Grants talk:PEG/TMorshed/Wikipedia 15 Celebration in Bangladesh

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

GAC members who support this request

1. --DerekvG (talk) 17:27, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
2. I fully support this proposal. --Nasir Khan Saikat (talk) 03:21, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

GAC members who support this request with adjustments

1. MADe (talk) 16:23, 27 November 2015 (UTC) Please check with the WMF if they can provide your organisation with "merchandise" instead of buying it yourself. It might be cheaper/more convenient to order and ship it to Bangladesh. MADe (talk) 16:23, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Hey @MADe: Thanks for the point. Initially we thought of that too but my personal guess is that WMF don't have any merchandise listed because they will be customized. Since our focus is on Bengali and we'd like to make our merchandise with Bengali text/mark on it (for example: Wikipedia15 t-shirt design). But if WMF wants to provide the materials necessary we don't have any problem either as long as they are customized. ~ Nahid ^Talk 19:57, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

GAC comments

Kiril Simeonovski

Thanks for the submission. I support the idea of organising fruitful activities to celebrate the 15th birthday of Wikipedia in principle but there are some things that need to be cleared up and improved. My comments are the following:

1. The goals do not seem to be SMART. For example, it is difficult to measure the improvement of article quality.
2. The measures of success need all to have numerical thresholds. Please make sure that all are consistent.
3. Since you plan to deliver Wikipedia 15 merchandise, my recommendation is to directly request it as a non-financial requirement from the Wikimedia Foundation along with the branding souvenirs that you have already listed there.
4. Can you explain how the expenses for Wi-Fi were calculated? The same amount appears in the request for the Wikipedia 15 Celebration in Nigeria. Is it possible that the expenses for Wi-Fi are exactly the same in both Bangladesh and Nigeria? Or maybe this was left in by mistake as a result of a copy-editing?
5. The budget items do not sum up to the totals, indicating that there are miscalculations. Please make sure that all the amounts have been added correctly.

Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 13:36, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello @Kiril Simeonovski:, thanks for your support for the plan. Here are the replies:

1. As you can see, two of the four segments of the plan, Good Article contest and Good article day (edit-a-thon), focuses on quality improvement. The Good Article contest is an online contest and the first of its kind being organized on Bengali Wikipedia. As a result, it was difficult to guess how many good article would eventually turn out. So, the target was to involve as many participants as possible (in this case expected participants is 300). And it is very encouraging that already 263 participants have signed up for the contest. Even more encouraging is the fact that we've already got 189 good quality articles out of this contest and counting. On the other hand, the Good article day (edit-a-thon) segment specifically mentions that it aims to increase the number of Good Article on Bengali Wikipedia from 14 to 40. This program has already been proven a success as the number of new articles reviewed as Good Article is 56! The other two segments (Workshops & Wikipedia 15 Celebration) are aimed at awareness building and it's hard to relate those to targets such as number of articles created.
2. As I have elaborated above, two segments (Good Article contest and Good article day) have specific numerical success targets in terms of quality improvement and both have already surpassed the stated targets. On the other hand, Workshops and Wikipedia 15 Celebration aims to build awareness and thus success target has been attached to number of participants.
3. I think Nahid has already answered this question above.
4. The expenses for Wi-Fi includes cost of 3 Wi-Fi routers plus 3 bundle internet packages for Dhaka, Chittagong & Rajshahi respectively. Each device plus package costs approximately BDT 5,000 (BDT 15,000 in total for 3). Since total 5 edit-a-thons have been planned in 3 locations, the total cost has been divided by 5. The expenses presented here are correct. Probably the volunteers from Nigeria copied some part of this proposal while preparing their proposal and left the Wi-fi cost same by mistake during copy editing. But, as I see now, they have already corrected that.
5. There is indeed some miscalculation and it will be corrected shortly. (and fixed. ~ Nahid ^Talk 22:45, 12 December 2015 (UTC))

Regards.--Ali Haidar Khan (Tonmoy) (talk) 14:00, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

WMF comments

Hi Tanweer Morshed and NahidSultan, we are pleased to fund this grant request in the amount of 171898.40 BDT, which you have retained after the successful completion of Bangla Wikipedia 10th anniversary grant.

• It is great to see you community focus on improving quality through two different kinds of events. We hope that you will share advice for how other communities can host similar events.
• In general, we do not support awareness events such as the ones proposed in this request, however, the survey results that you shared from your last series of school workshops support your claim that more general awareness talks are needed. Please be sure to collect email addresses or user names from participants in these events so that you can invite them to workshops and editathons in the future.
• We recommend that you will use the Wikipedia 15 celebration as an opportunity for your community to discuss goals and plans for the year ahead, as well as any other issues the Bangladeshi community would like to resolve. Please make note of any important conversations on these subjects in your report.
• We encourage you to think about applying for funding for your next series of events through the Simple Annual Plan Grant program, which will accept applications on a rolling basis beginning in January 2016. Wolliff (WMF) can give you more details about this program.

Congratulations, and thank you to everyone who participated in planning these events and preparing this request, including Kiril SimeonovskiMADe who posted great questions and comments. We look forward to reading your report. Cheers, --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 20:00, 15 December 2015 (UTC)