Grants talk:PEG/Lauren Gawne/Improving endangered language content

A decision has been made on this grant. Comments are still welcome on this page.

GAC members who support this request

1. MADe (talk) 22:15, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
2. DerekvG (talk) 15:42, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

GAC comments

Hi,

In brief - you are about to organize 6 meetings and you need to buy pizza, drinks and snacks for these meetings. The question is what do you want to do exactly during these meetings? Edit what kind of articles?. In fact - you can edit wiki projects from home, you can also organize workshops for newbies and then let people work at home as well.. What is the added value here in comparison with home-editing and eating your own pizza :-) ? Polimerek (talk) 23:02, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment! The value-add is, to my mind, three fold: 1. We can encourage and train new editors face-to-face every month, especially as word of free pizza spreads through our student cohort (surviving in London is rough on a student budget). We want to encourage them to see this is an important 'public-facing' responsibility for the academic community, and making it a community event helps that. People can train and start editing in the two hours, and then reenforce and develop those skills (and/or train other new people!) at follow-up meetings. 2. Meeting each month creates more 'stickability' - I can organise a one-off workshop but I know there is very little chance of the majority of people editing again regularly. Our students are busy, so giving the a specific time and space ensures the quality of content will definitely improve over 6 months, rather than a single spike and then people never returning to Wikipedia. 3. There are a couple of specific projects we have planned where it would be good to have people working together in a room (e.g. updating language page links from specific archives can be much more easily coordinated by a couple of people in a room with a whiteboard) As for 'what kind of articles' I think I've listed them fairly specifically in the 'target readership' section - every one of the world's 7000-odd languages has a Wiki page, and many many are just stubs, even though there is information about these languages: https://tools.wmflabs.org/enwp10/cgi-bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=Language&quality=Stub-Class That information is often hard to access for non-linguists, which is why we're targeting this community to create a positive editing environment. I hope that answers your question! -Lauren (talk)

Thank you for timely and detailed answer. The second question is - why don't you ask Wikimedia UK for help? They support such events: [1] and can probably help to advertise it. Polimerek (talk) 22:08, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

The first reason is that Wikimedia.org have a good track-record of working on Linguists topics (see Gretchenmcc's [Women in Linguists] project. The second is that everyone I talked to directed me here (and as an a Wikipedian who is slowly spending more time participating in active Wikiediting work it's not entirely clear from the outside that the Orgs are different).

The aim is good but I do not understand the impact and may be you are addressing your effort in the wrong place. I am figuring out how me, working around some endangered languages on the Alps, can attend to those meetings and how those meetings can help these languages. Probably the best would be to work for a "community group" and with the objective to build a group like this. --Ilario (talk) 09:01, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Ilario, The aim of improving the quality of content is a valid reason to apply for a grant, and it's the main aim I've listed on the request. There are over 6000 language stubs on English Wikipedia (https://tools.wmflabs.org/enwp10/cgi-bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=Language&quality=Stub-Class), so this is an area that needs dire attention of all types - be it from specific communities working on their own language, or a group of people who are trained linguists. Not everyone can attend every project that applies for grants, many are site specific. I've tried to mitigate this in our case in a number of ways. I'll be running a concurrent live #lingwiki on twitter, and all training materials will be shared online (which I mentioned in the grant) to encourage others outside of London to participate. London also gets a lot of through traffic, so as we get settled more visitors may join. Training linguists and language specialists at SOAS is useful for three reasons (1) they already know enough about linguistics, or have access to resources that make them efficient (2) it will normalise sharing language information on Wikipedia for early career researchers who may then go on to be sustained contributors and (3) SOAS has a global reputation as a centre of specialisation in language documentation, which means that telling people about this kind of activity here normalises this kind of activity for linguists world-wide. If this project gets funded and you're ever visiting London between your work in the Alps let us know and we'll tell you when an edit-a-thon is on. -Lauren (talk)

WMF comments

Thank you Polimerek for commenting and DerekvG and MADe for offering your support on this request. WMF was prepared to fund the request, as we felt it is likely to meet project goals of filling content gaps and engaging new editors because it follows proven methods of developing a series of editing events at an academic institution. Wikimedia UK offered to fund the project, as they can offer easier financial transactions and local program support. We are thrilled that Inspire grantee, Gretchenmcc literally inspired these newer WIkimedians to start a project of their own, and we look forward to seeing it develop further. Thank you to members of the GAC, applicants Loztron and Glensdale, and Daria_Cybulska_(WMUK) for your efforts to develo[ and fund this request. Cheers! --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 15:26, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

:)

I just wanted to drop a note to say how happy I am to see this proposal! It seems really well thought out and focused on creating a vibrant community. Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 03:59, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm really hoping that we can do something cool :) Loztron

As an update for those who are interested in this grant, we're chatting to Wikimedia UK about finalising the funding, but we've run two sessions so far (Nov, Dec) and have a January one locked in. We've already had 5 new editors get on board and we've got a good combination of people working on the specific projects discussed and general page improvement. I'll link here to the updated project page when it's finalised! Loztron