Grants talk:PEG/ Open Labs/Wikipedia Weekend 2015

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

GAC members who support this request

1. The planned event seems reasonable to me, the programme is full of interesting topics and innovative ideas, and the budget is also decent considering the goals and the measures of success.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 23:14, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Kiril Simeonovski we hope to have other collaborations with shared knowledge in Macedonia :) --Margott (talk) 12:21, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
--Manx thanks Kiril Simeonovski. Your help and inspiration for us since OSCAL is highly appreciated. --Leeturtle (talk) 14:08, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

1. --DerekvG (talk) 17:17, 17 November 2015 (UTC) wishes the organisers a lot of success

Thanxs a lot DerekvG. Greetings from Albania :)--Margott (talk) 12:21, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
--- Dear DerekvG, thank you for wishes! We hope to grow the Albanian speaing community as much as we can through activities like these. --Leeturtle (talk) 14:08, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

GAC comments

Quite big amount of budget is cost of invitation for people from abroad. Why do you think it is important to have them, and what about the potential language barrier? (There are no costs of translation included). Polimerek (talk) 12:53, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Dear Polimerek, about the travel budget: Since we didn’t had any confirmation fro the speakers when we applied for the budged we did a summary of the travel costs for the speakers that we had already invited at the time. And till now there are 4 guys from Kosova, 1 from Sweden and one from Macedonia. The amount related to the travel costs we think can not be considered high, especially when we are talking about 6 speakers from abroad that are planned to be part of Wikipedia Weekend in Tirana. Regarding the language issue you mention: Except the Swedish Wikipedian the others are Albanian speaking guests. Unfortunately Albanians who live in Albania and have good knowledge about Wikipedia and what to be part as a speaker are not that much. This is the reason we want to organize such events in the end of the day and try to bring experienced Wikipedians from abroad with the ultimate goal of inspiring new volunteers and learn from more experienced Wikipedia contributors. We have seen this work in the past, since we also got inspired this way. We are confident there will not be a language gap since Albanian people from all ages have good knowledge of English and as we already have organized other events with non-albanian speakers this was not considered an issue. --Leeturtle (talk) 14:56, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

WMF comments

Hi ViolaCiv, thank you for submitting a request for funding for Wikipedia Weekend in Albania. The weekend agenda is very well developed, and it is great to see how many sessions are workshops to create content and teach new skills. Please see our questions and comments below:

1. In the 'Fit with strategy' section, it seems like you have different levels of follow up planned for participants. Some will be encouraged to participate in contests, others in workshops from the weekend without any explicit follow up, and others will be set up with mentors. Can you explain how you will determine what kind of follow up a participant will receive?

• We plan the first day of the event to be mainly focused on the presentation of different Wiki Projects, in order to include every participant. Here is the agenda, which might have some minor changes and the excact time for each activity: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Weekend_in_Tirana_2015#Agenda. The organizing team, as well as the speakers will be mentoring those who will need help and will have questions related to the basics of wiki markup language, editing a page, adding multimedia to the Commons etc. The experienced participants (including the ones from OSCAL) will start with uploading photos regarding the albanian folklore on commons. The second day will be full of edit-athons and competitions in the computer lab so everyone can contribute on different topics. For a detailed follow up after the event please see our answer below. --ViolaCiv (talk) 12:15, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

1. How is the Ministry of Education involved in the project?

• We have contacted the Ministry of Education to help us promote the event among high schools in Tirana and not only, as well as give us official information about the schools in Albania, so we can add these data on Wikipedia. Through this partnership we aim to promote the event to schools in Tirana so that more kinds join the event. If the grant is approved and we manage to print the materials we will definitely spread some of the materials to schools in Tirana as a promotion of the event in any case. The ministry of Innovation and the Ministry of Education are positive about these options. --ViolaCiv (talk) 12:15, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

1. Have you considered how you will follow up with students after the event?

• During Wikipedia Weekend we'll register the usernames that will be created during the event and will check their progress and emails so we can invite them in the weekly events we organise at Open Labs Hackerspace and to different other venues. As a guide for our follow up we'll use the information available on the Outreach page:

https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education/Toolkit . We are planning to take the follow up seriously by updating the Albanian Outreach programe page and translate the general wiki page in Albanian language in Q1 2016. At the same time dedicated mentors of Wikipedia Weekend will follow up with newscomers based on the registrations we have during Wikipedia Weekend. This is planned in the next 3 months after the event. --ViolaCiv (talk) 12:15, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

1. Having other open source organizations lead editing workshops seems like a great idea, but it would be good to make sure that doing so does not violate any conflict of interest policies on SQ Wikipedia.

• As organizers we are dedicated to follow the policies of editing in Wikipedia (in general) and in SQ Wikipedia (more specifically) by following the rules here (https://sq.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vini_Re!) and here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars).--ViolaCiv (talk) 12:15, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

1. Please include more details in the notes section of the budget for lines 1,2 and 5 explaining how many people are traveling from abroad, who will be given accommodation, and what is included in promotional materials and gifts.

Overall, this is a very strong proposal. We were very pleased to hear that the OSCAL conference and partnership between Open Labs and the Albanian Language User Group have led to an increase in active editors and new offline volunteers working to improve SQ Wikipedia. We look forward to your responses. Cheers! --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 18:50, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

We're willing to answer any other question you may have. Thanks in advance. --ViolaCiv (talk) 12:05, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your quick and thorough responses, ViolaCiv and thank you to GAC and community members for your comments and support on this request. We are pleased to support the Albanian Language User Group and their partners Open Labs in their efforts to grow the community of active online and offline volunteers. It is wonderful to see that you have been able to work with open access and education organizations to reach new users, and that current volunteers have created a solid plan for mentorship and follow up. Please let us know if you need any further support in this and future events. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 23:21, 20 November 2015 (UTC)