Grants talk:IEG/Global Economic Map

Travel costs

User:mcnabber091Out of curiousity, what do the travel costs involve? Gryllida 23:22, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Travel costs would serve the purpose of meeting with professional econimsts and professors to discuss the optimal format to present economic data for the Global Economic Map. Expenses would be airfare, accommodation and other travel costs. Mcnabber091 (talk) 20:16, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Scope

From your description it looks like the bot would be specific to Wikidata and contain a set of rules as to what databases to use to retrieve the data. Is such task needed at other sister projects? Would it be feasible to shove some of its config on-wiki and write it as a gadget? Gryllida 23:26, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

The host of the data would be Wikidata but people can retrieve it and use it (for their personal researches or Wikipedia and or other sister projects) using tons of API-related gadgets like API Query, Pywikibot, etc. or in Wikipedia they can use it using Lua Amir (talk) 22:38, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Lua looks interesting, especially as it's very limited and doesn't even have api access. How would you do that, out of curiousity? —Gryllida 11:06, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia and Wikidata don't demand certain rights to have access API (unlike other websites), e.g. I use this API request to see edit count my bot in Wikidata [1]. About Lua there a help about it mw:Extension:WikibaseClient/Lua Amir (talk) 17:01, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Source code

As you've already requested the bot at a relevant wiki, it looks like the bot is already capable of performing (at least some of) its tasks. As a grant requires all development to be open-source, I suspect that it could be pertinent to release the current version source code and link to it in your proposal. Gryllida 23:28, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

We haven't started to write a code yet but when I started it would be on github (obviously open source) Amir (talk) 22:38, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Is it possible to include publication of the source code under free license to the "measures of success"? rubin16 (talk) 05:32, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Yeah I will add that to the measures of success.Mcnabber091 (talk) 08:50, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Timeline

At Global Economic Map, you mention a need in additional data types Wikidata needs to deploy for this project, "notably the URL datatype and the Number with Dimension datatype - both due to be completed by September 2013". From my understanding, if approved, grant would commence in June. It may make things a bit difficult as while you may develop, there is — if I understand it correctly — no testing ground yet. Would you run your own wiki instance and deploy the required data types on it in advance? What is the expected timeline? Gryllida 23:40, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

URL datatype is already implemented (AFAIK), there are several test wikis that people can test quantities with unit (not now but sooner than Wikidata) in it and it could be a proper test ground for us Amir (talk) 22:38, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Is it possible to see your planned schedule? For example, in case grant is approved, when do you plan to finish planning, to write specification, what data are you going to collect first, etc.? rubin16 (talk) 05:31, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi rubin16, sorry for the delay on the timeline, me and Amir still need to discuss this. I will create a new section on the project page 'Timeline'. Mcnabber091 (talk) 21:02, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Ok, thanks! rubin16 (talk) 07:21, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Amir and I have posted our timeline. rubin16 Gryllida Mcnabber091 (talk) 17:00, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks again! rubin16 (talk) 17:08, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Budget

What parts of the budget need clarification or further explanation? Thanks Mcnabber091 (talk) 21:20, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

• Hi! Looks like a good start, thanks! Here is how I'm interpreting your budget: Alex would be paid $3000 for project management, Amir would be paid $2000 for software development, and then you'd have $1000 to use for travel expenses. Is that correct?
• I wasn't sure if the funds for usability testing or branding/logo design would actually be paid to other contractors - if you are hiring contractors for these steps, these should be made into their own line-item.
• Or, put another way, what contractors will the Project Manager be recruiting? Since the 2 project participants listed for this project would be grantees (software dev & project manager), I'd expect to see a separate line item for any additional contractors you think you'll need to hire, and have those costs broken out separately. If not contractors will be hired, then that part of the project management work goes away, I'd expect.
• Finally, it might be useful to give some added details about the travel to help us evaluate how realistic it is....are you thinking to make 1 trip or 5 trips, will they be in your home country or globally, is there 1 conference you'd attend to get access to several economists or are these several 1-off meetings? I'm wondering why you can't use phone/videoconferencing to meet this need, so having a better sense of why/what kind of travel is needed might help. I'm also wondering if the 2 project participants might want travel funds to meet together at some point in the project, or if you expect you can accomplish all of your work remotely.

Cheers! Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:31, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Siko (WMF) thanks for the qustions

• Alex would be paid $3,000 for project management and Amir would be paid $2,000 for software development. I agree that the $1000 for travel expenses might be unnessary so I will remove it from the proposal. The 2 project participants can complete the project remotely.
• Branding/logo design would be paid to other contractors. I'm not sure who exactly would be hired but I think this project needs a logo of some sort. I will make make 'Branding' into it's own line item. I will ask Amir about the usability testing.

Thanks Mcnabber091 (talk) 08:31, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

• Hello! I also wanted to ask some questions regarding budget: as I see from discussion on the talk page, you are willing to host your tool and project on Meta\Wikidata and not to create separate website and promote it. So, how would you work - from own website or from Meta/Wikidata? In case you choose own website it seems that it would result in additional costs for hosting, if you would use Meta/Wikidata - I am not sure that branding would be required in this case: readers and editors could be informed about the tool at local economics projects or simply by observing of the tools' own work in articles. What do you think? rubin16 (talk) 05:26, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
• I also want to ask some more questions about budgeting... Siko (WMF) already asked about other contractors above but I still have little understanding - who do you want to hire and what tasks will be implemented by them? rubin16 (talk) 05:43, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
• "outreach and implementing" - isn't it similar to "branding and logo"? What is included here? The question is again dependent on the project's location - whether internal (Meta/Wikidata) or external (own website). rubin16 (talk) 05:43, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
• "research", "communicating with database providers" - what is considered to be done here? As I see, databases already provide open and easy for machine-reading data - World Bank, US Census, documentation for US Census. I do understand that Amir would have to work on this data to process them, but the structure of data you want is already clear and you already requested for necessary properties at Wikidata, databases are open... I don't want to say that these works are not necessary but it seems not so clear for the external reader (like me) rubin16 (talk) 05:43, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi rubin16, I just made some edits to the budget. We will do our project from within meta holidays. The contractor will help us create the logo design for the project. I got rid of the 'outreach and implementation' part and included its expenses as part of 'planning'. The structure of the data is not completely decided upon. The overall structure is there but I'm not completely sure on the final format. There are some small decisions on the format that still need to be made on what to include and not to include. I will get rid of the 'communicating with database providers' and 'research' part and just leave it as 'Determining the finalized format'.Mcnabber091 (talk) 08:25, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

• Frankly speaking, I am a bit confused now :) my question was aimed on the necessity of such works as "outreach and implementation" or "contractors", not on their classification in expenses: if you are really going to invest more time determining the final format - yes, it's better not to keep its amount and not to decrease it; if you are going to work on implementation - it's better to state it as a separate item of expenses because overall "planning" is less informative. If such works as implementation was already included by substance into planning, I would expect to change amount of such expenses, not just relocating them. Please, don't think that I insist on cutting of the budget, I just want to make budget breakdown clear and reasonable, without duplicating tasks (now we have 2 lines for designer), that would be reasonably connected between each other rubin16 (talk) 18:00, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi rubin16, now I understand what you were asking. 'Outreach' will be needed to contact potential editors and potential users of the Global Economic Map. Potential users would be economics students and professors. 'Implementation' will involve the steps to make this project up and running within meta-wiki. I redefined the Logo design costs into two separte items: the costs of finding a logo contractor and the payment to the contractor to make the logo. I do not know who we would hire yet to be the contractor. I hope this answers your questions :) Mcnabber091 (talk) 11:25, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi rubin16 I replaced 'Implementation' with 'Creation of the Meta-Wiki Global Economic Map webpage'. I think that is more accurate of what I will be doing, sorry for all the changes. Mcnabber091 (talk) 16:57, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Feedback

Hi Alex and Amir,

Thanks for submitting this proposal, it looks like you're off to a good start! I took a pass through it today to make some formatting updates, as we've changed some things in the template since you started your proposal. Here are some initial comments/questions:

• Where will the Global Economic Map articles that the bot is updating actually appear (ie, where will I go to read this information)? Like Gryllida, I'm curious to know if this project depends on having your sister project also created? That's probably a dependency you don't want, because creation of sister projects can take a long time, or never happen (plus, they require WMF engineering to deploy, which means your IEG would be ineligible as you can't accomplish this w/o WMF staff). Besides, if the articles are placed in some new website, you'll also have the not-easy task of making readers aware of this place and visiting it. Perhaps instead you are thinking these articles will begin on different language versions of Wikipedia, maybe with English Wikipedia (or another 1-2 languages) for your beta test during this first 6 months, with possibility to expand to many more languages as success is demonstrated? Clarifying this point somewhere in your proposal may be helpful.
• Target audience - In past projects we've learned that having a very specific target audience is helpful. Students and economists like a wide target to aim for....how will this data possibly reach all students and economists in the world at the end of 6 months? One way to refine this could be something like more like "students and economists reading Wikipedia" (or, English Wikipedia?)
• Along similar lines to the above 2 points, I added an engagement target parameter to your infobox, and I guessed as what projects I thought your target might be. Please update as you see fit! (+ specified languages are always good, if you plan to scope your test to not every language version of Wikipedia at launch, for example, which may help keep this project more manageable to start).
• I added a community engagement section (this is new to proposals since you started your draft in 2013) - please share some thoughts there about how you plan to engage the community (Wikidata folks, Wikipedians, etc) to help/test/use what you've created along the way.
• Measures of success - this still feels a bit fuzzy, I'd encourage you to think in the form of measurable targets, rather than yes/no assessments. At the end of 6 months, how many articles/languages/stats will you aim to have updating via this bot, for example? If you're creating new articles, how many page views will you aim for, to know that the bot is creating something that people actually view/use?

Please feel free to continue to make updates based on feedback you're getting on this proposal during the community comments period, and let us know if you have further questions! Best wishes, Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:15, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi Siko,

• I clarified the measures of success on the project page. I do not know what is an appropiate page view total after 6 months because I do not know how many page views other economic data sources receive.
• I also expanded on the community engagement target parameter. I am not sure how to contact the target editors because it is against the rules of Wikipedia to mass message people through their talk pages.
• Target audience: Student economists reading Wikipedia (should this be expanded on or refined)?
• I will let Amir answer for languages to be updated by the bot and for where the articles will appear.

Mcnabber091 (talk) 11:06, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

You can leave messages on project pages that have to do with economics. The english wikipedia project has over 200 watchers, so leaving a message there will reach a good number of people in your target audience. You can also ask there if anyone knows of similar pages on other non-english projects - you might be able to pick up interest from someone overseas that way. Here is the en wiki project stats: page info Jane023 (talk) 23:31, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

About where is best place for the project, making it a sister project obviously costs too much and it's not big enough. I like the idea of nesting the project inside of meta-wiki (like Wiki Loves Pride) and nesting the data inside of Wikidata. Language support is one of the most important reasons of nesting data because any language is allowed on Wikidata and you can receive these economical data even in language you invented and no one else knows!but using these data inside of Wikipedia languages is something else (and equally important) that can achieved with convincing editors of Wikipedia to get these data from Wikidata and put them in their infoboxes and this thing can be achieved via publicity like posting in Wikimedia Blog, wikipedia-l, Wikiproject economy, etc. Amir (talk) 09:24, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree with all of that - my point is that you can get people interested in your project (without community interest no one will vote for your project) by posting a link to your project at the project pages. Wikidata is the best place for your data to go because of the language issues. I do object to the way you say "All sources must be completely reliable" - that is not possible and so it is silly to state it like that. You can better say "All sources must be accepted as "highly reliable" to the community" Jane023 (talk) 12:18, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Where did I say "All sources must be completely reliable"? Amir (talk) 05:07, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Under the heading "Sources of Data" in the "project idea" itself. Jane023 (talk) 08:11, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

I didn't say that. Amir (talk) 10:46, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

My bad just fixed it Mcnabber091 (talk) 16:36, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Content

As with all things in the Wikipedia universe, this project will succeed or fail based on the ease of use (by both Wikipedia readers and Wikipedia editors) and dependability of the data input. I can't see anything about the dependability of the data to be used. You can create all sorts of bots and gadgets, but if the community labels the content "non-encyclopedic", your project will fail. I assume that there will need to be a dependable database per country or set of countries, so going world-wide may be a bit ambitious to start with. Is the data even dependable for the US and EU? Jane023 (talk) 08:35, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Jane023 I will add a new section about the dependability of the data. That is certainly important. Mcnabber091 (talk) 08:44, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

I just noticed this decline of your sample article at the English Wikipedia's "Articles for Creation" project: Economic Summary of China. Since acceptance of the format of your content is a crucial factor in your success, I suggest you input this content on Wikidata rather than the English Wikipedia. That way, the English (or any other language) Wikipedia can create an infobox to use your data in (for example) the en:Economy of China article. I noticed that I am not the first person to make this suggestion and that several other Wikipedians have pointed you to Wikidata in messages on your user talk page on the English Wikipedia. Looking at the Q number for the sample article, no properties are listed there that could be so used today and indeed The Q number for the Economy of Austria only lists one property for unemployment rate. If you have problems creating the necessary properties to input your data on Wikidata, then you can post messages to the project chat there. Jane023 (talk) 10:34, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Oops! I see you have already started here: d:Wikidata talk:Global Economic Map task force/Properties. It appears though that the work there has stalled? Jane023 (talk) 10:38, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I need to spell out that what I mean specifically is that all datapoints that you want to use in one of your tables (see everything listed under your "Sources of Data" section) should be data residing in associated properties on Wikidata, so I therefore expect each and every source of data in your proposal to have a corresponding Wikidata property. As a measure of progess I would want to see properties proposed, created, and used. Jane023 (talk) 10:45, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

For example, you want to include Industry and Financial institution top 10 rankings per country, so per country you need 20 properties; 10 for top-ten industry institutions, and 10 for top 10 financial institutions. Population per city and employment stats per city may not be available to aggregate at the country level, so your thoughts on this are required. Same thing for GDP per city and GDP per industry (these will probably never add up). At the top of the proposal page, you link out to pending properties on Wikidata, but I think you need to link to pending properties of the Economics Task Force on Wikidata (which is you, I presume?) Jane023 (talk) 07:18, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Jane023 sorry for the delay. I will start working on showing the status of the properties in an organized format soon. I will also update the Wikidata Global Economic Map task force to show the property status.

• I am not sure what you mean by 10 properties for Top ten financial institutions. Do you mean that there would be a property such as 'Ranked 7th biggest bank in residing country'? I was thinking that our bot would automatically filter thru all qualifying institutions (items) on wikidata and rank them into our table as a top 10.
• Population, employment and GDP stats are not currently available for all cities. But there are population and GDP stats for all countries. I do not think aggregating (adding the totals of each city) would be a good idea because it would not add up and the data for each city is unavailable. Mcnabber091 (talk) 07:39, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for this answer, that clears up a few of my questions. I think we can agree on the second point, so that means that you still have to get community consensus for using the database that you will choose per country for the aggregate numbers. Let's say you use databaseA for Country1 and databaseB for Country2. You will need to create properties for both databases and then add those properties to the proper countries. On the first point, I am trying to explain that if you want Wikipedia projects to use Lua to download the Wikidata infobox information, you will need to keep it simple, i.e. values in Wikidata that can be transcluded, the way images are transcluded from Commons. Jane023 (talk) 08:54, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Jane023, I just mapped out all of the data sources and their corresponding Wikidata properties here: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Global_Economic_Map_task_force/Properties

Community support

I have posted talkpage messages at the following locations

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Wirtschaft

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Business

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Companies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Economics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Finance

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:%C3%89conomie

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progetto:Economia

Mcnabber091 (talk) 07:49, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Technical dependencies

Hi Mcnabber091 and Amir,

We're checking this project for eligibility today, and from reading your proposal I'm still unclear on a few things. The plan to use Wikidata to house the data and a bot to update stats/articles makes sense, but I'd like confirmation of the following:

1. At one point your proposal mentioned building your own website, but I understand from later comments that you're now planning to just have the project pages live on meta-wiki (and most of the activity itself would happen on Wikidata, it seems). Can you please confirm asap that my understanding is correct, and another website is not needed for this project? If you are planning to build a separate website, this would bring up hosting dependencies which could make this project ineligible.
2. If Wikidata properties don't yet exist for the data you propose to store there, that seems like a rather large technical dependency for this project to move forward. I'm still not clear on how you propose to handle this dependency - I see that you've got an idea for a temporary workaround, but that doesn't really solve the key issue. Like Jane, I'd encourage you to do some mapping between your required data and Wikidata properties to help us assess how large this dependency is.

Thanks, Siko (WMF) (talk) 23:01, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Siko (WMF) we plan to do the project pages live on meta-wiki. No other website is needed for the project.Mcnabber091 (talk) 10:26, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Siko, as Alex said we don't need a separate website. about the second question: It needs to be implemented but It's around the corner and it'll be implemented before summer (or at the most pessimist estimation before end of summer) so it'll be done before the six months deadline of the project I can contact Lydia and get a confirmation for it and there is tracking bug in bugzilla for it (bugzilla:63722) Amir (talk) 11:37, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 1 2014

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 1 2014 review. Please feel free to ask questions here on the talk page and make changes to your proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 1 2014 begins on 21 April 2014, and grants will be announced in May. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

Please note that eligibility is dependent on the project having a hosting plan and/or other technical dependencies resolved so that there is no reliance on WMF engineering. If your project is recommended for funding, we will work with you to gather information about your plan before an IEG can be approved. Siko (WMF) (talk) 00:27, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

measures of success

I haven't found a thread to include my question, so started a new one :) rubin16 (talk) 05:46, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

• maybe my English is not perfect and I understand something wrong but what does "At least 5 editors to manually upload economic data into Wikidata for missing sections of the Global Economic Map that the bot cannot automate after 6 months of creation. Target editors: Wikipedia editors of 'Economy of _____' articles and economic list articles (example: 'GDP by country' article)" mean? I think that success is when you won't need editors to manually upload data as there will be no missing items, am I wrong? rubin16 (talk) 05:46, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi rubin16, even with our bot retrieving data from many databases there will still be parts of the project that won't be filled in. Sometimes a database might have data for 170/193 UN recognized countries. In that case it would be useful if somebody manually found those pieces of data from another source and filled in the gap. This will probably be the case for corporate data and government budget data in the short term but we plan that OpenCorporates and OpenSpending projects by the Open Knowledge Foundation will make this data easy to retrieve by a bot in the future.Mcnabber091 (talk) 08:46, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

• I would better call this point "at least 5 other wiki-editors who would join the check of uploads' completeness and would correct mistakes if any". So called "engagement" :) rubin16 (talk) 16:14, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Notifications and bot approval

Please link Wikidata community notification and a bot approval for your bot project. This can't even be considered without. --Nemo 07:31, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

• though I am not grantee, but the link to Wikidata request for bot flag is here, not approved yet rubin16 (talk) 15:47, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

@Nemo bis: the bot can't be approved without writing the code and running for test and other stuff, I think an open request for approval is enough (Correct me if I'm wrong) Amir (talk) 23:04, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

$750 on logo design!?

That just seems wasteful. the wub "?!" 22:45, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

• I might notice that the figure got down to $500 now. Gryllida 22:50, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
  • No, I've included also the $250 for "Finding contractor for logo design". the wub "?!" 23:22, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
    • Hi the wub and Gryllida, how much does logo design usually cost? We plan that this project will have a professional looking logo such as the 'Wikimedia Meta-Wiki' logo that can be seen above. $750 was just an estimate and we can revise it to whatever seems fit. I also need to formulate what the appropriate logo will be. I imagine it might have a '$' symbol. I am open to other brainstorm suggestions for the logo. Mcnabber091 (talk) 09:06, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
      • I'm pretty sure the meta-wiki logo was designed for free by volunteers, as were most project logos. the wub "?!" 12:52, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
        • Okay didn't know that, i will eliminate that part from the budget. Mcnabber091 (talk) 13:52, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Scope

• I understand that the bot uses an API of an external site to collect data. I would like to see examples of sources of information that you would use. Gryllida 22:53, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Hi Gryllida, all of the sources of information can be found in the table listed here: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Global_Economic_Map_task_force/Properties I have added a link to this page on the IEG page under 'G.E.M. data sources and wikidata properties'.I will continually update this page as the project progresses. Mcnabber091 (talk) 09:14, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
• Is the bot design capable of extending to retrieving data from other fields — medical, biological data? Gryllida 22:53, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

  I think it would be, positively people have to change the codes in order to make it compatible Amir (talk) 16:46, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Missing datatype in Wikidata

This project is great, but the required datatype for expressing amounts with currency (number with units, see: bugzilla:54318) is not available yet. Has it been clarified with the Wikidata development team if it will be available by the time this IEG would begin? --Micru (talk) 07:59, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

As the timeline shows there is no need to have that datatype implemented before July 1st and I talked with Lydia she told me June 1st can be a optimistic estimation (as we wrote in the timeline) and I think with the most pessimist estimation it'll be there before July Amir (talk) 02:23, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Global Economic Map

Scoring criteria (see the rubric for background)	Score 1=weak alignment 10=strong alignment
(A) Impact potential Does it fit with Wikimedia's strategic priorities? Does it have potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	8.2
(B) Innovation and learning Does it take an Innovative approach to solving a key problem? Is the potential impact greater than the risks? Can we measure success?	8
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in 6 months? How realistic/efficient is the budget? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	6.5
(D) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support? Does it support diversity?	6.2
Comments from the committee: Proposer has persistently engaged the community. A number of editors have expressed support for this project. Committee is mpressed by the prospect of figuring out how to create bots that automatically update Wikidata. This project, if done the way it is proposed, could scale to all projects and sustain itself without the help of the proposers. If this is successful, it could provide a model for the automatic collection of data in other areas besides the economy, so good documentation of pitfalls encountered along the way would be helpful too. The project is very ambitious in that it intends to collect and make available information from a large number of sources. Its success as time goes on will depend on the providers of each piece of data not changing the way in which it is made available. The information in the proposal gives no indication of how much successful experience the two participants have at managing projects and programming bots. There are concerns that they can get this done in the time allotted. Implementation of the project depends on the planned addition of a suitable data type to Wikidata, and if this is late in appearing it could delay the project. There might be more complexity than expressed in the handling of data sources that have to be heterogeneous. The proposal is dependent on Wikidata community approval. Much needs to happen on the side of community approval for the indicator fields and the databases the proposer wants to use as sources. It is questionable whether proposer will be allowed to have students make the edits he envisions on the English Wikipedia. Perhaps IEG should be flexible and make the proposal’s timing tied to Wikidata's implementation. Encouraging to see Amir (Ladsgroup), who is an experienced bot operator, take the technical side of the project. The proposal supports diversity because the information would be neutrally collected by a bot for as many countries as possible, rather than depending on individual editors to show interest and expertise in mining data sources for various parts of the world. If economists around the world find these Wikipedia economic summaries a convenient way to access up-to-date information, this will increase traffic and Wikipedia's general reputation. The proposal is reasonably scoped and does not ask for an overly sized budget relative to the task. The budget for this proposal is quite modest and a good value. The impact is greater than the risks.

Thank you for submitting this proposal. The committee is now deliberating based on these scoring results, and WMF is proceeding with it's due-diligence. You are welcome to continue making updates to your proposal pages during this period. Funding decisions will be announced by the end of May.
— ΛΧΣ²¹ 23:53, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Round 1 2014 Decision

This project has not been selected for an Individual Engagement Grant at this time.

We love that you took the chance to creatively improve the Wikimedia movement. The committee has reviewed this proposal and not recommended it for funding, but we hope you'll continue to engage in the program. Please drop by the IdeaLab to share and refine future ideas!

Comments regarding this decision:
We appreciate the effort put into this idea by both proposers, and have been particularly impressed by Alex’s persistence and enthusiasm over the past year for growing a global economic data initiative. There are 2 primary reasons why we’re unable to fund the project at this time: (1) The project’s success currently depends on Wikidata’s support for units and a list of properties that do not yet exist, and we understand it will be several months at the soonest before these dependencies can be removed, and (2) WMF is unfortunately unable to fund 1 of the 2 grantees on the proposed team because of US restrictions on making payments to the country in which Amir resides. In addition, we have some remaining questions about the degree with which the Wikidata community is comfortable with paying for bot-created entries to this Wikimedia project, so we’d like to see more discussion and endorsement from members of that community before moving forward. As such, we’d encourage Alex to continue to deepen his engagement as a volunteer in the Wikidata project and community over the next few months, and to consider alternatives to the current team or budget request. If Wikidata dependencies are cleared, we’d be happy to consider an updated version of this proposal in a future round. Wishing you best of luck!

Next steps:

1. Review the feedback provided on your proposal and to ask for any clarifications you need using this talk page.
2. Visit the IdeaLab to continue developing this idea and share any new ideas you may have.
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Iran

Ok, it's not the WMF's fault if USA have idiotic/criminal embargos, but was this mentioned before to the applicants before they spent more time on this proposal? I don't see a mention of "Iran" earlier on this talk page. Moreover, were WMDE, WMCH or other orgs working with WMF on grants if they'd be willing to at least consider grants to embargo-afflicted wikimedians? --Nemo 11:32, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

We weren't informed that the co-proposer was in Iran until WMF began the due-diligence interview (and in fact, I understand that was the first time the original proposer had learned of this as well, so that explains why it didn't come up on the talk page until now). And I expect that yes, in the event that another chapter wanted to collaborate w/ WMF to find alternative funding solutions in such situations, we could look into options. For this particular case, however, the WMDE staffers that were consulted during WMF's due diligence did not recommend funding (due to the other reasons related to Wikidata noted in the decision template above), so we decided not to pursue it further at this time. Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 17:17, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Everyone knows I live in Iran (It's mentioned in my user page) and the main proposer knew it since we started working but I thought it wouldn't be a problem because there a million ways to bypass the law (including chapters funding). if you mean you and the proposer didn't know about the problem, I didn't know it either, I didn't know (and I don't think) the law is so strict that you can't fund no Iran-resident at all. At the end, I sent an e-mail to the committee but no answer: I suggest you to add this statement in eligibility criteria (in order to prevent further works and sudden rejects that makes the work goes to vain) Best Amir (talk) 15:00, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Trying something, please tweak: [2]. I think there is some bot posting messages to those who draft funding requests, it should add a warning if they have a fa-N babel or similar. --Nemo 11:30, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

A very high proportion (a little less than half) of Iranians don't count Persian as their native language, I think fa-N or fa-3 and above is better, besides I think there are other countries with similar situation (Syria, Libya, or other countries but I'm not sure) Amir (talk) 15:11, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Amir - you sent your email to the IEGrants@ address on June 1, and it took me 2 days to respond to that because of weekend + travel, not because we're ignoring you :) Agreed with what you suggested in your email, we can make it clearer in the program rules now that we've learned from this experience, and I will work on that! Regardless, you'll note from the rejection this wasn't the only reason we passed on funding this project at this time. I had a good talk in person with Alex at Wikiconference USA this weekend about the details, feel free to sync up with him again if you still feel like you are missing information in terms of why we're not funding in this round. Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 17:54, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

about the e-mail, That was my bad, Sorry and about the first reason of rejection I want to say the first reason is enough for postponing the IEG (not rejecting it) so In order to avoid starting over for the next round you can just postpone it and in the mean time we can find someone else for bot developing or find a way to bypass the law. Amir (talk) 07:41, 4 June 2014 (UTC)