Grants talk:IEG/Typo fixing

Responding to notice on proposal

Hi The Quixotic Potato! We certainly do want good ideas submitted in our grants program and I appreciate that you jumped in so proactively with yours and made the deadline. Now that you have, you are quite welcome to continue to work on and develop your idea, your team and your community engagement stategy. The deadline doesn't mean you have to stop working on your proposal, just that you had to submit it.

The purpose of community notification isn't to generate a popularity contest. We think it is critical in this highly collaborative movement that all applicants notify the community in appropriate ways so that they can get feedback about how closely an idea meets their current needs, receive constructive criticism about potential problems and, potentially gain new participants interested in the project (notification may help you find the programmer you are looking for!). It would be unfortunate for any applicant to simply solicit endorsements from friends, since they would forfeit the opportunity to improve their project through objective support, feedback and constructive criticism from people with a stake in the outcome of their proposal. As you think about community notification, consider the people your project would impact if funded and notify that audience to give them a chance to engage with your project idea.

Warm regards, --Marti (WMF) (talk) 17:00, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Just a quick reply before I go on a mini-holiday; I will probably write a longer reply when I return:

• I found another programmer who is willing to help. He is not a Wikipedian, I know him IRL. I hope he will be able to guesstimate how much time he will have to spend on this project by monday so that I can try to figure out a reasonable budget.
• Community comment is requested between 30 September till 19 October. I understand the deadlines from your perspective, but from my perspective they are unhelpful and even unworkable. I wrote my proposal on the 29th and I won't be able to go be online for the next couple of days (I will be in a forest somewhere). I do not like spamming, and if I don't spam people then no one will see this proposal. Pages like this get almost no pageviews because almost no-one knows that they exist. Endorsements are a bad idea (and putting endorsements on the grant page but forcing negative feedback to the talkpage is also a bad idea). Artificial deadlines are also a very bad idea. I have a company to run, my customers have deadlines, this is volunteer work. If I have a good idea, and I submit it too late, and no one responds to it, it is still a good idea. I would like to write some software to notify people who are probably interested in this sort of stuff, but that would take time, and I haven't even started packing my bags yet... If I would've been notified that I had to submit a proposal between 30 September till 19 October then this problem wouldn't exist. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 11:23, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

@The Quixotic Potato: Great to hear about the programmer! I also saw your note to Jimbo on his talk page, and in terms of notifications, I think that brief message and screenshot of what the tool is intended to do works very well. You could consider posting something like that to just a few other places like to the AWB talk page and the Guild of Copy Editors. I agree that spamming is annoying, but contacting just a few communities that you would want to use and benefit from your tool isn't harming anyone, and carries a lot of potential to improve your project. Thanks, and I hope you enjoyed your holiday. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:36, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

@I JethroBT (WMF): @Mjohnson (WMF): Good news: I am back from my mini-holiday (sometimes its nice to be in a forest, without electricity, a shower or even a toilet), I have a screenshot of the new VB.NET version and the programmer told me how much money he needs. I will try to contact some people to ask them for feedback/endorsements as soon as possible. The most efficient way to do that is probably to write a little script that tells me when someone made his/her most recent edit. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 07:40, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2015

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2015 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 2 2015 begins on 20 October 2015, and grants will be announced in December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

Marti (WMF) (talk) 17:41, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Typo fixing

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?	6.8
(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?	6.2
(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?	6.4
(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?	5.0
Comments from the committee: I make typos all the time and am eternally grateful for the people who correct them, though sometimes it takes years (!) This would be great to have and as a AWB user I may even be tempted to try it. The idea itself is good. The tool (AWB) is good. However, the applicant’s attitude and the lack of willingness to communicate with others may negatively affect the potential impact. As we move to a mobile editor workforce, I think we will lose instead of gain AWB contributors. I question the need for more desktop-only solutions. On the other hand, I do think spelling is important! Using AWB in this manner is a good approach. However, the hesitancy to communicate with others (I would have already reached out to the AWB devs) creates a huge risk. Success is measurable, but achieving it unclear. AWB developers are hard to find. The project can be accomplished in the allocated time. The budget is very efficient, and the participants have all the necessary skills except perhaps in communication and outreach. Target is editors with pet peeves when it comes to typos (and I think there are many of them) Would like more breakdown of the second part of the budget. The grantee needs a programmer, and the programmer is only payable with the grant: a "chicken and egg" problem I am unclear about its impact considering there are several bots that correct general misspelling.

1. Thank you. Would you like to be a beta-tester?
2. I am not a native speaker. In my native language I can express my thoughts in many different ways, therefore it is far easier to be as polite as I want to be. But in English my choices are limited. There may be some (sub)cultural differences too; I don't think it is impolite to say that something is a bad idea, because that (to me), doesn't imply that that person is a bad person. Everyone has bad ideas.
3. Good point, I have adapted my plan to be less dependent upon AWB (I changed it from 1 AWB plugin to 2 standalone applications and made it possible to develop software that can use Typolists files in scenarios where AWB is not available and made it easier to develop an app for mobile users that handles Typolist files. Most of the tools that are used on Wikipedia can´t run on a mobile phone. Mobile phone technology hasn't yet evolved to the point where it is possible to use applications that require a more complicated userinterface (like AWB's); a mouse is far more precise than a touchscreen and a real keyboard is far better than typing on a touchscreen. Tablets & phablets & all-in-one computers can run Windows desktop applications (like AWB); and soon mobile phones will be able to do the same (Microsoft calls it "Continuum").
4. I didn´t feel ready to send out requests for feedback because I was already working on the new version behind the scenes and the text needed to be updated but that is finished now and I am working on a script that finds people who may be interested at the moment. Normally that risk would be huge but:
   • my software edits AWB's config file but doesn't interact with AWB itself.
   • this software doesn't need to be a plugin inside AWB, it also works as an external application.
   • In Windows it is very easy to write software that manipulates another application.
   • AWB is opensource.
5. We need more people who want to improve AWB and develop plugins.
6. I didn´t feel ready to send out requests for feedback, but I am working on that at the moment.
7. Many people adopt typos, but finding and fixing them manually is slow and boring work. The software fixes that problem.
8. Working on it.
9. Exactly.
10. There is no software similar to this except Project TypoScan (but that doesn't work anymore). Fully-automated spelling bots are not allowed. Unfortunately there aren't many tools that help humans fix typos more efficiently, I know only a handful, and the ones that do exist rely on RegExp so they can only fix a tiny minority of the typos. Almost all of the typos found with this new software cannot be found with existing tools. A fuzzy search for the word "previously" returns 86 results so the amount of existing typos on en.wiki is very high. I have a list of the top 10.000 most frequently used words on en.wiki. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 13:35, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Round 2 2015 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:
The committee is supportive of this project’s proposed efforts to address typos on Wikipedia. However, because automated revisions can be a sensitive method of contributing within the collaborative environment of Wikimedia projects, the committee would like to see the project team establish a stronger, documented user history before funding this proposal. We would be glad to see this project return at a later date.

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.
3. To reapply with this project in the future, please make updates based on the feedback provided in this round before resubmitting it for review in a new round.
4. Check the schedule for the next open call to submit proposals - we look forward to helping you apply for a grant in a future round.

Questions? Contact us.