Grants talk:Project/BrillLyle/Twitterpedian-in-Residence

Suggestions

1. use hastags in edit summary to provide metrics see https://tools.wmflabs.org/hashtags
2. user teahouse method to build twitter response team, talk with Jonathan Morgan / WMF
3. broaden mission to coach newbies to soften their interaction with the wiki. Slowking4 (talk) 00:00, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Slowking4:!

1. Hastag tool: Can I add this suggestion to my grant page? This would be very helpful along with Twitter and other social media advanced search options! Please let me know

2. Teahouse: I haven't used Teahouse -- have used the IRC channel #wikipedia-en-help for a lot of help -- so I will investigate and talk with Jonathan. I really appreciate this guidance and advice

3. Agree 1000% -- I think much of what I have already experienced and the majority of the discussion has been educational as far as the 5 Pillars, image licensing, the basic "Don't edit your own page" issue, etc. I see this position as having a very heavy focus on being a super positive ambassador for Wikimedia projects. Anyone who follows my Twitter feed (and the Twitter feed I co-administer for Wikimedia NYC) knows I am a huge supporter and promoter to Wikimedia projects. So that would be a continuation, regardless of whether this grant is funded or not!

Thanks so much for these suggestions. Really appreciate them. Please let me know if there are any others. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 17:12, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

yes please add hashtag to proposal, (you can edit the wiki) check out the wikipedia library example, it is a model of how to get better metrics.

check out the history / development of the teahouse. you would be responding faster, but the "build a response team" seems the same. i would suggest trying out new coaching techniques, and then train a circle in them for some scale. cheers. Slowking4 (talk) 03:26, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

At any rate, use a personal and separate Twitter handle for this activity (as is recommended for WIRs too). Something like @BrillLyleSupport, without any Wikimedia logo or trademark. Nemo 08:33, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

• Hi @Nemo bis:! That's a great idea. I am going to create a Twitter account that is my user name right now. Thanks! -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 06:09, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
  • My user name is taken. I will need to think about alternatives.... Thanks again! :-) -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 06:29, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

October 11 Proposal Deadline: Reminder to change status to 'proposed'

The deadline for Project Grant submissions this round is October 11th, 2016. To submit your proposal, you must (1) complete the proposal entirely, filling in all empty fields, and (2) change the status from "draft" to "proposed." As soon as you’re ready, you should begin to invite any communities affected by your project to provide feedback on your proposal talkpage. If you have any questions about finishing up or would like to brainstorm with us about your proposal, there are still two proposal help sessions before the deadline in Google Hangouts:

• October 11th, 0200 - 0300 UTC
• October 11th 1600 -1700 UTC

Warm regards,
Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 03:16, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi @AWang (WMF):!

– I updated the status of the project proposal to "Proposed."

– I have posted a request for review to the mailing lists on the proposal as well as communities on Facebook. Additionally, I have posted to Twitter that the proposal is up for review. If I don't see feedback on the talk page I will send one more request for feedback in a few days.

Please let me know if there is any further action I need to take.

Thanks so much! Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 14:57, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Update

As of today, Tuesday October 11, 2016, I have re-posted a notice about this Project Grant to the mailing lists that are part of the Community notification section of this grant page.

Either due to poor timing or maybe ineffective outreach on my part -- but also probably due to the fact that this might be a controversial proposal -- the low response rate of review/endorsements indicates to me that this may not be an idea that can be successfully funded. That said: Thanks so much for the positive endorsements and posts to this Talk page!

Whatever the outcome, I will continue to do outreach on Twitter and other social media -- and if possible, will try to collect data and if there is enough consistent data, consensus and positive feedback, I may attempt another grant application. I truly believe that since I have been doing this quite a bit already, and it dovetails with a lot of support work for editathons that I do via my very active local Wikipedia chapter here in New York City, that there is definitely a need for this kind of high touch responsive approach. However, there is definitely a limit to how much an editor can be expected to contribute or respond to on an individual basis when this process often takes a huge amount of time and effort and is not centralized or organized very well. Just having these repetitive conversations with people who are either upset or unhappy or dissatisfied with their Wikipedia and their lack of ability to reach a human, and then addressing their issues and helping make the pages better, leads me to think this is a valuable thing, although frustrating because there doesn't seem to be a better systemic approach. That was what I was hoping to explore here. So just wanted to put this out there, that I will continue, whether the project is funded or not, but continuing in current ad hoc way. :-) Best -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 08:50, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

I didn't realize this was still in consideration for funding. #yay -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 06:31, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

A one off project is not the solution to an ongoing issue

Twitter is not going to go away. A one off project is not the solution to an ongoing issue. My experience on Quora where I hang out is that people on the internet have Email and all you really need to do is refer them to OTRS en:Wikipedia:Contact_us. I suggest that we adopt a similar stance re Twitter.

There are various slippery slope issues in having an identifiable person offering to help people fix Wikipedia where those people have a COI. OTRS will have the experience to handle the situation where part of what the complainant wants is not something we would want to do. They also have some vetting and training re handling personal information, and there are logs available if someone alleges that an OTRS volunteer was too close to a complainant or dismissed their complaint too readily. There is no need to replicate that on Twitter when we could instead signpost people to OTRS. I'd be particularly concerned at calling this an "in residence" role without safeguards that the GLAM community has re the Wikipedian in Residence program. WereSpielChequers (talk) 13:32, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Regretfully I'm going to have to agree with WereSpielChequers referring someone to OTRS seems more than sufficient. OTRS has safeguards in place where as a twitterpedian in residence (from my perspective anyway) couldn't have the same safeguards put into place. . Cameron11598 (Converse) 15:28, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

@Cameron11598: Can you explain what specific safeguards exist on OTRS that makes it so good? I would like to know more about this. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 06:54, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

I am obviously new to OTRS, although I do have an account via my WM NYC role. The amount of spam going through OTRS seems to prohibit a quick response, but maybe I am not seeing how that is parsed out. My concern with OTRS is that it isn't a very transparent approach, but if there was an on-Wiki / on-Twitter interaction, it would be more public -- and would therefore promote and assuage some of the PR issues.

I am unaware of the training that occurs for OTRS folks. If this training is established modules, it seems like this information would be ideal to share amongst the larger Wikipedia community as a skillshare? Would this be something that could be done through a GLAM / WiR program? Is it exclusive to OTRS? Could a Twitterpedian-in-Residence have this training and skills and abilities? Not trying to argue here, genuinely curious, as these are very good points. Quite frankly, I think there needs to be more information about OTRS and what is done there. I have been an active Wikipedian for a couple years now and didn't even know about OTRS until this past year. Any feedback / info / further thoughts, I am very interested in this discussion. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 16:48, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

My experiences with OTRS are mostly indirect, out of date or not something I can publicly disclose. Other than that some people I have referred to it have been very happy with the result and none of the people I've referred there have come back to me and said it didn't work. I would agree that it isn't a very transparent process, but I'm not convinced that transparency is the most important thing for a complaints department. If someone doesn't like that we have their religious affiliation in their article based on some service they attended twelve years ago with their partner before last then a tweet isn't the best way to explain that, and a series of emails might result in an OTRS member making a BLP compliant edit to the article. They are of course free to tweet their exasperation after the OTRS experience - it isn't a magic wand that can solve all problems. Could they do with more volunteers at OTRS? I'm sure they could. Is there stuff from there that could be rolled out to the community? Maybe, you could try asking them that. Could we do something better with Twitter? I don't know Twitter well, but I'd think that something that signposted complainants to the relevant complaints page would be good, but that might be a twitter bot rather than anything more sophisticated. WereSpielChequers (talk) 18:04, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers: One of my ideas is that complaints could be listed as a public Task List on a Wikipedia:Meetup page or something similar in the GLAM space. So that the end-user would have an idea about what is going on, and could see that editors would take on the project of fixing the error(s). A bot might be able to run queries. I would be interested in a technical solution; however, right now I think the issue is a human one. I wish you had more first-hand knowledge of Twitter. It's actually really great to connect with people. I am amazed sometimes at the conversations that happen there. I think it's one of the biggest strengths of Twitter versus other social media, the ability to connect so quickly to so many people, and people who otherwise are not reachable. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 06:52, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

already being done

I see no reason whatever for this grant. The service proposed is already being handled at OTRS, by volunteers. I deal with 3 or 4 usually of the most difficult ones a week, and others do many more. What we need is more people with experience to volunteer at OTRS. OTRS is part of the community, selected members who have the experience, are willing to do the work, and willing to confirm their identities, as they are working with private information. We do have a method for distributing the work : for the utter spam (which is 95% of the correspondence) to be dealt with semi-automatically. The remainder is distributed to appropriate lists, and volunteers notified. It should be a principle that the grants are intended to be used for what is not otherwise being done by the community. I can see the point of a grant to re write the program (though I think this may already be underway), and perhaps a grant for better training. DGG (talk) 02:23, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Much respect to DGG and his perspective on this. I find these comments very valuable and helpful, so thank you David.

My concern with OTRS is that I had been a Wikipedia editor for over two years before I even _heard_ about OTRS. Then when I was able to glimpse into the interface it seems like a real horror show of spam and a very difficult interface.

The idea behind the Twitter and other social media interactions was to have things be transparent, and publicly tracked. I am not super happy with how one-way the OTRS system is -- someone unhappy with their page sends an email to the ether of OTRS and trusts that there will be followup and that their concerns are going to be addressed? I actually don't know how the process works but personally I tried to actually find the email address in the Meta help and it was sort of a nightmare to find -- and wasn't very clear what would happen, how the process works, etc.

I understand there is a lot of problems with people's expectations of Wikipedia, but this is a great opportunity to educate the public and establish a more human and transparent approach to the issue. I am doing this every time I help out at an editathon, and I will continue to do this via Twitter and other social media when I see the issues crop up, like they have in the past. I just think Wikimedia Foundation could establish a better system, even if it's at minimum explaining the process of what happens with OTRS complaints, etc.

Anyway, I know we will probably have an active discussion about this in person next time we see each other, and I look forward to learning more about OTRS and whatever other progress is being made on that side to do more with the program. I really appreciate you taking the time to discuss this here, David. Much respect, your pal, Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 03:16, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

You are not alone in not encountering OTRS for your first couple of years, it was probably a year or three from when I started editing to when I encountered OTRS. Until you need to delve in to the complaints process you may not come across it. But there are some very experienced Wikipedians involved in it and I'm sure they've put thought into improving the system. Remember our main way of changing articles is to get people to click the edit button, any alternate route to make changes has to be carefully designed not to compete with that but to complement it for scenarios where editing doesn't work or isn't appropriate, otherwise you could get another AFT or Gather fiasco. I'm not sure I follow your comment re spam. Obviously any interface we set up has to cope with a deluge of spam and spammy approaches, hence the importance of an OTRS system to deal with companies threatening the Wikipedians who won't do what they want. But if you haven't had OTRS access how would you know how much Spam they get? WereSpielChequers (talk) 08:03, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers: I do have OTRS access. The comment on spam was that when I have peeked in OTRS' interface, I was shocked that given the volume of spam the email address gets it's sort of amazing that any of the legitimate complaints get through to humans. I may ask DGG to show me how he works with the OTRS interface, ideally in person at our next editathon or meetup.

I am not sure about AFT or Gather, would like to know more.

I don't see this type of service as competing, but as something more complementary to OTRS. I think that more editors would volunteer to assist in article cleanup -- and it might be a good task list for possible courses or editathons -- if the process was opened up a bit.

I am still pretty fundamentally unhappy with the closed nature of OTRS. I get having Admins and people in charge, but the visibility of OTRS as a solution to the general public (much less editors who are active for years) and the lack of transparency is just not a workable solution to the problems people have.

Wikipedia is way too powerful for there to be no recourse. Some people I have assisted have been super upset, and these are often tech-savvy folks, and they have not been able to find a solution. I had a hard time finding the email, and it's not exactly clear what will happen, if someone will help, what end-users can expect. These things need to be easier to find and more explicit. An additional overriding concern: I think the powerful impact of Wikipedia as the world gets even more digital makes it imperative that WMF does a better job on this -- or at minimum communicating steps to resolve issues. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 06:47, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

my observations about OTRS are somewhat less sunny. a GLAM uploads photos that were then nominated for deletion, and then deleted with an OTRS pending, and then undeleted 30 days later when OTRS was processed. twitter has a faster response time and is more open so we are not guessing what the status is. some people work with twitter not email. we need to adopt the channel used by our questioners. telling me OTRS works is wholly inadequate as a critique. Slowking4 (talk) 21:36, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2016

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2016 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 2 2016 begins on 2 November 2016, and grants will be announced in December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:16, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Comments of Ruslik0

I have some comments/questions:

• Taking into accounts comments above you should do a better job explaining how your approach is different from OTRS and in what situations it is better to ask the Twitterpedian-in-residence instead of e-mailing the OTRS.
• Since the project is relatively small have you considered applying for a rapid grant instead?
• I do not understand GLAM background section: who is Dorothy Howard?

• In the current form the project does not seem to be sustainable - it will stop functioning once there is no "Twitterpedian-in-residence".
• You should improve the measures of success and make them more specific.

Ruslik (talk) 18:00, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Ruslik0: Thank you for these questions.

The proposed approach is different from OTRS because it is direct and public. People who have complaints don't know or care what OTRS is, and if they are successful in finding the email address that feeds into OTR -- which is not an easy thing -- they are just sending a complaint into a dark hole and hoping that their complaint will be heard. Responding to complaints on the social media where they are being communicated is a direct, one-to-one, personal approach to problem solving their issue. I suspect many times it might be about educating the person complaining in issues of COI and copyright, but I am sure it is also the fact that the page is in bad condition or is out of date and needs to be updated. In any case, the idea is the in contract to OTRS, this is a way to very publicly and proactively respond to complaints, versus do this in a hidden process. OTRS could be used to track complaints, if that is something that is done there. But I would propose that even an on-Wiki page to list problems would be ideal.

I had thought to do a Rapid Grant but when I started to look at the numbers it seems like the beta project should have a longer period to test out, which pushed it into this budget bucket.

Apologies, I am so GLAM focused -- and NYC focused. Dorothy Howard was a very active Wikipedian prveiously based in New York City. She was one of the initial founders of Art+Feminism and was Wikipedian-in-Residence at Metropolitan New York Library Council and is a writer and technologist. She was one of the first in person contacts I had for Wikipedia, was a point of entrée for me into the local community, and wrote an important-to-me paper called "Labor and the New Encyclopedia." When I talk about GLAM and Wikipedian-in-Residence programs, I am promoting the idea that all institutions that are producing cultural content should have a WiR to highlight their digitized collections. It is not an implemented idea really, but I would love to see this become a more common construct. It would be good for both institutions and it would make Wikipedia a richer, deeper resource. I will try and develop the GLAM section more. Thank you for letting me know it was unclear.

I envision this project as a beta test to see if (a) there are enough complaints (b) the solution of personal response works (c) it's sustainable. If it is, then I would apply for a continuation and/or fully grant and build up a team of folks similar to the Women in Red initiative to work together to be Twitterpedians-in-Residence.

I agree the measures of success are not specific enough. Part of the beta part of the project would be to develop measures of success. I am unsure if this is a good enough answer.

Thanks again for the questions. Please let me know if you have further concerns. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 18:08, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Comments by Joalpe

Hi. I think your proposal has the interesting aspect of attempting to integrate positively projects and Twitter. I have three main questions:

1. Could we get a sense of how common people demonstrating frustration with Wikipedia on Twitter is? Evidences you have shown remain anecdotal.
2. Could you please describe step-by-step how you envision the communications procedure that would be triggered when someone demonstrates frustration with Wikipedia on Twitter?
   1. Here, I am concerned that nobody would be seen to speak in the name of the projects or the community, and because of the length limitation of tweets there might not be enough room to explain precisely the kind of interaction you are intending to establish.
   2. Here, I am also concerned about not making our communication with potential contributors to happen on Twitter and not on talk pages within our community.
3. Wikipedians-in-residence are generally associated to a specific institution. I was not sure why you have called the position you want to be funded for has anything to do with a residency. This seemed to much more like a paid PR position to work on sustaining a positive image of the projects on Twitter. Am I getting this wrong?

Thanks for submitting a project! I hope my comments were helpful. --Joalpe (talk) 01:28, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Joalpe: Thank you for your questions.

1. I will add a list of the specific complaints and threads that I have seen and addressed onto the grant page. I think that while the evidence might seem anecdotal, there are actually enough times that people have expressed their frustration, anger, upset that it is not just anecdotal. That said, I think that some of the project, and why I was thinking this might be a beta project, is that the complaints could be collected in a systematic manner, documented on an on-wiki page, and addressed on an on-wiki and/or on-social media platform way. So it would in and of itself, the project, would establish the hard data of this not really anecdotal phenomenon.

2. The step-by-step process would be a systematic search for complaints, logging of those complaints, responding to complaints on the various social media platforms (for now it would be focused on Twitter), addressing questions of education about COI (don't edit articles yourself), copyright (pictures going up on Commons need to have a free culture license, etc.) and so on, reaching out to fellow Wikipedia volunteers for assistance on maying edits and/or improving problem pages, updating the subject, resolving any critical issues, reportage and survey feedback. This is not solidified but as the beta project develops I expect best practices and structure to be established -- as part of the project -- more clearly.

2.1. I agree that it is a concern that presenting myself as a Twitterpedian-in-Residence would be a very public face to Wikipedia. Yet at the same time: Aren't we all presenting ourselves as a public face of Wikipedia and the various projects that we participate in, either unofficially or officially (I am part of Wikimedia NYC and do the Twitter feed there, etc.) as we volunteer? I think it is not really that different. And could have just as many benefits or problems as we encounter in our day-to-day participation in projects, conferences, events, and in our editing of articles, especially BLP ones....

Honestly, I think that Wikimedia Foundation needs to establish something like this officially. But if they don't have this established, or aren't willing to do this, then something like this approach might be a middle ground solution where it can be proven that (a) there is a need and (b) it can be effective and helpful.

As far as length limitations, I ask the subject to either DM me or email me so there is a chance if the communication needs to be over 140 characters that is not a barrier. The 140 tweet length constraint hasn't seemed to be a big problem so far.

2.2. As far as having the conversations de-centralize or happen off Wiki, I am one of the bigger proponents of using on-Wiki as a space for the work. At Wikimedia NYC we do all of our event pages on Wiki, and it works as a way to onboard people into using and understanding how Wikipedia works, how to edit, etc. That said, using Flow would help navigate the arcane Talk page editing problem. I am a big fan of that. I think registering for an account to then navigate Talk pages might present a lot of barriers. It is an option, of course. But I think that probably what would happen is that I would put a notice up on the Talk page documenting and linking to the complaint and would provide an overview of the conversation about the complaint and solutions provided. It would be a lot more transparent and available than what is happening now on an ad hoc basis. The on-wiki tracking that I propose would also enhance transparency. I am really not trying to do anything nefarious here. I believe fully in having a transparent process. I think it is only a good thing.

3. re: Paid PR position vs. embedded in institution question: I think you could argue that GLAM Wikipedians-in-Residence are performing outreach and public relations as well. I envision this Twitterpedian-in-Residence project as being embedded in Twitter, and while not highlighting collections or teaching communities about Wikipedia, the project would perform outreach and education as a part of its mechanism of responding to BLP issues. Probably not a good enough answer, and this is definitely the biggest concern about this position -- and why it would behoove WMF to actually proactively create a type of Help Desk similar to what Time Warner and other consumer based companies do. But this isn't happening yet. And I have been doing this triage now for a while, have started to become the person people reach out to for problem BLPs. So this project is an attempt to create a systematic approach to solving these problems. Maybe the name of Twitterpedian-in-Residence is a bit too tongue in cheek and is a misnomer? Not sure....

Thanks again for these questions!

-- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 18:19, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Twitterpedian-in-Residence

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	5.9
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	6.4
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	6.4
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	6.1
Additional comments from the Committee: The project offers a new platform to support readers, rather than editors. May end up being a platform for complaints. The projects fits with Wikimedia's strategic priorities and has a potential for online impact. Its sustainability is unclear but it may be worthwhile as a pilot project, Does not differentiate itself from existing similar solutions. I agree with the need that grounds this proposal: to connect Wikimedia projects with other social medias, in this case Twitter. As a community, we have had a somewhat negative approach to blogs, youtube and other platforms. This does not make much sense, and I see this proposal as something that could contribute to take us to a different agenda and active role. Yet, this is only possible if this activity is a process that the WMF fully agrees with, since it involves basically PR of the projects. So, to sum up, this proposal tackles an important issue, but it may only be sustainable and scaled up if there is an interest in the WMF, which was not pre-arranged as far as I was able to understand. Very limited potential. A new fresh Twitter account will have to be set up. Compare it with @WeAreWikipedia, active more than 2 years and only has 2,500 followers. I am not sure, even with specific text search in Twitter API, will be able to reach everybody with problems when editing. We need to encourage people to use any Wikimedia space if they need help. I see some good ideas but there is a lack of measures of success: the applicant writes about the instruments but not numbers to make a clear picture about the success or failure. The approach is innovative without doubt. There are risks but they are not very high taking into account the modest sum requested. On the other hand the impact potential appears to be relatively large. Measures of success can be improved though. This is currently being done and so grantee may need to distinct his/her project from what already exists. Part of what is being proposed is already being done, but I would say amateuristically. The proposal could be set up in a context in which our PR policy on Twitter is taken more seriously. Measures of success, as said in the talk page, are very limited. I see some risks in the project: how could the TiR verify the information? how will the NPOV be taken from someone who is the primary source? (ie: imagine that @jimmy_wales complains about Wikipedia information related with his favorite cakes, what will be the TiR’s procedure: make some changes without references (?)). The way to take the data (Twitter adv. search) could be a pain: no filter about the "wikipedia" string in the URL, so there is a lot of results "in the air". The applicant appears to have necessary skills to execute the project. The budget is realistic. The pilot project can, in my opinion, be accomplished in two months. As it was emphasized on the talk page, this proposal cannot be understood as a one-shot project, but rather as a process that should be led by the WMF with volunteer support. Though I am very impressed by the proponent's eagerness and commitment to being our face on Twitter, I am not sure this is the best solution. Learning process for the community on how to tackle the problem that is diagnosed in the proposal is not clear. The grantee is focused too much in his/her own perspective. Most of the activities described look trivial for any experienced Wikipedia editor. I don't think the amount they will be receiving by hour is necessary. There is a lot of endorsement from the community and notification was very noticeable -especially if you follow a lot of mailing lists-. The community interest appears to be high though many comments are negative. This projects seems to have notified a lot of communities however the ability to avoid redundant effort is my main concern. Good level of support. I have serious concerns about availability of volunteers after the grant, If we keep comparing with @WeAreWikipedia account we see that sometimes not enough volunteers are available for tweeting every week. We should focus our community of volunteers in help desk/tea house. I don't feel comfortable with the project: the idea seems good, well presented and with a lot of support, but I don't like the idea of creating a new channel to support our readers. I don't know the number of complains about the correctness of Wikipedia information, so I can't estimate if the new way to help could be successful. I like to see this project in Rapid Grants as experiment before make a "step up" to Project Grants. The project can be funded as a small pilot, although measures of success should be made clearer. I am not convinced by the approach to solve this problem. I don't think is financially prudent for the WMF to spend money on something that is already being done and more especially being done by volunteers. The case for an active role on Twitter is well made. I am not sure the solution that is being presented in the proposal is good. I would like to hear from the WMF communications team, since I have the impression that the role of Twitter PR might make more sense as a permanent position on the WMF, in the process of improving our activities on social media.

This project has not been selected for a Project Grant at this time.

We love that you took the chance to creatively improve the Wikimedia movement. The committee has reviewed this proposal and not recommended it for funding. This was a very competitive round with many good ideas, not all of which could be funded in spite of many merits. We appreciate your participation, and we hope you'll continue to stay engaged in the Wikimedia context.

Next steps: Applicants whose proposals are declined are welcome to consider resubmitting your application again in the future. You are welcome to request a consultation with staff to review any concerns with your proposal that contributed to a decline decision, and help you determine whether resubmission makes sense for your proposal.

Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation has been undergoing a community consultation process to launch a new grants strategy. Our proposed programs are posted on Meta here: Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021. If you have suggestions about how we can improve our programs in the future, you can find information about how to give feedback here: Get involved. We are also currently seeking candidates to serve on regional grants committees and we'd appreciate it if you could help us spread the word to strong candidates--you can find out more here. We will launch our new programs in July 2021. If you are interested in submitting future proposals for funding, stay tuned to learn more about our future programs.