Grants talk:PEG/WM IN/PEG Bridge Funding

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

GAC members who support this request

1. --DerekvG (talk) 14:05, 2 October 2015 (UTC) I maintain my previous vote --DerekvG (talk) 15:30, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
2. --Ilario (talk) 09:51, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

GAC members who abstain from voting/comment

1. Considering my involvement in preparing previous grants and my involvement in WMIN, I abstain from voting. However, I shall comment on the grant. -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 17:30, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

GAC comments

Comments from Karthik

1. I see 97 volunteers registered for WCI 2016, however, could you please give more details on the same. List just seems volunteers who just passed to add their name. Could you please list them out along with their activities? I think this will also help the community to highlight whether again this WCI will see volunteers burnout like the previous one.
2. Wikipedia in Tech Education? Do you really want to remind the Indian community about the Wikipedia Education Program, popularly "WEP". I would like to see elaborated plan on this. Also, certain things are striked-off?
3. Project budget table: INR 2,00,000 for Various community PEG is not a small amount. Could you elaborate on the planned activities for next 3 months on this? If I just take an example of Wikipedia anniversary celebrations, it should not cost more than 50,000 INR for pan-India. Same applies for WCI Planning; would request if a detailed plan or at-least a drafted plan to be shared to show some seriousness on the same.

That's it for now. Hope to see more update to the PEG. -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 17:48, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

1. ♪Karthik♫, first of all, WikiConference India 2016 is a 100% community driven program. It will come up with a separate PEG application providing more details. WMIN intends only to make an allocation for contingency funding through its Microgrants program to support the community until its PEG request is approved.

The list of volunteers includes many veteran Wikipedians (from all the major Indian Wikimedia communities), sysops, bureaucrats, FOSS activists, WMIN EC & staff members, CIS-A2K staff members members and a steward spread across the country. WMIN and CIS-A2K have pledged support as organizational partners and the WCI 2016 organizing team is looking to enrol more partners. The volunteers are also organizing themselves into teams like this through an inclusive and transparent process. List of more teams and members will emerge soon. Irrespective of the number and capability of volunteers, the WCI 2016 PEG request will also explore the possibility to engage a short-term contractor and/or an event management firm to conduct the conference in a professional manner incorporating learnings from the movement and at the same time without burning out the community.

Update: ♪Karthik♫, we have now revised the overall budget and plans under which WikiConference India 2016 won't be supported during this grant period.--Ravidreams (WMIN) (talk) 20:41, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

2. WMIN is well aware of the recommendations from the 2011 edition of Wikipedia in Education program in India and has implemented them already. For example, we have a small class size of 35. These are engineering students with a natural incentive to work on tech projects during their final semester. Please note that our program is fundamentally different not only from the 2011 Indian edition but also from all the Education programs running worldwide as we are having a tech focus. This means that we will be coming up with a revised definition of metrics matching this program. I will be glad to provide more details if your questions are more specific. Thanks.--Ravidreams (WMIN) (talk) 01:02, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

3. ♪Karthik♫, we have now revised the overall budget and plans under which 30,000 INR is allocated for Community PEG under Microgrants program. This will be spent only on edit-a-thons and workshops like this.--Ravidreams (WMIN) (talk) 20:33, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Community comments

Oppose until the start-date is no longer six weeks before this application was launched. PEG doesn't normally fund retrospective spending. Tony (talk) 22:52, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Tony, this PEG request is tied to Wikimedia India's bridge funding application for admin expenses for the same time period. We can commence our programmatic activities only after receiving this grant. Right now, we are only doing activities that do not require funding. For example: Arranging lectures through Skype for Wikipedia in Education program and helping to coordinate volunteers for WikiConference India 2016. Therefore, this grant won't fund activities retrospectively. Thanks.--Ravidreams (WMIN) (talk) 07:59, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Make the start-date the date on which your activities funded through this PEG grant would start, if this grant is approved. Otherwise, I'm going to strongly oppose. Tony (talk) 04:06, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Tony, I understand (and share) your concerns about approving grants with start dates that are before the time of grant approval. In this case, however, I think it might help to have a little more background on this request.

I encouraged WMIN to apply for the PEG request in this way (with the retroactive start date). That's because WMF has asked WMIN to transition to the new simple annual plan grants process from the full annual plan grants process due to some ongoing eligibility concerns (technicalities about their charity status in India) and because WMF and WMIN both think that the simple process will provide WMIN with better support. In order to make this transition work without interrupting the employment of their current staff person (who we see as critical to the progress they are making to revitalize their chapter) and without interrupting the good momentum they are building with the community around their current program work, we needed to provide them with a bridge grant for the interim period. That grant has provided them with staffing and operating costs for the bridge period before their simple annual plan grant will start. We agreed to fund their operating and staff costs and current levels (without an increase) until the start of the new grant. At the same time, we did not feel right about approving their program activity without a strong committee review process, because we felt the advice of the GAC and other community members could improve WMIN's plans and give them better insight into their work. That's why we asked them to make this separate grant request for their programs through the PEG process. In this sense, this bridge funding request is quite atypical, which I think may be helpful background when considering this issue.

Through the new simple annual plan grants process, we're working to make sure exceptions like this are not needed in the future, but we may need a bit of flexibility as we transition organizations to the new process.

Due to WMIN's need to respond to some very important and time-sensitive program opportunities around a partnership with the Indian government around the release of Tamil content, WMIN was not able to submit this PEG proposal before the start of the bridge funding period. I encouraged them to submit this request anyway, with the retroactive start date, because I don't want this delay to prevent them from getting funding for their program activities for the full bridge period, should the PEG process grant it. If the PEG is approved for a lesser amount or not approved at all, WMIN would be asked to immediately revise their activities and cover the costs from another funding source. Since this is a good quality proposal and this is good work happening in a critical part of the world, I do not think it is likely that they will have to revise their plans in this way. Yet, I want to be clear that proposing a grant with a retroactive start date is a risk that WMIN is taking on, and does not imply an obligation on the part of the GAC, or WMF, to fund this proposal.

I also want to add that I've had in-depth discussions with WMIN around why submitting late grant requests is a major concern for us, and they've agreed to improve this in the future.

While I understand (and agree with) your objections to retroactive approvals, I think this is a worthy exception for the reasons I've outlined here, and I urge you to reconsider your stance and accept the current grant dates.

Best regards, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 17:53, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

OK, now timing and the reviewing are yet more assymetrical. I'm still unsure, with planning, why the transition couldn't have been handled with prospective rather than retrosprective transitional-funding applications. The most obvious issue for reviewers is: what are we reviewing and what is a "given" in the minds of WMF staff and the applicants? Looking at the budget, what has already been tacitly accepted, and what has not? There's no point in our wasting time in reviewing aspects that will be funded irrespective of discourse on this page. So what is the point? As a supplementary question, can you provide an idea of how many more of these "transitional" retrospective applications will be put through the PEG "reviewing" process? Tony (talk) 07:27, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

WMIN is facing some serious administrative barriers that have forced them to drastically revise this programs budget as well as their operational budget, which seems like an understandable reason for this delay. As I mentioned in my note earlier, the entire grant is subject to GAC review, as usual. WMF doesn't consider anything a "given" until a decision is made about the grant. We don't expect to use this transitional model again, since the Simple APG funding option is now operational. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 21:12, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Regarding laptops, wouldn't it be better to bulk purchase the Vidyut laptops from IIT-Bombay which are cheaper per unit and sturdier. I think you can purchase several units and either lend them to editors or lend them to participants at workshop. Vincentvikram (talk) 11:46, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Vincentvikram, most of the applicants for our Equipment Lending and Community Support program are power users who are very clear about their needs. See, for example, this request. So, it wouldn't be appropriate to give the same equipment for everyone. We are also looking at supporting only few select applicants who can clearly demonstrate the difference through this program. So, there is no need to bulk purchase equipments. At the same time, we do have a limited budget and see that users' needs are met with a basic to medium range model. --Ravidreams (WMIN) (talk) 22:55, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

WMF comments

Hi Ravidreams, thank you for the effort you have put into creating such a detailed proposal and to community and GAC members who have commented on it. It is exciting to read about the new projects you are piloting in education and community support, and we look forward to learning more about the outcomes from both these and the GLAM projects. Please see our comments below and let us know if you have any questions.

Programs

• Can you give more details about how you provide non-financial support to the community?
• It is great to see how the equipment lending program has had an impact on power editors and has led to such a clear increase in content. As you evaluate the pilot it is important to think about how effective or scalable providing equipment to more casual users will be.
• The education program sounds really interesting, particularly because of its focus on MediaWiki development. We look forward to hearing a report on how the first program went, and what lessons you have learned. Do you think that this is a program that could be replicated by other chapters? How is the focus of the course determined each term?
• Can you provide more details about events that WMIN will host as part of the partnership with Bejoy Narayan Mahavidyalaya GLAM? For example, how many trainings, editathons, workshops and contests are planned for this period?
• Please refer micro grantees to MCruz (WMF) to work on sharing lessons learned from their projects.
• Do you have plans in place to engage new volunteers with the digitization and use of documents from GLAM projects to avoid burnout in that area?
• Given the large number of materials you expect to digitize through the GLAM programs, it would be a good idea to recruit volunteers with experience on Wikidata or Wikisource to make sure the materials can be easily searched for and used. You may also want to find a volunteer who can write tools or bots to categorize these images.

Measures of success

• It would be helpful to have more substantive measures of success for the equipment rental program, as it is one of the more expensive programs. In your report, please include metrics to show changes in absolute bytes added and removed for participants in this program.
• The measures of success for GLAM programs include a very high number of images - can you add targets for images in use?
• Goals for new editors are a bit low considering your plans to host GLAM activities. Are there other efforts or activities focused on recruiting new editors?

Budget

• Please add more detail about how funds included in budget lines 1-3 will be spent.
• It is not clear what the 200 t-shirts in line 4 will be used for. In general we do not support funding requests to provide merchandise to all participants in events, they should be reserved for event organizers or as prizes.
• Are the two laptops are included in line 5 to be used in the community support program? If so, have you identified recipients?
• Please provide details about approximately how many bus/rail tickets will be provided using funds in lines 13 and 9.

We are pleased that WMIN plans to participate in the simple APG pilot next month and should be able to make a decision on this request soon. Best, --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 21:51, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi KHarold (WMF),

I will be adding my responses for all your suggestions and questions soon. Please see my first set of responses below:

Programs

• Following are examples of some of our non-financial support for the community:
  • For Wikimania 2015, we offered help to review and improve the applications of community members from India. This requirement has been globally recognized with Wikimania 2016 providing similar support through its ambassadors.
  • We provide a technical help desk and connect the community members to help one another.
  • We provide inputs for community program design as acknowledged here.
• We do plan to scale up the budget for Equipment Lending program but it would be still be focused on highly active contributors. Irrespective of our budget, we do not plan to roll out this support for more casual / new / less active contributors or even highly active contributors who cannot demonstrate a significant improvement or increase in contributions because of this program. We took this decision as we have observed that communities or contributors can develop a sense of entitlement / reward. This is not only the intention of the program but also detrimental to the community health and dynamics in general.
• Our Wikipedia in Education program is a year-long program for every set of students. The focus for the first semester will be to orient the students in Wikimedia and Language Engineering related research areas with various guest lectures and hands-on training. The students will start working on their projects in the second semester. Only after the end of second semester can the impact of this program be assessed and the program design for next year can be modified accordingly. One thing that we observed in the last semester is that students need more hands-on training, one-to-one mentoring and textbook like sources to be oriented. So, going forward, we will try to allocate more resources to meet this requirement. We will strongly recommend that more chapters recruit students to work on MediaWiki related and other technological challenges of the Wikimedia projects. Unlike article writing Wikipedia in Education programs where we accept Wikipedia editors are born and not made, we can expect increased retention of students, professors and high impact for the effort we invest as all the stakeholders are trained to do technical work as professionals and have a natural incentive to work together here.
• Regarding outreach at Bejoy Narayan Mahavidyalaya GLAM, a Wiki Academy was organized on 8th May 2015 in the college. As this particular college is having a large collection of zoological specimens, the students of this department are having a keen interest on adding specimen related information in Wikipedia. We plan to conduct 5 more workshops. The dates are yet to be finalized as the college has just started working after a local festival.
• Sure, we will put the micro grantees in touch with MCruz (WMF). Thanks for this suggestion.
• Burnout in GLAM is a well recognized risk for us. We plan to mitigate this by engaging college students who have an interest in the material digitized. They will be motivated by means of providing a certificate of participation and internship opportunities in similar GLAM organizations.
• Thanks for the suggestion to get help from the broader Wikisource and Wikidata community. From the Bengali community, Bodhisattwa has a keen interest in growing and organizing Bengali content in Wikisource. He participated in the recently held Wikisource Conference 2015 and we hope exposure like this to help us make the right connections with the global community. The Bengali Community in West Bengal recently held a meetup in September 2015 which had a major focus on growing Bengali Wikisource using Google OCR. We are also initiating a request for this in the upcoming Community Wishlist Survey. And regarding the development of bots and or tools, Kalyan will be a definite resource.

Measures of success

• For past recipients of Equipment Lending Support, we have been checking the monthly edit activity stats to assess the impact. Based on your suggestion, we will continue to report the bytes added too as it helps us assess the impact based on global metrics.
• Please note that bulk of the work is about scanning documents, books and magazines that will be stored in Commons as PDF files or images. We will aim to improve at least 250 artciles in Wikipedia by adding images and references from these sources. Besides this, with the help of Google OCR, we will also prioritize important works and transcribe them in Wikisource. We aim to identify 100 such works and completely transcribe them. But, this part of work can only be completed after the current grant period considering the already ambitious target of scanning 1000s of pages. Based on learnings from other such digitization projects, we will also explore other models for transcribing such massive work. Tamil Wikimedia community is trying to solve this by having a full-time Wikimedia in Residence supported by clerical staff.
• Goals for recruiting new editors are low because we wanted to have realistic goals based on our local experience and global stats and trends for the Wikisource movement. While many of the Wikipedias in Indian languages have a slow growth owing to our socio economic and political conditions, many Indian languages have a rich sources of books and classics available in public domain dating 1000s of years. Our primary focus here is to undertake massive upload of such content. Unlike the rest of the world, we do not have Guternberg like projects with an army of volunteers to proofread and transcribe. Hardly 1 in 20 Wikipedians contribute to WikiSource projects and only 1 in a 10 million population become Wikipedians. Stats of the leading Indian language WikiSource projects for Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali can be checked. We will try our best to recruit new volunteers as it is also very important to avoid the burnout but we only have realistic goals regarding this. Unlike Wikipedia editing, even a few new volunteers will be good here as most of the work is mechanical and can be supported by Wikipedian in Residence like programs.

Budget

• Please note that we have now revised the overall budget and plans. The line items 1-3 for which you have requested details earlier are now line items 1 and 2.
  • Line item 1 will be spent only on edit-a-thons and workshops like this.
  • Line item 2 will cover expenses for:
    • A Wikipedian in Residence supported with a monthly stipend of 30,000 INR. Venue and other facilities are provided free of cost.
    • Expenses for running a 2 day workshop with around 20 participants for creating training resources. Venue and other facilities are provided free of cost. Lunch and snacks for the participants will be the major expense that will be supported.
    • Expenses for running a 2 day Wiki Academy with around 20 participants consisting of writers and media professionals. Venue and other facilities are provided free of cost. Lunch and snacks for the participants will be the major expense that will be supported.
    • Expenses for running a Wikipedia stall in a book fair for 10 days. The stall will be provided free of cost. Daily allowance of 500 INR per day for 2 volunteers plus expense for hiring a projector will be the expenses supported.
    • Travel (bus and train) related expenses regarding various meetings to forge this partnership.
• We do not distribute t-shirts aimlessly or to all participants in an event though it is often requested by community members while organizing events. We use them to share WikiLove for active Wikipedians who have done 1000+ article edits. We also send them as prizes for winners of article writing contests. We also present them to event organizers as our token of appreciation recognizing their efforts.

Update: We have now revised the overall budget and plans. Swags won't be purchased during this grant period.

• Yes, these two laptops this laptop is for Equipment Lending and Community Support program. One recipient for laptop has been identified. Another well known contributor came up with a request for high-end camera and accessories. But, we may not be able to support his request at the moment as it is way beyond our budget. But, evidence of such requirements in the community highlights the need for us to scale up this program in future.
• Please note that we have now revised the overall budget and plans. The line items 13 and 9 for which you have requested details earlier are now line items 8 and 4.
  • Line item 4 - We are planning a week long intensive session with the students during January 18 - 24, 2016. We will invite mentors from various cities to guide the students. The college will host us with accommodation and food arranged free of cost in their guest house. We will provide reimbursements for train or bus tickets for 6 mentors not exceeding 2500 INR each.
  • Line item 8 - This will cover travel (bus, auto and train) and food cost for 3 volunteers for 3 visits a week for 8 weeks. Details:

Auto fare: 9*2*2 = 36 INR (Onwards ans return with one stopover)

Bus fare: 60*2 = 120 INR (Onwards and return)

Train Fare:15*2 = 30 INR (Onwards and return)

Food: 150 INR

Travel + Food = 336 INR for individual volunteer

For 3 volunteers = 1008 INR (rounded to 1000 INR)

For the whole project= 1000 per day*3days*8weeks = 24,000 INR

Total: 24,000 INR

Thanks.--Ravidreams (WMIN) (talk) 22:48, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

WMIN Comments

Announcements regarding this PEG application have been made at Indian Wikimedia community mailing list, WMIN's FB page, Twitter handle and chapter wiki. Please let us know if the application can be edited to include these links. Thanks.--Ravidreams (WMIN) (talk) 20:18, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Update: Please note that we have now placed a revised grant application with changes to the overall budget, plans, activities and success measures. Thanks.--Ravidreams (WMIN) (talk) 22:47, 1 December 2015 (UTC)