Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Wikimedia France annual grant request 2022-2023

Feedback from the Northern and Western Europe (NWE) Regional Funding Committee on your proposal

Hello User:Rémy Gerbet WMFr, Thank you for taking the time to submit your General Support Fund proposal in the Northern and Western Europe region. We are pleased to have reviewed your application and have the following comments and questions:

• We were really impressed with the legal and psychological support which you provided to your editors. This is an excellent programme and one which it would be great to see carried into other areas of the Wikimedia groups.

• Another area in which you have shown innovation and great progress is with your language support programmes.

• It is particularly notable where you are reaching other french-speaking countries and ensuring they have the support of Wikimédia France

• We were particularly taken with your programmes for children and early adoption of the Wikimedia ethos and processes.

Areas where we would like a bit more information were

• How do you ensure the involvement of minority community groups and minority community languages within France?

• Can you provide more clarity about the retention of new users figure? Can you confirm that metric is 10% versus 10 new contributors and what strategies for retention you have considered and why did you choose the one you are using? Do you consider 10% to be a stretch goal or easily achievable?

• You mention the work is international but not which countries are involved. Can you provide more detail around which francophone countries you are working with? How many were involved last year and will any countries be added this year? How do you go about adding countries, is it an outwardly proactive process or do other francophone countries reach out to you for support? Can you give more detail about how areas like French Caribbean, French Guiana, etc. - are involved, the places not specifically called out in the application.

• Can you give more detail about staffing and how the addition of a new FTE will fit into the existing staffing structure.

• One thing touched on but not specifically detailed in the application was the idea of working with the police. Since for some communities, the idea of partnering with police can be unnerving, it would be helpful to know more about the nature of the work.

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you.

On behalf of the NWE Regional Committee, ☕ Antiqueight ^chatter 16:18, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Responses from Wikimedia France to the NWE committee

Hello Antiqueight,

Thank you for taking the time to read our proposal and thank you for your questions that will allow me to detail some projects a little more.

• How do you ensure the involvement of minority community groups and minority community languages within France?

Regarding the engagement of minority language communities in France and in particular the two we have targeted for next year (Breton and Guyanese); we will do this through specific partnerships. In the context of Brittany, we are going to sign a partnership with the Brittany Region and the Diwan language schools, a school network that teaches Breton. We are going to deploy contribution workshops in these schools in connection with the local Wikimedian community. We will thus directly reach teachers, children and communities who speak the language and who are committed to its preservation. For Guyana, we have been in partnership for 2 years with the University of Cayenne and in particular, two Guyanese culture classes which study the languages ​​of Guyana (especially Creole). The workshops that take place relate directly to the contribution in Creole with students who are around 24-26 years old, who are natives of Guyana and who are keen to promote their culture. This is why we are convinced that we can have a real impact on Wikipedia projects in Breton and Guyanese in the near future by combining strong interaction with the linguistic communities and strong partnerships.

• Can you provide more clarity about the retention of new users figure? Can you confirm that metric is 10% versus 10 new contributors and what strategies for retention you have considered and why did you choose the one you are using? Do you consider 10% to be a stretch goal or easily achievable?

Training in Wikimedia projects is the marker element for the transformation of practices. In 2022-2023, we are engaged in a major action with the Ministry of Higher Education and Research in France. We will be led to conduct training with several hundred teacher-researchers with state-recognized training. These trainings will complement those we do for GLAMs, secondary school teachers and other settings. These courses are themselves supplemented by our two MOOCS dedicated to Wikipedia and Wikidata. Next year, we will have a person in charge of harmonizing, coordinating and monitoring the association's entire training program. This person will also be in charge of following up the trained people who want to continue contributing to the projects. Basically, after each training, with a common evaluation form, each participant can declare their intention to join the Wikimedia France tutoring program. This program will allow them to be followed online on their first steps on the projects by this person but also by volunteers of the association. On all the people who will be trained during the year, we anticipate about 1500 people, we hope to maintain 150 people on projects over 6 months (10%). This is a fairly high objective but which can be achieved by personalized support and the establishment of time dedicated to newcomers. And we know that in some public administrations and cultural institutions, contributing to Wikimedia projects is becoming more and more of an obligation.

• You mention the work is international but not which countries are involved. Can you provide more detail around which francophone countries you are working with? How many were involved last year and will any countries be added this year? How do you go about adding countries, is it an outwardly proactive process or do other francophone countries reach out to you for support? Can you give more detail about how areas like French Caribbean, French Guiana, etc. - are involved, the places not specifically called out in the application.

We work mainly with countries in the French-speaking area and thus we support projects in several countries. Last year we supported the Republic of Congo, Benin, Cameroon, Senegal, Chad, Haiti, Guinea Conakry and Côte d'Ivoire. We do this mainly through very active support for the creation of WikiFranca, a new association based in Geneva created in November 2021 and for which Wikimedia France plays the role of financial and organizational support in conjunction with Wikimedia Switzerland. We thus host a micro-grant system dedicated to the Francophonie. The committee is made up of 6 people: 1 person from Cameroon, 1 person from DRC, 1 person from Morocco, 1 person from Côte d'Ivoire, 1 person from Switzerland and 1 person from France. The budget of this commission is made up of Wikimedia France. It assesses requests for actions that take place in French-speaking countries and members of WikiFranca. It respects and evaluates actions according to the criteria set out in the WikiFranca charter of principles. Anyone can come and ask for support ranging from organizing a local contribution event to setting up a website for the affiliate.

Concerning the overseas territories, I mentioned the partnership we have with the University of Cayenne in Guyana that we have been strengthening for 2 years. On the other islands, especially in the Caribbean, we have too few volunteers at the moment but we are in the process of changing that with the help of a new volunteer in Guadeloupe. Reunion has a slightly different status. Indeed, we managed to integrate into our board, a recent Wikimedian, teacher who grew up and who works in Saint-Denis de la Runion allowing us to strengthen our local presence and in particular to Mayotte for which we received about twenty of students we trained at the end of 2021 in Paris. The work remains very important and we are only at these premises. From the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean, we are trying to approach and train more than 3 million individuals in their immense diversity. This will begin first with Guyana and Reunion where the first milestones have been laid.

• Can you give more detail about staffing and how the addition of a new FTE will fit into the existing staffing structure.

I have already mentioned this a little when asking questions about retention, but in summary here is what it will give.

- The person in charge of volunteering, who will soon be recruited, will be integrated into the support division. Its mission will be to coordinate active support for the community of online and field volunteers with aspects of legal, psychological, logistical support, loan of equipment and training of volunteers. This person was already announced in the previous grant but I prefer to talk about it here because it has not yet arrived.

- The new person we wish to recruit will be largely supported by the partnership with the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. She will position herself upstream of the project managers and coordinate the entire training program, ensure the development of our online training platform with MOOCs, and follow the path of new learners by evaluating their integration into Wikimedia projects.

• One thing touched on but not specifically detailed in the application was the idea of working with the police. Since for some communities, the idea of partnering with police can be unnerving, it would be helpful to know more about the nature of the work.

Yes with pleasure :). In France, there is a police agency dedicated to crimes committed online (harassment, threats, homophobia, racism, etc.) Each citizen can go to the Pharos site to report to these specialized police officers who can then investigate. As you can imagine, this site is very overloaded and that is why this police agency has chosen to set up partnerships with what they call "trusted third parties" which will soon be the case for Wikimedia France .

Basically, these trusted third parties have access to a priority approach, their reports are prioritized and we can do more things like add attachments and follow up on the reports made.

Our idea would be to do this for the French-speaking community and to be able to report to the French police any unacceptable behavior that may take place on the French-speaking Wikipedia. Indeed, the community generally does its job very well by deleting and hiding content, but sometimes this content is simply very violent and the authors must be worried about it. That's what this approach would be for. Last January, we organized a meeting between several administrators and patrollers of the French-speaking Wikipedia and the police commander of this agency. The community sees in Wikimedia France a relay of confidence towards the police authorities. Thus, we would be in the following operation. The community identifies problematic comments. A volunteer takes a screenshot and transfers it to Wikimedia France, which will carry out the reporting process to this police agency. In return, Wikimedia France will keep the community informed of the progress of the various reports. We have checked with our lawyer that this does not pose unnecessary risks to the association and this is not the case since we could not be charged for a breach. Here again, it is a question of helping the community, of giving it real support so that it feels that the moderation work it is doing is not in vain and that there may be real penalties behind for people who insult, harass or threaten our community. All this work is therefore done in close contact with the admins who are informed of each stage of progress of the discussions.

I hope I was able to answer your questions. If you need more information, I am obviously at your disposal.

Best,

Rémy Gerbet WMFr (talk) 22:23, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Round 2 2022 decision

Congratulations! The Northern and Western Europe Regional Funds Committee has recommended your proposal for funding!

The Wikimedia Foundation has approved the committee's recommendation to fund your proposal in full for $467,815.00 USD / 425,000.00 EUR

Comments regarding this decision:
The NWE Committee recommends full funding for Wikimedia France.

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement.
2. If you have questions, you can contact the Regional Program Officer for the Northern and Western Europe Region.

Posted on behalf of the Northern and Western Europe (NWE) Funding Committee, --Marti (WMF) (talk) 17:43, 26 May 2022 (UTC)