Grants talk:IEG/Visual dictionary

Content creation plans

Hi SoujanyaaB and Yug,

Thanks for putting so much thought into this exciting idea :) I can see the value of building a framework for creating these graphics with clear guidelines, samples, etc, and the potential impact something like this could have for Wiktionary.

As you know, WMF grants traditionally do not fund content creation, though, so it is the production area of this proposal that concerns me as we're completing eligibility checks on all proposals this week. I do understand your point that this type of visual content is particularly time-consuming and may not be immediately suitable for volunteers. But if this is the case, I'm wondering what that will mean for the longer-term success of your vision: It seems like if we fund graphic designers to directly create the first 300 images, we've invested in a framework with potential to scale, but then skipped the opportunity to build a pipeline for scaling your graphic creation beyond these first images. What will motivate the Wikigraphist community to create the next image set if the first set requires payment for the creators' time?

Would you consider potential alternatives for accomplishing your goals in the production phase? Some ideas: Having graphic designers create samples rather than a complete set, and then serve as advisors for volunteers creating the remaining sets. A funded graphics community-organizer on the team could experiment with ways to reach out to students or other existing volunteers in the graphics community to encourage volunteers to complete sets based on the framework and guidelines you create. Dvdgmz may have some thoughts about whether these sorts of graphics might be of interest for students voluntarily creating content as part of the WikiArS program.

Curious to hear your thoughts! Best wishes, Siko (WMF) (talk) 22:45, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

I had about the same concerns regarding content creation when reading through the proposal. Like Siko I wonder whether you could think of a version of this proposal that has volunteers produce the content, but with professional support? I was thinking of something like a workshop or training session where you teach volunteers, so they are enabled to produce the content themselves? I would also like to see the volunteer community involved when design guidelines are established etc. Did you get in touch with the Wikigraphist community? What is thei opinion on this idea? Best regards,--Poupou l'quourouce (talk) 21:15, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello Siko (WMF), hello Poupou l'quourouce,

When I drafted this project, I had consider to include such leadership work / community training. The team indeed will have a dedicated project page were other contributors could tract the progress, and join the effort. For the working station, it may be either the project page or the wikipedia graphic workshop (which is also a training forum!), this second option would be interesting for community engagement. Yet, my initial analysis was that switching totally from content generation to a leadership / training mission put us face to the following issues:

• it's quite hard to for me to estimate up front the time|salary needed for "training the community", as the community may be more or less reactive to provide active contributors. I thus feel unconfident to add such item to the project.
• It takes out the measurable objective toward a a critical mass of n files, which de facto would create a stylesheet and standard which following volunteer could follow and respect.
• Basically, the switch ask to favor the project shape (community project) over efficiency (delivery of critical mass of images). I'am wikigraphist and hard core wikipedian, but my professional life get busy, so I can't get this community management work on me. Soujanyaa is an efficient professional designer and light real life wikimedian (organizer of wiki meetups, Indian hackathon), ask her to manage the online community to get it (the online community) to design these images will actually be (IMHO) counter productive. Community management, as you know, ask a lot of enthusiasm, energy and time. So we need someone on it.

This said, I however understand your concerns over content generation and your preference for "project *smoothing* content generation". I will get a talk with Soujanyaa to see what we can do on this side, some possibilities to check out, we may get some good ideas within days.

Yug (talk) 17:37, 9 October 2014 (UTC) -cc SoujanyaaB

Hi, Yug, thanks for giving this some further thought. One idea I had is to turn on the call to action for this proposal, so that others can join in with you - so I boldly just did that (more info about how I did this, and what other roles you could allow people to signup for are here. If you don't want this, of course, feel free to revert my edit!).

If Soujanyaa's role would be the project manager (I'm guessing that part of budget would go to her, as she's listed as the primary grantee and the plan is to hire the other roles anyway??), you could think about hiring someone else to take on the role of community organizer instead of hiring the second graphic designer, for example. We can help you estimate the budget and get clearer on those activities if you decide to go that route. In that case, I expect the target could indeed be the same number of files, but you would plan for the graphic designer to only create, say, 10 themselves, and spend more funds on a community-organizer to bring others along. Having the same target is a risk, but also a motivator. We won't kill you if you don't meet it, but we'll sure be impressed by your project's impact if in trying to meet it you develop a much more sustainable community around this work for years to come! I do know how much effort that work will take, so I do think you are right to think about staffing for it.

If my idea makes sense to you, some suggested next steps could be: 1) add some info in the participants section of your page to indicate what roles you have already filled (who is doing what), and what other people/roles you might still be looking for to join the project, and then 2) go out and notify communities like the wikigraphists with a link to your proposal so that they can start to join in! You've only got about 1 more week to do this and start showing community interest and support before the committee begins to score proposals, so my advice is to not wait until your proposal is perfect to make this happen - just get as many people looking at it as you can, from relevant target communities, and let them help you improve it as we go :) Best, Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:58, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello Siko (WMF) ,

I completely agree with your point, regarding the concern about this project being more of a contributory effort and having some peer volunteering involved.

As far as our previous proposal was concerned, our main idea was to introduce a trend of consistent, cohesive and aesthetic visual language for the dictionary. Coming to the topic of visual content, we thought of creating a visual language which sets a trend/standard/identity for Wikipedia. And that by itself is a project which needs a much more directed time and effort put together. However, we kept in mind the volunteer driven nature of this community and decided to pilot a production phase (initial 300) where we develop a standard visual language followed by a set of graphics which can be made easily available in an editable svg format to the public. The idea of having open source graphical elements was to make it easier and convenient for any user/volunteer to develop additionnal yet consistent vector graphics for Wikipedia.

Its good to have your inputs on the proposal and having considered the recommendations and point of views that was collectively shared in this talk, we’d be happy to refine the overall idea.

Being a designer and educator who is working in rural areas of India, I am already involved in reaching out to the remote places, teaching computer class and the value of sharing knowledge over the internet. And as far as my skills and experience is concerned I can commit myself to carry out/help organize outreach programs for children locally, where they can be trained to design graphics, learn a language while doing it (E.g: English for students in India) and upload the relevant deliverables in WikiCommons to share it with the world. Which could be then peer reviewed over the project page by both the Wikigraphist community and whosoever is interested in design. Volunteers can use the visuals or the idea itself to make updated design contributions. Here we need a funded graphic designer and a project manager to be involved constantly to check and manage the flux of information and compile it to the dictionary. Designing graphics for educational resources is a very niche domain of interest and bringing a community involvement on such a topic over the net would be slightly challenging, which is why we are proposing a fund to carry out the task. :) SoujanyaaB (talk) 13:33, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

@Siko: Thanks for raising the call for action, it's welcome. Soujanyaa will be the project leader, she is designer, worked at Yahoo India, currently do a year off teaching village's kids computer class, to browse the web, English class and reading English resources online. An online community contributor is needed, yes. Connecting dots, I see there a way to tinker this project. An hybrid way should be possible between real life outreach and quantifiable objectives with the online community. Soujanyaa could build a graphic guideline, outreach to the local kids, teach computer design, WM commons upload and assess engagement, monitor the quality and keep a blog on the kids and project. Online contributors could work aside these kids, and maybe even together, teaching them online. This cooperation could provide a critical mass of items to make the style long term relevant for the community. Yug (talk) 13:57, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi SoujanyaaB and Yug, thanks for these replies. It sounds like you've thought of some potential changes that would allow this project to be considered eligible for an IEG. I will need you to update your proposal to reflect your new strategy (participants, budget, activities, etc). Once you've made it clear that we're not paying a designer to create all the images themselves, I'll be able to mark this project as ready for review. I need to do this by Monday, October 20th. So, if you would like to be considered for this round, I will need you to update your proposal in the next 3 days. Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 16:42, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Siko (WMF), the theoretical and ideation stages (listing priority words and provide an elegant svg graphic guideline + toolkits) will be the same. The Production stage will be largely revamped. Regarding my concern on how to evaluate the community management work up-front and its salary-cost, how would you do ? any advice ? Real life management should be easy to estimate. But for online... I'am a bit lost by the range of possibles. Maybe a light online management (4h/week * 12 weeks), and rely more on the community. Yug (talk) 09:45, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Note: We are now designing this project on the model of Keilana's Grants:IEG/Women_Scientists_Workshop_Development, for its real life outreach. Workshop will be oriented toward graphic contribution made by kids, and favoring language learning. Yug (talk) 09:48, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Yug, I think starting with a benchmark of 4h/week * 12 weeks makes sense, and since you're using the same rate of pay for everyone that part is easier too. If this project is selected for a grant and adjustments are needed as the plan develops further, we can discuss in more depth at that point and make necessary changes when the time comes. So, sounds like a good start, hope to see the updates on your page soon. Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 17:43, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello Siko (WMF), the proposal have been reoriented. Soujanyaa confirmed me that the kids are enthusiastic to contribute and "help the world kids to learn English". The call for review on various village pump is yet to do. (tomorrow or day after). Yug (talk) 18:47, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Notifications?

It would be good to see some discussion/interest from current active Wiktionary participants in this project also, going beyond old strategy discussions from 2009, etc. Just a reminder to include this in your notifications as well. Cheers! Siko (WMF) (talk) 21:56, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Notification haven't been done yet. It's coming ! Yug (talk) 12:46, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

The committee starts scoring next week, so the sooner the better, if you're hoping to have a go at it this round :) Siko (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello all,

Being a graphic designer, educator and a newbie in this community, I realized that creating educational content for children is a big challenge and Wikipedia could be an excellent platform to cultivate that. Me and a long time Wikipedian Hugo Lopez put forward an idea of kickstarting a community involvement in creating a Visual Dictionary.

Visual Dictionaries for centuries have been an effective and efficient way of educating children, especially for learning language. To create content for such a dictionary we have proposed a IEG project which is determined to develop a platform/tools for vector graphical contributions and reach out to the young learners of remote corners of the world via visual graphics workshop.

The purpose of the outreach workshop is to educate children about design in the process of learning a language, impart the value of knowledge sharing on the web and make community involvement in Wikipedia more fun for them. The created content can be then shared on the online platform which can be then reviewed and edited by the community. These contributions in the form of editable SVG's could collectively be a good set of tools to create graphical content.

It is a community driven initiative to introduce a trend of clean, scalable and standard graphical contribution. It is a fun and creative initiative to educate the younger generation about Wikipedia.

We expect this to have a great impact on engaging a community to create fresh illustrations and create a healthy repository of contents.

We need your votes!!! SoujanyaaB (talk) 14:14, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2014

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2014 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 2014 begins on 21 October 2014, and grants will be announced in December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

Siko (WMF) (talk) 23:39, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

feedback and comments from Thepwnco

Hi there.

Thank you for your proposal, and for outlining your approach a bit more on this talk page; I also appreciate the way you've adapted your proposal in response to feedback.

It's great that you've already given some thought to frequent word lists and established some targets for creating a collection of images that is to continue growing after this project. One additional idea that you may (or may not) want to consider is encouraging the online community manager to make efforts to build a community that is multilingual, and culturally and geographically diverse in order to ensure that the final images created are as universal as possible (i.e. free of specific biases or assumptions) and thus can be re-used in many contexts.

I also wondered if you could tell me if you have been in contact with the individuals behind previous attempts by Wikimedia communities to develop a visual dictionary (for example, the WikiVoc project on Commons). If so, are there any takeway messages that may be relevant to you that indicate why these attempts were not successful?

Thanks.
-Thepwnco (talk) 22:46, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello Thepwnco. The Wikivoc project was my effort as a volonteer wikipedian. The task was too heavy to carry out with the quality of design I targeted, I could only gather 2 other contributors, for a total of about 14 files (from memory). This IEG is building upon Wikivoc's experience :

• Soujanyaa proposed to get more symbolic design, which reduce the level of entry to the project and speed up design, and allow kids to have a more active part in it;
• Soujanyaa also got the good idea to use the visual dictionary as a support to teach local Indian kids computer graphic design and web 2.0, which they are hunger to learn with their freshly landed computers.
• I'am considering to reuse the WikiVoc project page, with some process improvements from the German Map Workshop (table-list of completion), as the online face of the project.

The whole set, funded by an IEG grant, sounds quite doable to re-kick start the concept of a Wikipedia made visual dictionary, and should be a cool experience for kids. Yug (talk) 18:53, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Community calls !

We'd like to call out again for support. A bunch of young wiki enthusiasts who participated in the Wikimedia Hackathon Dec 2013 co-ordinated by us are really excited about this project and looking forward to learn more about Wikipedia. We need your support! SoujanyaaB (talk) 13:08, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

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Redirect message : WMF grant request for "Kids Visual Dictionary"

Hello all, we designed a Wikimedia outreach project to get a group of Indian kids to learn computer graphic while creating a real Wikipedia picture dictionary for basic English which they could be proud of ! The whole team will be under the management of a professional graphic designer who previously worked at Yahoo Inc India. The IEG proposal is detailed there on meta. We are competing with other great projects as well. Also, please take a look, your support for the Kid Visual Dictionary is also much welcome (here)]. Yug (talk) 18:45, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

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Aggregated feedback from the committee for Visual dictionary

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?	5.7
(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?	6.1
(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?	5.9
(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?	3.7
Comments from the committee: Really innovative but risky as it is not in the usual scope of Wikimedia projects. Fits generally with strategic priorities to increase participation and quality, and to some extent also to increase reach. Interesting idea with a lot of potentially beneficial side effects beyond the WMF strategic goals. Wider community discussion and demonstrated community interest is missing. Little endorsement, don't show much of a community backing this proposal. A few people have considered a similar initiative in the past, but not for several years. If not supported by a volunteer community, it will have no lasting impact. The images may be easily reused, which is good. Does not seem sustainable or easily scaled however, and is bordering on paid content creation. In order to benefit not only the kids involved, but also Wikipedia, the project will need a bunch of Wikipedians who are willing to engage with the project and to review, discuss, recommend the designs brought up by the kids. Project relies heavily on the assumption that such people are going to turn up. A visual dictionary is interesting but does not translate into other projects more broadly. Unclear how creating similarly-styled SVG graphics is a strategic priority. The idea of graphic design workshops to instruct Wikipedians is pretty awesome. That might be a good basis for another grant - probably a lot of people who work in Commons would love to get some graphic design instruction. Project has online impact potential if the proposed deliverables (guidelines, an SVG toolkit, a collection of freely licensed content) are produced. If the process does not succeed, or has limited success, there might still be valuable insight for managing or coordinating future offline partnerships; additionally, the small group of youth directly participating in the workshops will still be provided with mentorship, and, thus hopefully will feel encouraged and interested in continuing to contribute to Wikimedia projects. Success in terms of the sustainability or healthiness of online communities is always somewhat difficult to measure, and we would like to see some more concrete measures of success for what will be considered a healthy online community in this instance. Difficult to judge the ability of the project to be executed given how important the role of the online community manager will be The process of the project is exciting; it is in many ways an experiment.

Thank you for submitting this proposal. The committee is now deliberating based on these scoring results, and WMF is proceeding with its due-diligence. You are welcome to continue making updates to your proposal pages during this period. Funding decisions will be announced by early December. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 17:02, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

User:Hahc21, Thanks for your feedback. Our communication was late and weak indeed, my apologizes. Yug (talk) 00:21, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Round 2 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:
This is a lovely idea that unfortunately developed late in the proposal period and lacked sufficient community engagement and a clear plan to harness volunteer efforts with potential for sustainable expansion. We would be happy to see a future proposal focused around training community members in best practices for graphic design in a way that would scale beyond a specific single set of images.

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.

Noticed ! Thanks User:Hahc21, Jtud (WMF), Siko (WMF) for your review ! SoujanyaaB & Yug (talk) 15:39, 13 December 2014 (UTC)