement among others things.

Our goal is to summarize a process for the researchers. We’ve also had conversations with the French Research Agency (which funds research works) to reach out to researchers and spread the idea that Wikimedia France can be a facilitator and a partner, if needed. We will support in high priority research works with an open publishing policy. So our next campaign will be dedicated to reaching ou to researchers and support research works. Moreover we recently recruited a young student researcher for three years (Rémy Gerbet). His thesis is about the circulation of knowledge in the greek world (first to sixth century before Christ). A chapter in the thesis will treat about link between the Wikimedia projects and the construction of knowledge.

• I am very interested in the discussion about the Linga Libre tool, and its planned uses as it continues to be developed and improved. Is the ultimate goal to make it available as part of the overall Wikimedia community's toolkit?

Lingua Libre will be available to the entire Wikimedia community to increase the audio content on the various Wikimedia projects. Lingua Libre has evolved thanks to many experts who are actively involved in its development. On April 13th and April 20th, 2 meetings were held. The first one took place at Wikimedia France and the second one in Alsace with scholars from the University of Strasbourg. Nicolas Vion, author of the Shtooka recorder project, worked at Wikimedia France to develop Lingua Libre. An open call will sooon be launched on Wikimedia Commons to ask editors to test the tool and provide feedback for its development.

We reached out to many institutions and started to lay the ground for a solid partners’ network. Lingua Libre was presented to the Office for the Basque language and the association for the Occitan language (Lo Congres). Both already announced their full support to Lingua Libre and their willingness to use it to develop Wikimedia projects in regional minority languages (RML). We’ve also worked closely with the Basque Wikimedians User group. Similarly, we met the head of the Academy of Kanak language, based in Noumea in New Caledonia. He declared his intention to use Lingua Libre to launch major recording sessions on all islands of the archipelago. Experts of Micronesian languages will use Lingua Libre to collect a lot of sounds preventing some languages from disappearing in the coming years.

Wikimedia Commons will be ta frame of reference to find freely available sounds on dialects spoken by only a dozen people in the world. The French government, through the Ministry of Culture, is following the development of Lingua Libre, with great interest. Today the website Lingua Libre is available online but the recorded sounds are stored on an external server. Obviously, the goal is to build the ultimate gateway to the Wikimedia projects: account creation and automatic upload with a proper categorization on Commons.

For now, the tool is developed primarily for speakers of minority languages, but in the future, it may be used to collect all kinds of sounds and, of course, the code is completely open.

Here is the logo :

LinguaLibre LOGO-04

• I note the "My Wikipedia Community" activity. This seems to be quite an ambitious program. I am concerned that the targets may be somewhat unrealistic. Could you help me to understand why you think these are achievable?

Indeed, it is an ambitious project. France counts more than 36,000 townships. We therefore expect a target of 6,000 accounts creation, which corresponds to only 16.6% of the municipalities.

In a more and more digitized world, France got involved in an unprecedented open data policy. However, there is still a lot to do to explain the challenges we face in the Wikimedia projects, and the goals we pursue. Therefore, through the “My Wikipedia community” projects, we want to support every stakeholder from French townships in enriching and improving Wikimedia projects, through content donations (archives, open data sets) ; articles improvement ; tutorials to help content uploads, etc. Through data extracted from Wikipedia articles, users get an overview of the “quality” level / completion level of a specific article regarding one city in France they’ve looked up. The interface provieds users with suggestions on where to fill the gaps. A national competition will be organized in 2017 and a prize will be awarded to "Wikipedian cities". Last but not least, strategic partnerships will allow us to deploy the project at national level, especially through the Rural Association of Mayors of France, and the French Digital Agency. With this project we are addressing both e-inclusion issues on French territories, and ensuring a decent presence of French municipalities on the Internet.

• Comment: Good work with the accreditations and certifications. As the FDC noted in the past, it is good to seek out this type of external review.

Thanks again for this submission. Risker (talk) 01:07, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Risker, I answered directly in the text. Thank you for the time spent on our request. Cyrille WMFr (talk) 08:51, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi Risker, thank you for your comments. Let me address two of those.

• Sorry for overlooking a link for ComeOn!. It is a software currently and actively developed by our volunteer EdouardHue (who I’m sure would be glad to talk about it further!). This startup guide (in French) gives a good overview of the tool.
• Good catch with the broken link to WikiMOOC.

@Wolliff (WMF): @KLove (WMF):: May I request to edit the proposal to fix these two missing/broken links?

Jean-Fred (talk) 08:32, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Approved. Thanks, Jean-Fred.Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 20:32, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Done! Thanks for approving :) Jean-Fred (talk) 09:43, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

@Risker and Jean-Frédéric: ComeOn! is actually in a release-candidate state. I have been using it for my own needs since its inception (you have to eat your own dog food) and it is beginning to be reviewed by some selected GLAM partners, as I added some GLAM-related features in version 2.0. Version 3.0, since a few weeks, adds early support for audio files. Reaching general release status is only a matter of finding a little time & money to acquire a code signing certificate, fix the two known bugs (one being an Heisenbug), translate the manual to english (UI being already translated) and maybe a few more languages (including the UI; Poland and Netherlands having shown some interest). Real-world feedback will provide valuable input for improvements.

Source code is published under Apache Software License 2.0 which is generally known^{[citation needed]} as being more appropriate than Creative Commons for source code.

--EdouardHue (talk) 22:22, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

• Thank you, EdouardHue and Jean-Fred. EdouardHue, with the addition of the links, it is clear that ComeOn!'s development is progressing well and that there is a recognized goal to provide the infrastructure that will allow its use on a broad scale. I will look forward to the responses to my other questions. Risker (talk) 01:33, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Questions and comments from FDC member Itzik

Sorry for the last minute questions, but I have a few questions after I read your proposal:

1. If I understand correctly, according to your last progress report, the actual numbers for the first 6 months are far less than you are planning next year (311 new\improve articles - compared to 35,320 in this proposal and 375 active editors VS 2,150). Are these numbers realistic?
2. Has the WikiMooc already ended (I didn't find the dates). From the 6,000 people who signed up - how many people actually wrote\improved articles? how many of them are continuing to edit after the end of the course?
3. Not related to the FDC - I wonder why the WikiMooc is based on the old editing interface and not using Visual Editor. In my experience, It is much more easy and quick to teach new people how to edit using the VE rather than the old wiki-code way.
4. Regarding the plan to work with VLC on video uploading - how will this tool be different from the current video convector tool on current video convector tool on WMFLab (or from WMCH planned server converter)?
5. It is amazing to read about your local experience with local communities and I'm happy to see the plans to increase them. I understand there are 15 groups - can you give (or link) to some more information about the average number of people in each group? number of meetings and activities and any other information about this project?
6. I see that the WikiConvention is not part of your budget, and you are asking for PEG support. According to the rules, chapters who receive grants from the APG cannot ask for other grants. As this is the first event, and not a current international event like WMCON/Wikimania/Hackathon - I'm not sure it can work out. In any case, why are you not starting with arranging a local French speakers conference before a semi-international one?
7. If I remember right, WMFR already bought some photography equipment. Could you provide a list of the current ones and how much are you planning to spend next year on buying new ones?
8. During your last fundraising, you collected 75,000 Euro less than the year before (I hope I'm reading the numbers correctly). This is 50,000 less than you planned on your last proposal. According to your income budget - this year you are planning even to increase the donations vs last year. Is this plan realistic?
9. In your last proposal you indicated you are not planning to increase your operation reserves this year (113,000 euro planned by the end of this fiscal year). But it seem they been increased by 10,000 euro. According to this year's proposal you are planning to increase them by an additional 15,000 euro, which are not indicated on your budget expenses plan. How is that?
10. WMFR's store - how much income are you anticipating this year from the store? how much money will you invest in it?
11. Conferences under "Lobbying" are budgeted as 11,000 Euro. Are this costs are for the trade shows fees?
12. "Purchases of material/maintenance" under project 1 are budgeted as 50,000 euro. Could you give more details about this costs? Same question for the 26,679 euro under overhead.
13. Occupancy costs are office rent costs?
14. Are the ~50,000 euro costs for travels include international travel for staff\board and volunteers? Could you share with us how much goes for local travels vs international travels?

Thank you for your time :) --Itzike (talk) 15:24, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Here are the answers:

1. About the active editors, we didn’t count the WikiMOOC editors (data were available one week after we submitted our HalfYear report). So we plan to include these data for next year with the WikiMOOC. About the new and improved articles, we have a new and significant objective of 25,000 articles creation / improvement through Ma Commune Wikipédia. The rest is about articles which will be improved thanks to contests supported by Wikimedia France (e.g. re-use of pictures in articles). Such data were not included in our previous reports.
2. The WikiMOOC started on February 22 and ended on March 27. Around 300 people created an article at the end of the MOOC (week 5). About the data regarding edits after the end of the course, they will be included in our impact report, as well as data concerning edit-a-thons we’re organizing in May and June, to which WikiMOOC editors will be invited to participate.
3. Most of the WikiMOOC was dedicated to the VE (we talked about it in the week 2). The Wikicode was detailed mainly to show the use of a user talk page (which cannot be edited with the VE). We always (when possible) tried to show the two ways of editing. The working group of volunteers who designed the WikiMOOC took part in the “Helping and welcoming newbies” community on French Wikipedia. They promoted the VE into the community and recently helped to improve our flyer “How to use and edit Wikipedia” with the VE (only the wikicode was presented until then).
4. We studied the possibilities to give newbies and the general public, used to non-free formats, the simplest tools to upload their videos without spending time re-encoding and converting their videos. Our objective is to develop a “contributory reflex” on Wikimedia projects by reducing as many technical barriers as possible.
5. The activity within local groups varies widely. It depends on the actions and availability of each member of the group. On average each group consists of fifteen people. They meet once a month. They develop actions based on contacts made locally. Thus, they train people in museums or teachers, hold booth during conferences or exhibitions, participate in panel discussions, organize photo hunts or participate in friendly encounters with other stakeholders from the free culture in their city. Thus, they can more easily get in touch with local actors, educate them and design actions with them.
6. It is important to emphasize the fact that the Wikiconvention is not a French-centered event. It is a language-based event, and therefore, any French-speaking editor in the Wikimedia movement is invited to participate. The idea of a Francophone wikiconvention emerged through a French editor, Pyb, but the very idea of gathering all French-speaking editors is supported by WikiFranca, the Francophone cooperation existing in the movement (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiFranca/fr). Today, on French-speaking Wikimedia projects, there more than 90 % of contributors editing from France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada , while there are more than 80 states officially recognized by the International Organization of the Francophonie. So, what is at stake here, is to bring together Wikimedians from all around the globe to support the parts of the world where user groups do exist and they need support to expand, recruit new editors, share their ideas with peers, inspire “old chapters”, etc.
7. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikim%C3%A9dia_France/Utilisation_du_mat%C3%A9riel_empruntable To sum up, we have 3 compacts and 6 reflex cameras, plus a GoPro. We plan to buy two more cameras, as described in the proposal, for a budget of ~2,000 to 2,500 euros.
8. If we exclude the context of the November attacks in France, this year, we have suffered a kind of competition with the fundraising team of the foundation. This year we hope to solve this communication problems...
9. The operational reserve is established to guarantee 3 months salary . Since our payroll increases, the operational reserve increases.
10. We plan to invest 2,000 € to 3,000 € . But we will not earn money from this shop . The aim is to offer the opportunity to acquire goodies —and only to cover our expenses, not to make any benefits.
11. Not at all, they are primarily petition fee (through Change.org platform).
12. To come up ...
13. Yes they are. 86,000 € for our office in Paris, and the other costs cover the expenses in cities where we did not manage to get a free space for the local groups (e.g. cities where we have monthly / annual subscription in co-working spaces).
14. Indeed, these costs are for staff, board and volonteers travels. The distribution is around 40/60 : 40% for international travels and 60% for local travels.

Thank you for the time spent on our request. Cyrille WMFr (talk) 09:00, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Hello @Cyrille, thank you for your answers! Any chance for the point 12.? I am interested here as well. Best! aegis maelstrom δ 11:37, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

WMF/WMFR fundraising

Hello. In your application you say "In turn, as we have repeatedly pointed to the various relevant parties, including the Board of Directors of the Foundation, our chapter is put in significant difficulty in this task by some actions of the Foundation fundraising department, very detrimental with respect to our donors." - please could you expand on what you mean by this? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:52, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Mike, the answer to your question is here : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round2/Wikim%C3%A9dia_France/Progress_report_form#Fundraising Thank you for the time spent on our request. Cyrille WMFr (talk) 09:07, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

WikiConvention Francaphone

Dear WMFr,
Thank you for your comprehensive proposal document. I realise that the official consultation period has closed, so please do not be alarmed by this question. Nevertheless, I thought that it is important to ask!
I note that your APG application refers to the "First French-language Wikiconvention 2016" as a key component of "Focus area 3: Contributing to the international movement" (in the sub-section for "supporting communities"). I also noticed that the PEG grant application for the WikiConvention has been assessed as ineligible for PEG funding (here) on the basis that WMFr is an APG chapter and this conference proposal has been assessed to be a 'national' rather than 'movement wide' event. [Note: I am not here to support/oppose/critique that decision, that grant application, or the conference idea].
My question is whether WMFr has decided yet what it will do, as a result of this decision, because that decision was made after your annual plan and consultation period was finished? If you have not yet made a new plan, that is ok - this will not be "used against you" by the FDC. But, if you have a new plan, perhaps you could say what it is here? For example, re-adjusting funding from the general budget to continue with the project at a smaller level; applying for funding for the conference from an external source; cancelling the conference; re-designing the conference and re-submitting the PEG application... Sincerely, Wittylama (talk) 08:08, 10 May 2016 (UTC) (Notifying key people associated with these documents: Pyb, Cyrille WMFr, GuillaumeG, Jean-Frédéric)

Hi Wittylama,

I will give my point of view, as a volunteer and the project coordinator of this event. We will do our best to organize this event despite the very late negative answer of the Foundation. 7 weeks to reply that my demand is out of scope. This is strange because the grant was reviewed by a lot of hard core members from diffrent countries and nobody warned me about this. But I made the mistake to base my grant on some previous PEG (WikiCon USA, WikiCon in Austria...). I will not do the same error twice. Wikimedians should not take into account previous PEG and lose their time to read all those reports. There is clearly a way to improve the documentation, help volunteers beforre submitting a PEG or make a very quick review just to check if the grant is in the scope.

It's very important for the French editors to meet together as does Germans, Dutch, Americans, etc. A tiny PEG will be resubmitted. The Foundation agreed to finance 172 euros per participant from non-FDC countries (0$ for the travel for scholarships, 0$ for the childcare program, an important way to decrease the gendergap from my point of view). I will stop complaining, you are not the responsible about that decision ;)

But I'm still shocked by the decision. I feel being treated as a n00b despite behing very active on Wikimedia since 12 years. Pyb (talk) 21:22, 10 May 2016 (UTC)