Grants talk:PEG/WM IN/Program Grant April December 2013/Report

Lessons learned – solutions not offered

Hi, thanks for this report. Some of the four lessons learned don't seem to offer solutions, which are actually the whole point of that section ("learned").

For example, (1) tells me the application was late and details the timeline of the process. How can late applications be avoided in the future? Could there, for example, be a planning timeline, reviewed periodically?

(2) indicates that there's not enough importance put on providing receipts. Are deadlines for providing receipts made clear to those spending the money? Is there a timeline for contacting those who are late? Is it possible to scan receipts and send electronically?

(3) suggests that more time is necessary in the timeline for deliberation. Was the process sufficiently advertised, with during-process prompting, and were cut-off points applied?

(4) – "multi-day" means ... two days? As opposed to four? What message is there for other projects in terms of the best timing for such activities? I'm interested in results that can be published and used as guidelines for all such WMF projects. What do you mean by: "There was a churn of about 5 trainees through the period"? And I'm presuming that you felt that was a disappointing number. How can such an event be better timed to encourage greater participation?

On another, related section, I find "Impact" vaguely expressed. I could have written that in absentia on seeing your application text, before the project was conducted. "Various" is vague. Which Wikipedia? Which Indic languages? How many new editors are your referring to? Examples of media coverage? Where are the links?

Thank you very much. Tony (talk) 02:18, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Dear Tony, we have been pre-occupied. Replies will join shortly. Thanks for understanding! -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 18:16, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Consider this a gentle reminder, @Karthikndr:, to see if you and your colleagues can make some time to respond to this.

Thanks. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 23:29, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Karthkndr, it occurs to me that much of the information you might provide in response to both my questions and those of the WFM staff below might be written into the actual report overleaf, with diffs and any meta-explanations or comments provided here. That way, the report itself is improved and of greater utility for the movement, both now and in the future. (I'm presuming changes can be made to a report after it's submitted.) Thank you. Tony (talk) 04:28, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

// (1) Yes Tony, the board along with our Executive Director always had participated in discussion of any projects from the point of initiation to the point of implementation and then following up. Thus, the board always had hard time in preparing reports and everything while most of them suffered burn out. We all have learnt a lesson to plan and timeline things. Sure to see that will work proper in future. -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 07:28, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

// (2) We never had any timelines for the community to submit bills but for most of the time we made sure to request them to submit bills promptly. This time, as we had some major community events, it was even hard for the organisers to work on so many things and then also submit the bills. I'm sure that we need to take some major and some soft actions in future to avoid this kind of situations. -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 07:32, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

// (3) NO, frankly and sadly nothing was well planned and oragnised and that became our biggest challenge in this grant. This also became our biggest learning process and that is the reason we are now focusing more on plans and deliberations rather than going straight forward to achieve goals. -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 18:34, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi Tony, with this grant, we have covered Malayalam Telugu, Kannada and Tamil Wikipedia along with obviously English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource. There are already too many Media links which has been added and they are just the popular ones. It is still very much popular to dig out more but they won't be effective either. -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 18:32, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Karthkndr: thanks thus far—this note is just to indicate that I'm checking into this page when edits are made. Tony (talk) 14:06, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

// (4) Multi day for us means anything for more than a day. There will be hardly any definition for better timings to hold a workshop or any such activities. Most of the educational institutions always have something or "other activities". It might be better to merge our activities with "other activities" like we did the one in IIT Kharagpur last year in January. Wikimedia India would leave it to the local community to decide on what fits the best, when and how. It will be too hard for a person sitting in west part of the country to understand how it works in east. -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 04:42, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

WMF report questions

Thank you for your report. We are interested in your response to Tony's comments above and have the following questions/comments:

1. WMIN spent 338,853.22 INR on outreach events. Please approximate the total number of people reached. Do you have any available information on retention from those events? If you collected usernames, you can use WikiMetrics to measure retention rates. Let us know if you have any problems using this tool. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:28, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
2. Please provide more details on the GLAM outcomes. Are there more outcomes beyond the 5 articles? What about digitization outputs? Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:28, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
3. Regarding, the 211,412.40 INR underspend, please submit a request for reallocation based on our correspondence via email. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:28, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Please let us know if you have any questions. Looking forward to your response. Thanks, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:28, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

(1) Hi Alex, I have requested for the list of participants from all the organisers. After they send it to me, I shall do wikimetrics and share it across. -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 04:37, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

(2) Here's the report which was provided in the mailing list. here. -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 04:37, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi ♪Karthik♫. Thank you for the updated information. We look forward to the outreach numbers once you have them. Congratulations on a successful GLAM event! Hopefully WMIN can continue this type of work going forward.

We are ready to accept this report, but still need the reallocation request. Please post the following details on this discussion page:

1. A budget outlining how the remaining funds will be used, including the total amount of remaining funds you will use for your activities.
2. A brief description of how the funds will be used.
3. A start date and a completion date for your activities.

Please let us know if you have any questions. Thanks, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 21:35, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Alex, to inform you, we have bought flight tickets for both the scholarship recepients. User:Kondicherry and User:Thamizhpparithi_Maari has been awarded scholarship. The flight amount has been rated at 73,550 INR and 72,723 INR from MakeMyTrip. The total amount spent on flight tickets is 146,273 INR. We have written to WMUK regarding hotel bookings and conference registration as we can not spend money beyond national boundaries, We are awaiting a reply thus we will update you exact amount as soon as we are aware of. We thank you, WMF Scholarship Committee and WMUK Wikimania Committee for their strong support. -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 16:10, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi ♪Karthik♫. Thanks so much for the update. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 16:52, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi ♪Karthik♫. Please let us know if you were able to spend all of the remaining funds on the Wikimania scholarships. If not, please let us know what your plans are for reallocation. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 19:08, 26 August 2014 (UTC)