Grants talk:IEG/Understanding Wikidata

Translation

Hi,

I like the proposal in general. Properly done documentation is always good.

An important comment that I have is that the text should be as translatable as possible. If it can be adapted to use the page translation feature of the Translate extension, it's a good option. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 21:33, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, that was my idea, but I wasn't sure how to make that happen the best way. It would also help me in the writing process. Ziko (talk) 18:30, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Deadline reminder, and some questions

Hi Ziko,

Thanks for submitting this idea - it seems like a great start to something that could be very needed! Just a reminder that the deadline to submit completed proposals in this round is 30 September 2013. Once you've finished adding all details, please let us know that you're ready for review by updating the status in your infobox to status=PROPOSED.

A few early questions/thoughts you may want to consider as you're finishing drafting:

1. I love that you've got a plan to collect some data at the end of the project to understand if the final documentation is truly useful for your intended audience, and a survey seems like a good way to do this. I wonder if you're also planning to collect some data from your target audience at the start of the project, to better understand what they find confusing and most want to have good documentation on? This is likely to add some useful info to what you already know, and help focus the scope of the documentation that you'd be creating. If so, we can point you towards some resources for usability testing etc, if that would help :)
2. I'm curious to better understand the specific activities you've got in mind for this project! Is the idea to travel because you'll be providing in-person trainings to specific groups, or because you'll be trying to learn from different stakeholders what type of documentation and clarification would be most useful to them? One scalable way to approach this might be to conduct usability tests and trainings online for those who are interested, all of which should ultimately contribute to better documentation for the communities to deploy online as well. If you've got lots of travel in mind for this project (other than, say, attending a couple of key conferences or something), I'd be curious to hear more about this aspect and why you think it would be important.
3. I see you haven't specified the amount of money you're requesting in your budget yet - please let me know if I can help with anything and you're completing this part (and feel free to submit a request in Euro, of course!)
4. I'd suggest notifying the Wikidata community via some means if you haven't already (linking to this proposal so that they can share their thoughts here) and post a link to your notification in the "Community Notification" section of your proposal.

Wishing you best of luck as you complete this proposal! Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 21:58, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Dear Siko,

Thank you for the kind and helpful remarks. About the four points:

1. I would be very grateful for any help such as resources for usablity testing. It should be clear that my initiative is mainly documenting what exists and not (primarily) a means to improve Wikidata. I am not sure whether to write more about that in the proposal?
2. The latter: it's about meeting Wikipedians (mainly them) and find out what they think about Wikidata, what they would like to know in order to be more motivated and empowered to participate. Mostly I will find the people in Germany and the Netherlands in person (I have already some persons and conventions in mind) or talk to them online. (WikiCon in Karlsruhe or WCN in Utrecht would be great but its already in November, 2013.) I have been told a visit to San Francisco would be less useful than to Berlin where the Wikidata team sits. I try to elaborate more on this in the proposal. Did you have something in mind about the number of people? It is not a real scientific approach but I want to talk to different kinds of Wikipedia contributors and others. / A kind of training would then be part of the last phase when I try to get some feedback from readers.
3. I am at the moment calculating a little bit about the sums necessary. I think I will come up with details soon.
4. Yesterday I have put a short note and link on the village pump of Wikidata, but I know I am a little late and try to reach out to some people individually.

Kind regards Ziko (talk) 18:24, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Some input...

1. It's not entirely clear what format this documentation would be in. Are you thinking something along the lines of Help:Contents?
2. Which language will be the original language of the documentation?
3. How will it be translated in to other languages?
4. Details needed on the grant total, and breakdown of main costs.
5. Will you be the sole author, or will there be other contributors?
6. You say you will work "on a part-time basis", but how many hours per week is that approximately?

--Danrok (talk) 20:34, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello Danrok.

1. It would be part of phase 1 to find out what might be the most suitable format or text genre (e.g., manual or text book, or something else). Though, I do have by intuition some ideas and tend to a manual.
2. The language will be English though German (and/or Dutch) may play a role in the process. For example, I imagine that I will write the glossary first for myself, including the German equivalents, and see how that fits for German readers.
3. Translatations would be the task of (other) volunteers, or maybe the WMF or WMDE want to hire people to translate.
4. Yes, will follow soon.
5. The work will be authored by me. If someone explicitly helped with a part of it he or she will be mentioned, of course.
6. I think that the time invested in the project should be something like a half time job or less than that.

Hope I answered your questions appropriately, and I will incorporate them into my proposal as much as possible. Thanks. Ziko (talk) 12:11, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Concrete objectives and concrete costs

I totally endorse this project in theory, but it needs work, and to be accepted, it needs an itemized budget. Having worked with Ziko in WMNL, I believe he can be trusted to thoroughly document his findings, but that is not exactly what is needed here. I do think a short brochure about Wikidata should be created for PR use, both for external parties and internal parties (the Wikipedians he is talking about). That "brochure" could be a piece of paper, a short video, a Wikipage, or maybe a whole set of things. Here are my comments based on the deliverables as specified today:

1) Popular introduction, possibly with a short history of Wikidata and its role in the Wikimedia movement

This needs to be specifically fleshed out how it will differ from the Wikidata article on Wikipedia. I think a few products can be named with a price put on them. Some suggestions: development (with a copywriter?) of a few articles and brochures (for external parties), project management of named tasks to be done by project volunteers, such creation/translation of a FAQ for local Wiki(p/m)edia projects and specific Wikidata help pages on those local projects - i.e. How to merge two items? How to check/add an interwiki link using Wikidata?, etc.

2) Hand book / manual; usable as a basis for help pages if the community likes to

I think it would be more effective to write (or crowdsource the writing for) a short, printable and translatable wikibook based on a specific Wikidata project (preferably one that will become popular, such as migrating the monuments database of WIki Loves Monuments from Toolserver to Wikidata). I thinking that documenting the history of a specific WD taskforce, and the kind of work done by those members, would be very useful. This could include interviews, work done by such members IRL as well as on other Wikipedia projects, and the development of WD properties by the task force used on Wikidata. Such a book could be valuable to use as a Wikidata template for other Wikipedians.

3) Glossary

Yes! Ontology, Persistent URLS, info boxes, lists of lists, machine readable metadata, etc. I think the Wikidata glossary could get big quickly, but I think one of the goals of this project should be to ensure that all Wikidata terms are well defined on corresponding pages on Wikipedia (which is not the case today).

Good luck Ziko with this proposal! Jane023 (talk) 11:28, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello, thanks. The documents would be only digital and online (CC-BY-SA), I guess, but of course the WMF or WMDE or another organisation can print them. In contrast to a Wikipedia article, my text would be author-based, and contain original research (I wonder whether Wikipedians will accept it as a secondary source suitable for Wikipedia :-) ). It would be important to have a good impression of the target groups, yes.

Wikibooks... I didn't think about that, but if that is a suitable tool for writing, or for presenting the results and let the community go on with them... I wouldn't mind but it also depends on the feedback and reactions from the Wikidata community. A good point to take with me for phase 1 (the talks with Wikimedians).

Wikidata terms: I am considering to indicate in the glossary whether a term is a general term from library / information science, or a typical wiki / Wikipedia culture term. But maybe that turns out to be impracticle; there are already links to Wikipedia articles, but the Wikipedia articles have the task to explain something in general, and not with regard to the problemes Wikidata users might have. I am open for suggestions.

Ziko (talk) 12:39, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2013

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 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 2 begins on 23 October 2013, and grants will be announced in December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

Siko (WMF) (talk) 05:27, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Community Notifications

Hi Ziko,
As you know, the IEG committee will begin their review of round 2 proposals on 23 October 2013. To expedite proposal review, I'm looking over the community notifications section of each eligible application. It looks like the link to your Wikidata project chat was archived. Please re-link to your post's present location so that the committee can more easily follow up. Thanks!
Best of luck! :)
Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 18:58, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Done. :-) Ziko (talk) 20:24, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Ziko. :) --Anna (WMF) 19:01, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Was this notified elsewhere too? Your link from Wikidata seems to have attracted less than 50 views, maybe a reminder on wikidata-l could be useful. --Nemo 06:48, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions, will follow. Ziko (talk) 21:58, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Understanding Wikidata

Scoring criteria (see the rubric for background)	Score 1=weakest 5=strongest
Potential for impact
(A) The project fits with the Wikimedia movement's strategic priorities	4
(B) The project has the potential to lead to significant online impact.	4
(C) The impact of the project can be sustained after the grant ends.	3.5
(D) The project has potential to be scaled or adapted for other languages or projects.	3
Ability to execute
(E) The project has demonstrated interest from a community it aims to serve.	4
(F) The project can be completed as scoped within 6 months with the requested funds.	4
(G) The budget is reasonable and an efficient use of funds.	3.5
(H) The individual(s) proposing the project have the required skills and experience needed to complete it.	3
Fostering innovation and learning
(I) The project has innovative potential to add new strategies and knowledge for solving important issues in the movement.	3.5
(J) The risk involved in the project's size and approach is appropriately balanced with its potential gain in terms of impact.	3.5
(K) The proposed measures of success are useful for evaluating whether or not the project was successful.	2.5
(L) The project supports or grows the diversity of the Wikimedia movement.	3.5
Comments from the committee: Interesting project. Better introductory material about WikiData could be essential to the future of the project. Ironically, some difficulty to support a proposal about Wikidata when so few people understand what it is and how it works! A research phase addressing and prioritizing the help needs of users would be useful, through surveys or interviews. Some concerns about whether the background or training of the proposer is the right fit for this particular project. Some concern that a focus on directing new users to WikiData might take away from already declining editor activity on other projects. WikiData definitely requires a manual which caters to newcomers as well as existing editors.

Thank you for submitting this proposal. The committee is now deliberating based on these scoring results.

Funding decisions will be announced by December 16. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 00:25, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Status update

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 thought that went into this proposal, and agree that Wikidata could be better socialized to new editors of that project (long-term Wikipedians, and otherwise). We’re not yet sure that the time is right for this particular type of resource, however. Given that Wikidata is still a new project, it may make more sense to focus on iterative on-wiki help and improvements to existing documentation before investing in a larger handbook-style approach.

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.

Hello, thank you for the reply and explanation; I think that you are not quite wrong. We will see how Wikidata evolves in future. Thanks to the grant team for the efforts, --Ziko (talk) 15:21, 18 December 2013 (UTC)