Grants talk:Project/Chinmayisk/Community toolkit for Greater Diversity

Note: Sections of this talk page have been archived. See the archived discussion here and rationale for archiving below. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 21:09, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Clarification regarding the partner institution

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), which is an affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation, is the partner institution for this project. This model of conducting a joint activity with the community has been used several times in the past, such as for WikiConference India 2016 and WikiSangamotsav (by the Malayalam community). -- Rohini (talk) 09:46, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

The Centre of Internet and Society (CIS) is only a event partner for this project. They will be supporting us in terms of event organisation and to help us reach out to their networks. -- Chinmayisk (talk) 17:40, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Owing to unforeseen developments that occurred after this grant was sanctioned, the Centre for Internet and Society did not act as our partner for the training event or as a partner institution for this project in general. -- Rohini (talk) 09:43, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Am I correct to assume that Tanveer (who's employed by CIS) still remained involved with your project? Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 14:39, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

• Hi, I would like to add few questions regarding this application in hope to clear some confusion. Impact-to-cost ratio is rather seems not balanced in this project. I would like to see more detailed information on what exactly will be the impact by going for paid Project Lead, Resource Person and Project Manager instead of getting volunteers from multiple indic usergroups. Furthermore, I would like more information about the website- Can you provide us with a sample module and how it will be different from Learning patterns so that we know if we can use existing web resources instead of going for a new web infrastructure. Are you going to provide travel scholarships to the volunteers attending the event and training session? How many people would be writing the modules. On what basis those expert module writers will be selected considering the fact that they might need extensive knowledge of how Wikimedia project works, how people treat gender gap on Wikimedia and how to address Gender Gap issue in Wikimedia space. Do you have any of the content writers in mind? Thank you! Jim Carter (talk) 07:39, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

• • Hi, in response to the clarification about the module writers, I would like to note why would we not stick to people coming as volunteers instead of paid writers. What are your thoughts on identifying individuals coming from the underrepresented demographics within our Wikimedia community before seeking other organizations? Did you thought about soliciting other organizations specialized in the empowerment of the underrepresented usergroup about sponsorship for this program? I would also love further clarification about what a "safe space" is, and if there are instances we were alleged for not having a friendly/safe space environment for volunteers? How are you aiming to "facilitate the creation of safe space"?

I believe, a wiki based website would do the work (I am a mediawiki developer), on a shared hosting plan with existing Wikimedia chapters based in India or abroad. Also, did you thought about collaborating with existing volunteer developers, instead of hiring developers for creation and maintenance. I know of at least 10 web developers in our Wikimedia community whom you may seek for the development and maintenance. I am personally interested in volunteering for the development of such web environment. Thanks! Jim Carter (talk) 11:39, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

@Jim Carter:Hello, thank you for detailed analysis of our proposal and your comments. Some of your questions were the same or overlapping with those of other commentators. We have replied to them in the FAQ section. We reply to the rest here:

• "What are your thoughts on identifying individuals coming from the underrepresented demographics within our Wikimedia community before seeking other organizations?"

That a module writer should belong to one or more underrepresented demographics is a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition.

Could you please define what you mean by "our Wikimedia community"? The Wikimedia 2030 strategy document states, "The definition of community will include the many roles we play to advance free and open knowledge, from editors to donors, to organizers, and beyond". This is also our (the project proposers’) definition of what makes a community [1].

To quote from the strategy document again, "Some of us write encyclopedia articles. Some of us develop software… donate money, time, or expertise... curate data, sources, or media… organize events, advocate for copyright reform, or remix artwork... community organizers, educators, or copy editors. Some of us do all of the above, and more. What brings us together is not what we do; it’s why we do it." To that effect, as long as the module writers have demonstrated a commitment to openness and belong to an underrepresented demographic, they fit the bill for the project.

The project proposers themselves will write the module(s) on gender; we indeed belong to the Wikimedia community as is evident from our bios posted with this proposal. We also belong to the corresponding underrepresented demographic.

As for the remuneration offered to module writers, paid work leads to greater accountability, defined and time-bound deliverables, and fair compensation for their labour.

The training sessions would also act as skill-building opportunities for Wikimedia India and CIS-A2K, so that they may continue to engage with individuals, communities and groups on diversity and inclusion.

• "Can you provide us with a sample module so that we know if we can use existing web resources instead of going for a new web infrastructure?"

Designing and creating a serious module is time, skill, labour and resource-intensive. We do not have any modules written out already. This is a greenfield project, so we do not have any templates or past literature either.

• "Did you thought [sic] about soliciting other organizations specialized in the empowerment of the underrepresented usergroup about sponsorship for this program?"

Yes, we did. However, we believe that the WMF is the optimal grantor to for this phase of the project.

This project is right in the crosshairs of the Wikimedia 2030 goals for diversity and inclusion, the focus on emerging communities, as well as the continuing efforts to increase diversity on Wikimedia projects. This project brings together several threads of openness, access to knowledge, diversity, inclusion, and trust and safety. According to us, the optimal beneficiaries and benefactors would be the Wikimedia projects.

This is an incubatory program; once we produce results we hope that we can look up to other organisations in the future for funds for scaled up versions, revised version, wider adoption, and trainings.

• "How many people would write the modules? How will they be selected? Do you have any writers in mind?"

We have budgeted for creating 8 modules apart from the ones we (the project proposers) will write. We have a mix of people who have been in the Wikimedia/ openness space, those who understand diversity issues in the real world, and have been working on it for years. The issue of the lack of diversity on Wikipedia is an extension of a society reality. Thus, it is not very different in terms of its dynamics. We believe that their experience will help us navigate through these issues as a community. In terms of contextualising content for Wikimedia spaces, we have some experienced editors who will share this knowledge through their review of the content.

• "I would also love further clarification about what a "safe space" is, and if there are instances we were alleged for not having a friendly/safe space environment for volunteers? How are you aiming to 'facilitate the creation of safe space'?"

What a safe space is, what it is not, why it is needed, and how it is created, are fundamental questions on the topic of this grant proposal. In the interest of our (your and the grant proposers’) time, we would like to share some links (WP:RS) that answer these questions:

• Article on English Wikipedia [2]
• Safe Space [3]
• Hospitality, Jerks and What I Learned [4]
• What is a Safe Space? [5]
• "Patterns of Failure", Successful diversity initiatives in open tech/culture, Page 21, [6] -- Chinmayisk (talk) 18:40, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  

Adding to the Jim's comments, I have a couple of concerns. As a regular practice, we (the grantees) bear the expenses of Resource persons, but not any compensation for their time, because they come on voluntary basis. And same with the other roles as well. At this point I support Jim's stands in getting volunteers from various communities, rather than having paid members. Coming to the event expenses, do you provide travel scholarships to the volunteers attending the event? Also what is the rationale for resorting to a FOSS-based website, apart from using the Learning patterns model, which provide a greater access for the community to review, and share their ideas. I'll be happy to support the project once my concerns are addressed. --Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk — mail) 16:05, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

@Krishna Chaitanya Velaga:Hello, Thank you for your input. As some of your comments were the same as or overlapping with those asked by other commentators, we have included them in the FAQ section.Please take a look at them below.--Regards,Chinmayisk (talk) 18:42, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

@Chinmayisk: Thanks for clarifying. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk — mail) 03:54, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Copying over my comment from the main page to allow discussion on it - While I agree with the issue of gender gap and the need to fix it, I am unsure if this is a very cost effective way to go about it, to put it bluntly. I cannot speak for any of the remunerations, but there's a number of places, such as website infrastructure, that could be perhaps easily avoided by hosting it on Wikimedia. (There are a number of ways apart from standard Wikitext, like the Outreachy dashboards have done for Learning and Evaluation or a number of other mediums, all hosted on Mediawiki). I would love to see more time, resources and funds being focused on the Global South in general (and South Asia in particular) but when the amount is roughly 66% of what a country-wide Wikimedia conference needs, I would rather it be focused more on organising events that fix the problem than on building things that will be indirectly talking about what the problem is. I strongly recommend a scaled down version to act as a proof of concept before going for a larger scale approach. Soni (talk) 02:53, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

@Soni:Hello, Thank you for your input. As some of your comments were the same as or overlapping with those asked by other commentators, we have included them in the FAQ section. We reply to the rest here:

• "When the amount is roughly 66% of what a country-wide Wikimedia conference needs…"

Unlike a conference, this is a greenfield project. We urge you to view it and its budget in that light.

We do not believe that an exercise for the creation, growth and sustenance of a hitherto non-existent resource for the community is comparable to a conference, or that it is useful to compare them. Both have their own merits, and they benefit the community, its culture and well-being in different ways.

We assume the “66%” figure refers to the total budget of WikiConference India 2016. We would appreciate it if you could help us understand the rationale behind treating WCI ‘16 as a yardstick for this project.

Considering the recommendations made by this project’s proposers after WikiConference 2016, [7] we are especially averse to treating the conference as a benchmark in the context of “Diversity and Inclusion” and of “Trust and Safety”. This project’s goals overlap with some of those recommendations.

• "I would rather it be focused more on organising events that fix the problem than on building things that will be indirectly talking about what the problem is."

This project covers the creation and continuing growth of a new community resource and four events for training and dissemination. Of the four events, one will be led by the grantees and the rest by volunteers who undergo the grantee-led training. The resource will be CC-licensed, publicly available, and subject to review by the community and a multitude of stakeholders. The training sessions would be capacity-building opportunities for Wikimedia India and CIS-A2K, so that they may continue to engage with individuals, communities and groups on the topic of diversity and inclusion. We believe that this project takes the diversity gaps head-on. Could you please point us to specific phrases or portions in the proposal that indicate that the community toolkit would "indirectly" broach the problem? We would like to fix those phrases.

• "I strongly recommend a scaled down version to act as a proof of concept before going for a larger scale approach."

This project is what you refer to as the proof of concept. The scaled up version would be usable globally, and would include more geographies and more underrepresented demographics such as race. As mentioned in the solution statement, "We hope to be able to expand its scope to a globally usable project after the end of the incubatory program in India." --Chinmayisk (talk) 18:40, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

• I do not think you understand my point so I will rephrase more bluntly. Speaking from strictly a budgetary standpoint, this project seems grossly expensive. I am of the opinion that the Global South in general (and both South Asia and diversity in specific) is a topic that definitely needs a lot more resources. I am yet to find a convincing argument that this project warrants the amount of resources it requests.
• The reason I take the conference as an example is not based on the inherent services it provides or the diversity it contributes, but to provide a yardstick of what the amount means, in terms of Indian currency. (As opposed to a similar project in the Western World, where the cost of living, and therefore, the cost of projects, will be much higher). With the exorbitant amount of resources that are expected from this project vis-a-vis other projects in the country, I do not see a comparable impact or a concrete enough plan.
• A simple example of what I call as overcompensations budget wise, will be the Rs 3,60,000 for just "Travel to conferences to disseminate or present the project, it findings or outcome". While I agree that presenting project findings is important and necessary, this also sounds like another way to bypass other Grant programs (say the Wikimania scholarships and the Rapid Grants program). What are the necessary factors that require the travel to conferences be covered by this specific grant? What conferences are you planning to cover? And so on.
• Similarly, I notice almost the entire project covered with a list of vague explanations for the cost effectiveness. For example, what is the breakdown of nearly 2,25,000 rs under documentation (Not for remunerations)? There's a lot of points there with costs, but I am yet to see where the cost for "Podcast recording and editing" or "Creating, shooting and editing short videos" comes from.
• Overall, this seems to be something of a general pattern I am seeing with this project in particular. A lot of the items are just vague enough that it is not clearly obvious what the resources are required for, while at the same time, I am not seeing a good amount of depth in the project proposal itself for what the overall module will look like, or even similar modules or programs elsewhere that can serve as a yardstick for what this project is out to achieve.
• I hope this is clearer in terms of elaborating on my points above.
• Soni (talk) 23:44, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
  
  

@Soni: Thank you for asking these questions. Since we posted the proposal, we have been reading general commentary that the budget is disproportionately large, but we had no clarity about what exactly was considered disagreeable about it.

Budget allocation for conferences: Speaking about the project at conferences will enable us to seek more inputs and feedback from peers and experts in the field, and fine-tune the content. Getting an audience of the same numbers and qualification as this constituency would be near-impossible otherwise. We would also seek new ideas and collaboration; future and innovative uses of the toolkit; avenues for its growth and adoption; and disseminate the toolkit so that it is adopted and seeded for diversity work in other parts of the world addressing different dimensions of the issue.

We aim to apply to speak at conferences with these themes: Conferences on IP, open knowledge, peer-production of knowledge and information; diversity and inclusion on the internet in general and open movements in particular; gender justice, digital rights, and so on.

This budget allocation is not intended to bypass other existing processes of the WMF for awarding grants. We would request funds, full or partial, from avenues associated with the respective conferences as much as possible, and utilise these funds only as a last resort. Chinmayi and I have previously received full travel and participation support from the WMF and other grantmaking bodies to enable us to participate in conferences and we will continue to engage with these grantors. These funds will also be made available to the project’s volunteers who imbibe the values of the project and can contribute to global discussions on the topic. The way grant disbursement works, funds under this budget item are likely to be released to us only if and when we need them. We would be also bound by the grantor’s rules to return unutilised funds.

No aspersions on you, but going by the general tone and sentiment of some ongoing discussions, we foresee that some members of the community will view this allocation as 'free foreign trips/ holiday package/ junkets' for us. The proposers of this grant make several trips within India and abroad every year for speaking engagements, conferences and events. Rest assured that we do not need more travel than we already get.

Budget allocation under "Documentation": The cost for podcasts and videos is remuneration for designers, videographers, video editors and podcast creators. We are committed to making the material available in as many media formats as possible so that it reaches as many people as possible, and be adopted by them. We wish to encourage participation from as diverse a set of people as possible. We would appreciate it if we get volunteers to create and edit content in these formats, because we do not possess professional expertise in it. However, in the absence of people willing to do it gratis, we will need to engage professionals to complete the project within a timeframe while maintaining quality. It is pertinent to note that the budgeted expenditure is lower than the market rate for these professional services; we are hoping to get an ‘NGO price’ from them. Chinmayi and I have worked for not-for-profit organisations and initiatives for the past few years; we are well-versed with hiring professionals, contractual or otherwise, for the specific needs of a project.

What this project is out to achieve:

Working titles of modules and sub-modules:

• Identifying different axes of privilege -- the Indian context of class, caste, and gender and how it plays out on Wikipedia.

• Identifying content gaps on Wikipedia, and their connection with demographics underrepresented on Wikipedia.

• Using wikitools to identify content gaps

• Organising an event with a marginalised group:

• How to support the group after and beyond the event.

• How to create support mechanisms to enable them to access relevant infrastructure.

• Strategies to respond to deletionism which is intended to subvert the presence and participation of the underrepresented demographics.

• How to organise and design outreach or training events meant for a closed group. (N.B: Closed group sessions are not against the spirit and ethos of Wikipedia in particular and of ‘openness’ in general. For example, events such as WikiWomenCamp are only open to women and transwomen. Women-only meetings and trainings have been established to be more effectual and successful in addressing certain gender-related issues, within and outside the Wikimedia context. Closed group events are also very important in the context of emerging communities.)
  

We do not agree with your assessment that the proposal is vague, lacks depth and a plan, and has an undefined or indeterminable outcome. You could take a look at the endorsements made by community members who work on diversity issues professionally or in the Wikimedia context or both, and are acquainted with the modalities of bridging different kinds of diversity gaps.

We understand -- correct us if we are mistaken -- that by "depth" you mean a certain level of detail. Unfortunately, we cannot offer you the level of detail you seek for reasons mentioned in our previous set of answers. We elucidate on some of them further:

• If by "yardstick" you mean a precedent, there is none. If by "yardstick", you refer to evaluation and a standard for holding the proposal by, we are going with the tried-and-tested methods of peer review, expert review and community feedback.

• There are no similar programs or modules elsewhere, but we can direct you to some initiatives that come somewhat close:

• A manual on diversity and inclusion in tech spaces, written by the grant's proposers, released last year at the Internet Freedom Festival. (Similar in purpose, not format.)
• Art and Feminism - Organising Kit
• Geek Feminism -- Resources for allies
  

We are addressing a gap that some have recognised, some have articulated, and no one has managed to successfully fill yet. We assure you that the project is right in the crosshairs of the strategic direction the Wikimedia movement aims to take.

It is true that the impact of this project is not immediately quantifiable as is the case with events. (E.g., number of participants, articles created or expanded, edits made). That, by itself, does not trivialise the project’s purported impact or make it disproportionate to the costs.

The absolute budget of the project vis-à-vis events/ conferences: Even in the limited sense of "What ballpark amount does it cost to run an operation like this in a certain place?", we disagree that the comparison with the budget of WikiConference India 16 is useful or fair. WCI '16 cannot be treated as a template or model expenditure.

Wikiconference India 2011 with its 700-odd participants from different parts of the country and the world was conducted on a budget of INR 25 lakh (INR 25,00,000) in what is arguably the most expensive city in India. WCI '16 cost 33 lakh for approximately 250 participants in a Tier-2 city. By your logic, even after accounting for inflation over a five-year period, WCI '16 came at an exorbitant price. We trust that you will agree that two conferences on the same topic held in the same country are far more comparable than a conference and our project. After the resource is developed, if an outreach conference to make use of these resources is held, it would cost a fraction of the entire project, and can always be integrated into events conducted by Wikimedians, WMIN, or CIS-A2K at no additional cost.

If absolute amounts quoted in specific line items of our budget are deemed to be exaggerated, we would be happy to take questions about them. -- Rohini (talk) 17:20, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Comment Thank you Chinmayisk for answering our inquiries. While the answers have certainly helped clear the many confusions, but I still believe that Wikimedia Foundation, being a nonprofit, on-donation run project, they should not provide remunerations for the following posts: Project Lead, Resource Person, Event Co-ordination and Project Manager as it can be easily handled by volunteers. I have seen and have been part of at least one successful Wikimedia project where the above mentioned posts were totally volunteer basis. On the other hand, I agree with you in regards to giving module writers some remuneration for their work and time.

"online safe space is the primary reason to want to use a separate platform" -- I cannot agree here, obvious trolls and people with bad intentions are always marked, blocked and taken care of on our Wikimedia environment (Wikimedia is contributed by one of the most civilised community on the internet) and I feel that any project that is having goals similar to Wikimedia should maintain that their space should be open, not just for a specific group of people, but for everyone to comment, and pose concern. If the proposed online platform is open to all, doesn't matter if the content is only aimed at a specific group of people, I believe that there is no reason for a separate platform. I don't find it plausible to assume Wikimedia is not a safe online platform. If it is not open for all, I am not comfortable with it.

However, if a separate platform is really needed for any other significant reasons, I would AGF and suggest that you get another estimation from a web developer and mention it here in detail. Cheers! Jim Carter (talk) 15:43, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2017

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2017 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community comments period, through 17 October 2017.

The committee's formal review for round 2 2017 begins on 18 October 2017, and grants will be announced 1 December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Frequently Asked Questions

As some of the questions asked on this page by different commentators were the same or overlapping, we (the project proposers) have collated them into a set of frequently asked questions and attempted to answer them:

• The cost doesn’t justify the impact. ("Impact-to-cost ratio is not balanced.")

The impact of the creation and sustenance of a hitherto non-existent resource built from scratch cannot be viewed, quantified, or evaluated like that of a workshop, conference, edit-a-thon, or outreach event. We request the commentators to state what they estimate the "impact" of this project to be and what they believe would be a justifiable and commensurate "cost" for it. It would also be useful if they could speak of what they consider the "value" of this project.

• Why have you planned for full-time engagement instead of involving Wikimedia volunteers?

This project needs tremendous volunteer time and energy. These are the activities that need volunteers:

• The two-day training program
• Translating the community toolkit from English to different Indian languages
• Contextualising the translated text for the respective communities
• Three different community-led training programs
• Community review of the toolkit

The phases for designing, commissioning writers, coordinating, writing, editing, inviting reviews, and responding to reviews and incorporating feedback amount to a sum total of approximately 3,000 human-hours of work. This does not include the time spent in translating and reviewing translations, and organising and conducting events and doing follow-ups. Thus, the output is difficult to achieve on only volunteer energy while ensuring a certain minimum standard of quality in a time-bound way. In an exercise such as this project, an output of bad quality does more harm to the community than not having one at all. We will end up being 'penny-wise and pound-foolish' if the project largely or completely depends on volunteer energy while simultaneously being bound by a timeframe. For this grant application, the timeframe is six months.

The training sessions would also serve as skill-building opportunities for Wikimedia India and CIS-A2K, so that they may continue to engage with individuals, groups and communities in the context of diversity and inclusion.

• Explain how the toolkit is different from Learning Patterns. Why not use the existing Wikimedia infrastructure/ resources instead of starting a new website?

While we love all the support and many, wonderful things Wikimedia infrastructure provides, they will not be enough for the sake of this project.

We will definitely use Learning Patterns to capture different lessons from the project. However, for the specific feedback and review process, we would need a safe platform that also supports different media types. The requisition of an online safe space is the primary reason to want to use a separate platform. It then allows room for everyone to experiment without inhibitions and without fear of a breach of confidentiality or privacy. We will post most of the content back on suitable Wikimedia projects after we have ensured that doing so will not cause harm to the people who have created it.

• Would you provide travel and participation grants to the volunteers attending the training sessions?

Yes, we would cover participation costs for all participants of the training event. These costs include travel to and fro Bangalore [or other locations in India, where we might be able to secure in-kind support for events and workshops -- Rohini (talk)], accommodation for three days, meals, and local conveyance.

The sub-section "Event expenses" in the "Budget" section contains a break-up of the costs. -- Chinmayisk (talk) 17:32, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

• Why have you allocated a portion of the budget to pay contractors and how would you select them?

We would greatly appreciate it if volunteers help us with different tasks, especially those for which we do not possess the requisite skills or know-how. However, in the absence of people willing to do it gratis, we will need to engage paid professionals in order to complete the project within a timeframe while maintaining its quality. Certain parts of the budget have been set aside for them. We plan to obtain the best price quotations possible from them with no compromise on quality.

The process of hiring contractors for these tasks will be:

• Publishing an open call for contractors to carry out specific tasks, such as visualisations/ graphics design, podcast creation, and videography and video editing.
• Requesting portfolios and price quotations from those who respond to the call. We will ensure that we get a minimum of three quotations.
• Choosing the best bid, based on a combination of factors (quality assurance, cost, turnaround time, et cetera). -- Rohini (talk) 17:59, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Notification on Marathi Wikipedia Village Pump with translation

The public notification about this proposal being up for community review was deleted by sysop and bureaucrat User: Mahitgar. For greater transparency, we are reproducing it verbatim along with the literal English translation.

अधिसूचना: नवीनतम फेरीमध्ये प्रकल्पासाठी अनुदानाचा अर्ज
सदस्य: Chinmayisk आणि मी जाहिर करत आहोत की आमचा प्रकल्पासाठी अनुदानाचा अर्ज आढाव्याची प्राथमिक फेरी पार करुन समुदायाद्वारे पुनरावलोकनाच्या फेरीत पोचला आहे. प्रस्तावित प्रकल्पाचे नाव "कम्युनिटी टूलकिट फॉर ग्रेटर डायव्हर्सिटी" ("अधिक विविधतेसाठी सामुदायिक साधनसंच") असे आहे: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Chinmayisk/Community_toolkit_for_Greater_Diversity

पुनरावलोकन करण्याची शेवटची तारीख १७ ऑक्टोबर, २०१७ आहे. आपल्या टिप्पण्या आणि अभिप्राय आम्ही चर्चा पृष्ठावर आमंत्रित करत आहोत: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:Project/Chinmayisk/Community_toolkit_for_Greater_Diversity

आपल्याला प्रकल्प आवडला असेल तर त्याचे समर्थन आपण एंडोर्समेंट विभागात करु शकता: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Chinmayisk/Community_toolkit_for_Greater_Diversity#Endorsements आपण प्रकल्पासाठी स्वयंसेवक म्हणून काम करू इच्छित असल्यास मला ईमेल करा किंवा संदेश पाठवा. धन्यवाद! -- Rohini (चर्चा) १९:५१, ७ ऑक्टोबर २०१७ (IST)

Literal translation to English
User: Chinmayisk and I announce that our application for a grant for our proposed project titled “Community toolkit for greater diversity” has cleared the preliminary round of review: [8]

It is now open for community review till October 17, 2017. We invite your comments and feedback on the Discussion page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:Project/Chinmayisk/Community_toolkit_for_Greater_Diversity

If you like the project, you could support it in the Endorsements section (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Chinmayisk/Community_toolkit_for_Greater_Diversity#Endorsements).

If you would like to volunteer with the project, please email me or send me a message. Thank you!

-- Rohini (talk) 10:54, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

I find this absolutely unacceptable. Raystorm (talk) 19:19, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Questions from Superzerocool

Hi @Chinmayisk and Rohini:, nice to read your proposal. I have some questions and thoughts about your application:

1. I understand the need about hiring staff but I don't figure out how they will collaborate with the project, Can you write up about their responsibilities in the develop of your project?
2. Why you need a website?, What is the main goal of it?.
3. You have assigned a lot of money to document the events, What's the outcome or goal or objective associated?
4. How do you will use the equipment after the grant ends?

Regards Superzerocool (talk) 18:13, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Hello @Superzerocool:, we have answered the questions in the order in which you asked them:

• Responsibilities

Project Lead: Module ideation (text, video and podcast), Drawing up the structure and design of the toolkit, Hiring module writers and other contractual personnel, Commissioning modules, Co-writing modules, Overseeing the feedback and review process, Maintaining the website (in the event that we don’t find volunteers for it), Designing the training event, Identifying potential reviewers and domain experts and seeking feedback/ reviews from them, Supervising setting up of the website, Identifying participants for the training event and contacting them.

Resource Person 1: Module ideation (text, video and podcast), Drafting module research methodology, Drawing up the structure and design of the toolkit, Identifying contractors and holding meetings with them for the bidding process, Identifying module writers, Contracting with module writers and other contractual personnel, Co-writing at least one module, Copy editing modules in coordination with the Project Lead and module writers, Speaking at the training event, Identifying participants for the training event and contacting them, Identifying Wikimedians, reviewers and domain experts for the feedback and review process and contacting them.

Project Manager: Planning the training events, Logistics for the events, Filing reports, Management of deadlines and deliverables, Periodic project review, Setting up meetings for project review.

• We will use Learning Patterns to capture different lessons from the project as well as the Outreach Dashboard. However, for the specific feedback and review process, we would need a safe space that also supports different media types. The requisition of an online safe space is the primary reason to want to use a separate platform. It then allows room for everyone to experiment without inhibitions and without fear of a breach of confidentiality or privacy. We will post most of the content back on suitable Wikimedia projects after we have ensured that doing so will not cause harm to the people who have created it.
  

During the feedback and review process, a separate website would encourage the direct participation of those who do not have experience with editing wikis. It would also give us more control over the content and activity on the website than a Wikimedia project wiki. In light of the activity on the proposal’s Discussion page in the past few weeks and our experiences in general, we anticipate that the project will get more unconstructive attention. A separate platform would give us more power to support the people who would work on this project.

• We have not allocated any budget to document the event(s). Documentation of the event(s) will be done through written notes, which will be a part of the facilitator’s job. Except for INR 50,000 allocated for purchasing equipment, the Documentation budget is meant for the designing, writing, creating and editing the modules.

• We intend to purchase equipment worth INR 50,000. This includes audio recorders, portable hard drives and a projector. After the project is over, it will be deposited with the Centre for Internet and Society in Bengaluru to be used as a community asset by Wikimedians. Moreover, this proposal is for the incubatory phase of the project. We hope that once this phase ends, we would use the equipment for subsequent phases, along with CIS-A2K and the volunteer communities.

-- Rohini (talk) 18:43, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

@Rohini: thanks for your answers. About (3) -Documentation-, I have see the title of the section in your budget where you request money for shot videos. Superzerocool (talk) 18:53, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

@Superzerocool: We do not intend to buy cameras or video editing equipment with the money. We will seek volunteers from the community to shoot and edit videos. If we do not get any volunteers who will be able to complete the work in time and with quality assurance, we will contract with professional videographers and video editors, who would be expected to bring their own equipment and cameras. -- Rohini (talk) 19:22, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

@Rohini: Thanks for clarifying this point. Superzerocool (talk) 19:27, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

References

I see this proposal uses some severely outdated sources, such as one blog post from 2012. I encourage you to use the best resources available, e.g. starting at Research:Gender gap. --Nemo 11:48, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Concrete deliverables

I see extremely generic word "toolkit" repeated various times but I have a hard time understanding what this would be. Perhaps some document or text, presumably on wiki pages, to instruct users about things? I see that under "there is a serious void of material" there is a list of 3 criteria you judged existing materials against, but it would good to have a bibliography or directory or other to understand what existing materials you have actually considered, so that it's clearer what you learned from them and what your novel contribution would be. It might also be that you missed some good resource which is existing and "only" needs to be localised (criteria 2 and 3). --Nemo 11:50, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Comments from WMF

Hello all,

I am writing in my capacity as a senior manager on the Community Resources team. At the Foundation, we believe that the Wikimedia movement should be safe and welcoming for all contributors and volunteers. We believe that Wikimedia processes, policies, and actions should be transparent whenever possible and avoid conflicts of interest.

To achieve these values, the Wikimedia Foundation Community Resources Department uses participatory grantmaking that is a collaboration between grantees, Foundation staff, volunteer committees, and Wikimedians from across the globe. Decisions about which proposals to fund are made on public wikis and in cooperation with volunteers and affiliates.

Grantmaking committee members, made up of contributors from different language Wikipedia and sister projects and including volunteer participants from around the world, are the primary advisors and decision-makers within our grants programs.

We are posting here in regard to community governance issues raised on this page in relation to the policy recently instituted on Marathi Wikipedia. We want to emphasize that the applicants for this grant proposal notified the community on Marathi Wikipedia (as well as other communities) as a requirement of the grants process. The purpose of the requirement is to ensure that the community has a chance to be aware of the application and express concerns or support for it.

We have decided to archive the section regarding the proposed new policy on Marathi Wikipedia as it distracts from the committee’s review of the substance of the proposal and does not provide any relevant feedback on the merits of the proposal. You can see the archived discussion here.

Best, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 21:05, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

I am writing in my capacity as a Manager on the Wikimedia Foundation Support and Safety team. Part of our work is to note issues of concern in communities and attempt to provide support. Just to add to AWang's note above:

The Wikimedia Foundation is committed to supporting the health of Wikimedia communities around the world. We are dedicated to providing a respectful, transparent, and harassment-free experience in the Meta-wiki Grants namespace for everyone. Wikimedia Foundation grantmaking follows specific processes to support these specific goals.

We want to confirm that the applicants for this grant proposal followed the requirements of the grants process when notifying the community on Marathi Wikipedia (as well as other communities).

We appreciate and support the community processes and expectations that make the Wikimedia Foundation wikis a safe and welcoming place for all contributors. Patrick Earley (WMF) (talk) 15:35, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Community toolkit for Greater Diversity

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?	7.4
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	5.8
(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?	5.8
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	5.6
Additional comments from the Committee: It has some ideas aligned with Wikimedia objectives. The project could impact positively in the local Wikipedia editors and it can improve the content in other languages than English. There are few ways to adapt to other countries or communities, but it may fit in the local community. Fits with strategic priority of achieving knowledge equity. There is definite potential for online impact as the toolkit is designed for adaptation and action. Like the idea of having a support group to help with community implementation and use of the toolkit. Yes, the project is very aligned to the strategic priorities (especially strategy 2030). In the light of several conversations happening around harassment, safety and support, this project will give new insights on how gender (and its intersection with caste and socioeconomic status) works in a global south country like India. The training modules and toolkits we have now are very aligned to the Global North, and does not encompass the complex situations of several regions in Asia. This project will be the starting point to understanding diversity in the Indian context. The project is unlikely to be sustained without the active participation of the grantees after the project period is over. the project has elements of strategic priorities but is not sufficiently justified. Very high impact potential. There are few successful initiatives targeting marginalised groups, this can be a good step towards more diversity which is among our strategic goals. Isn't the most innovative way to develop a project, but there are many previous project -in other communities- with some success after their execution. I see few risks related with local (wikipedian) community, so,in all project there are the same issues. The success is well aimed to be measured, but I don't feel comfortable using sheet sign-up forms to take metrics. Anyways, the metrics seems realistic and easy to take. While we see a fair number of proposals related to bias and inequity, this is the first one I know of that proposes a manual or modules that can be referenced by organizers and editors. As I see it, the big risk here is that the toolkit is not used - but the grantees are aware of this and have planned for ways to facilitate localization efforts (with translation, the support group, etc.). The iteration of this project will be benefited by the systemic bias toolkit and harassment training module. The outcome is meaningful, but the quality of outcome is hard to measure, at least in the short term. The measures of success do not give details about quality of content, which makes it difficult to weigh the benefits v/s risk. One potential risk is that some volunteers with good standing in the community may choose to not co-operate with the project, in which case substantial amount of data cannot be recorded. there are no clearly defined measures for the success of the project. there are no clear differences with the Learning Patterns and why we should create new toolkit instead of developing the existing system. Lacks clear justification for new web site. The solution (toolkits) is not innovative, but some ideas in toolkits can be innovative. Risks are rather high, but so will be impact if the project works well. There are a lot of tasks to do, this could be a problem if it isn't clear the owner of the task in the main group (or paid staff). The budget seems well aligned with the tasks and activities to do and the amount to paid to staff and contractors, but I don't understand how the equipment will be used after the grant ends. The grantees seems a long-time editors in Wikipedia but with a low number of edits, so I could think about a lack of participation in the local communities, this could be a problem. Project team has necessary skill set, including background in diversity and inclusion work, wiki organizing experience, and community ties. I think that the project can be accomplished in reasonable time. The budget is on the higher side, even for a 12 month project. The budget breakdown is not quite comprehensive, and more clarity is needed to know how they plan to travel. The main participants have a lot of experience in this area. Furthermore, their experience is specific to Wikimedia projects and other free/open platforms. the budget needs much clearer presentation. Also, information about the amounts in dollars would be of great help to the committee. The cost doesn’t seem to justify the impact. the proposer has a certain tech. knowledge and an earlier history of work It is feasible and participants have relevant experience. The budget is a bit too high. I don't see a strong support of the proposal, but there is a need to be solved. The target community is well defined. Project supports diversity, not only in its intent and proposed deliverables, but its approach to the work. There is support from individuals who work in equity/diversity. There happens to be some active editors who are not quite welcoming of this project (see comments on talk page). It is unsure if they will extend cooperation for this project. The project supports diversity in multiple levels : gender and its intersections in a global south country. there is no clear support from the wider community for this project. The project is diversity-oriented, it is well supported by people working on this topic, but might be less supported by the Indian community I support at this time, but will post some questions in the talkpage. I recommend fund it because there are few successful projects in hindi languages and this could be a new focus to reach new editors and opportunities. I don't feel comfortable about the equipment, the excess of personnel to do the project and documentation. Support funding but also don’t fully get the purpose of building a separate website/platform and need more info on that The budget appears to be high. It will be good to consider revising the operational overhead, travel expenses and main project lead. I would support funding for all project and toolkit development work, but would suggest reducing staff (don't think it takes 2 people full time for an event with 20 attendees, project manager/lead, lead/event coordinator and resource person/writers are partially redundant), equipment and website (check with CIS if some resources can be used) and possibly conferences (release funds only if a conference is identified and participation accepted)

This proposal has been recommended for due diligence review.

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal and recommended it for due diligence review. This means that a majority of the committee reviewers favorably assessed this proposal and have requested further investigation by Wikimedia Foundation staff.

Next steps:

1. Aggregated committee comments from the committee are posted above. Note that these comments may vary, or even contradict each other, since they reflect the conclusions of multiple individual committee members who independently reviewed this proposal. We recommend that you review all the feedback and post any responses, clarifications or questions on this talk page.
2. Following due diligence review, a final funding decision will be announced on Thursday, May 27, 2021.

Questions? Contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

Response to Aggregated feedback from the committee for Community toolkit for Greater Diversity

Thank you for your review and all your comments. The team is currently travelling in bad network areas we will write a response on 27th Nov -Chinmayisk (talk) 16:21, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

We thank the committee for its patience with this delayed response and its in-depth review and encouraging comments on the project. We have distilled distinct points in the review below and attempted to reply to them.

Budget has not been presented clearly. Also, it should be in USD values.

The form of the budget has been modified into a table and we have mentioned USD equivalents of items budgeted in INR.

Why is the website needed?

We have already addressed this question during the community review phase in the FAQ section under "Explain how the toolkit is different from Learning Patterns. Why not use the existing Wikimedia infrastructure/ resources instead of starting a new website?"

What will happen to the equipment after the project is over?

We have already replied to this question during the community review phase in the section Questions from Superzerocool. ("How will you use the equipment after the grant ends?")

Apparent redundancy of tasks performed by staff/ excess staff. Over-budgeting for staff salaries.

The tasks are not redundant but distributed between different members of the staff. As there is no redundancy, there is no excess staff. The budgeted salaries are much lower than the par-for-the-course amounts charged for the corresponding tasks for the specified period of time. The project’s proposers primarily function in the non-profit section in their professional capacity and charge a higher amount for the same work rendered as professional services. The salaries in the budget have been watered down as the proposal is that of a community grant.

Working on issues of diversity and inclusion, especially in the face of opposition from certain quarters, is very stressful. From our previous experiences, this work has borne an effect on our physical and mental health. Addressing those health issues comes as an extra cost to all of us involved. The well-being of the team is not something we are willing to compromise on. Thus, without a certain minimum pay, this work would be unfair labour.

As for salaries allocated for event coordination, the event comprising 20 participants requires the following efforts:

• Identify and invite community members to the event
• Arrange for travel, accommodation and related logistics for all participants. Address the needs of participants for additional support, such as childcare facilities for women participants or disability support.
• Arrange for a venue and set it up.
• Logistics for meals.
• Note-taking during the event as photo, audio and video recording would be prohibited in the interest of the privacy of participants and organisers.
• Finding and paying interpreter(s) for the event in the case of participants not well-versed with the English language.
• Documentation of lessons and the proceedings of the event. Writing an event report.

Considering that only one of the team members is being paid for 6 months and the other is not being paid for the coordination of the event, it is justifiable to budget for people helping with the event. Of course, if we manage to get volunteers to run the event we do not need this budget. However, in light of the fact that the event involves a lot of work we believe, as a team, we should have fair pay for the project.

Stiff opposition to the project from some community members and some “active” editors. The opposition may cause the output to not be accepted.

Quite the contrary, we believe that the opposition by certain members of the community on this Discussion Page demonstrates that how misunderstood our work is. By extension, it demonstrates how our work is needed. We also believe that these voices are not representative of the community regardless of how active these editors are or how long they have been editing. It is, we believe, a vocal minority overshadowing a silent majority. Harassment and/or coercion by long-standing editors who are in a position of power in the community is a well-documented problem in the Wikimedia context. From private communication with some community members, we understand that they appreciate and welcome the initiate but have been dithering from expressing their views and support publicly, especially on wiki. Presumably, the reason is fear of bullying and retributive action by these “active” editors.

Measures of success are not clearly defined or definable. / “The success is well aimed to be measured, but I don't feel comfortable using sheet sign-up forms to take metrics. Anyways, the metrics seems realistic and easy to take.”

As these views from the committee contradict each other, we would prefer to not reply to either of them. We have already addressed the question of the quality of content through the process of peer reviews and community reviews.

Is there a sustainability plan after the incubatory project is over?

We will continue to engage with the community with respect to this project after the grant period is over. However, our future work would depend on outcomes of the incubatory phase, support and the availability of funding to continue the work. Nevertheless, CIS aims to use our deliverable in the course of its work.
--Chinmayisk (talk) 06:34, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Round 2 2017 decision

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for a Project Grant.

WMF has approved partial funding for this project, in accordance with the committee's recommendation. This project is funded with $20,000

Comments regarding this decision:
The committee recognizes the unique skills that this team brings to this important project and is glad to fund this pilot. However, given that it is a pilot, the committee has elected to fund the design phase in full, but prefers to see a smaller, scaled back version of the offline training and dissemination for this round of funding. Once the effectiveness of the toolkit has been demonstrated through a scaled down implementation phase, the committee would be glad to support a larger scale distribution of the training. During your orientation, more details of how this might look can be discussed.

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
2. Review the information for grantees.
3. Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
4. Start work on your project!

Upcoming changes to Wikimedia Foundation Grants

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 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.

Queries

I will try my best to expand on this:--

• Project Idea
  • We define “underrepresented demographics” as women, gender minorities, lower castes, and non-heterosexuals in or from India.
    • Hmm...I won't certainly doubt the finding.Expected.
  • Our goal is to create a community resource to enable editors to work towards greater inclusion and diversity....
    • Consider me skeptical but I'm always doubtful about the ultimate-outcomes of these greater-diversity measures.
    • Most of these buzz-words emanate from those folks, who have minimal editorial experience at WP and almost-always, these efforts culminate in some messes, at-least in the Indian/African Circles.But, then again Women in Red, which works on a related principle fares quite/very well.
• Project goals
  • identifying different axes of privilege (the Indian context of class, caste, and gender and how it plays out on Wikipedia)
    • This is a bad idea, if this identification affects WP live-time and the probable-remedies to the idea, even worser.
    • A policy-addition was executed very recently which states research projects that are disruptive to the community or which negatively affect articles—even temporarily—are not allowed and can result in loss of editing privileges
    • Typically, my experience says that whenever a newbie visits the teahouse and says I'm a Dalit and my edits are reverted by X,Y,Z-bunch of upper-caste morons..., it is almost always equivalent to I'm trying to push my own unsourced/illsourced POV and someone has reverted my mess only to follow up with a series of warnings on my t/p. Anybody venturing on such goals at en-wiki will likely be blocked for attempting to right great wrongs.
      • So, be careful about your steps.
  • using wikitools to identify content gaps on Wikipedia and their connection with demographics underrepresented on Wikipedia
    • Hmm..Generate a LM, so as to train others to use wiki-tools to scrape out areas of disproportionate representation.Good.
      • Now, Caste-related-topics and BLPs are two areas, which will be the most likely answers, from the deomographic perspective of lower-castes.
  • organizing an event with a group of volunteers from various Indian language communities
    • Hmm..This looks a bit hazy to me.Am I correct in assuming that the volunteers will be choosen in a demographically-biased manner?
      • Somehow or the other, these demography-biased-editathons seems to generate the most problematic content.
      • NPOV and ideas about RS are typically non-existent in the minds of the participants, who are probably too mesmerized at the idea of publicising their tales, irrespective of encyclopedic value et al on one of the most-viewed website in the world.
        • Inclusion/diversity is important but it shall not be at the cost of quality.
  • Facilitate the creation of safe spaces by setting up a support group for all people engaged in initiatives to bridge diversity gaps on Wikimedia projects.
    • Is this the neo Gender-Gate-Task-Force? That was a disaster and generally these tend to be ones.
• Project impact
  • Number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects
    • How do you measure improved? On a side-note, pages created is a rubbish measure.
      • The AN thread and several community-dicussions decided that DHM was a pathetic waste of community time and resources.
      • In contrast, a WMF staff held it to be quite successful.
        • Where do you stand, as to your evaluation of DHM?
• Project plan
  • In the event that we do not succeed in finding a collaborator who fits all three criteria (working with an "underrepresented demographic" in South Asia, committed to openness, and acquainted or highly experienced with the Wikimedia projects), we would choose one who fits at least one criterion and jointly create the modules with them.
    • Gives me some hope, at-least:)
    • But, it may be prudential to note that DLM had got 2 long-term-volunteer-editors as some sort of co-ords/mentors, who were also WMF staffs, but with zero experience in the concerned editing-field.As usual, they messed it up and quite badly at that.
      • In that case, it's important to recruit editors, who have working-experience in the areas of disproportionate-representation.
        • For an example, both the areas of BLPs and Castesare governed by Community Sanctions and ArbCom Discretionary Sanctions, which IMO makes it a much hostile area for a newbie to edit.
        • Sourcing requirements are heavily complex and there's a host of other rules and ropes, which are pretty much alien to even established uninvolved editors.
          • In that case, will you look for topic-area-experienced collaborators?
  • We will explicitly seek feedback from the underrepresented demographics and publicly document the responses. This feedback will be sought via our networks, relevant mailing lists of civil society groups and of communities committed to openness.
    • I will fairly expect that many of these groups will raise their voice in unison against our long-established editorial-practices in the area, as a hindrance to editor-recruitment.
      • In that case, what is the role of the WP editorial community as to the development of the LM?
• Overall
  • Do you think your development of LM can not only be able to increase diversity amongst the Wikipedian-editorial-community but also manage to avoid the very-familar problems that have plagued these type of projects/ventures?
    • It may be worth noting that the fulfillment of the 2nd will be possible iff, you are willing to develop LMs in a manner that will not only resonate with the under-represented demographics but also with the long-standing WP community, which means some necessary implementation of quality-control measures.
      • Where do you stand?

That's the set of queries/gen. observations from my end.Yeah, I'm probably overtly pessimistic but I will look forward your replies/takes on the afore-discussed issues! Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 15:09, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Firstly, we urge you, like we have urged other community members on this page, to not draw comparisons with specific experiences you may have had with other projects or activities. This is a greenfield project, based on a methodology different from previous ones, and executed by a different set of people. Viewing it from the lens of other, successful or failed projects would be unfair to us and not necessarily in line with WP: AGF.

Secondly, some of your observations and questions are based on incorrect assumptions or are outside the purview of this grant proposal. Some are opinions and do not contribute to our understanding of what we could do to allay your apprehensions. In light of the fact that the community review period for the grant proposal is over and a partial grant has already been sanctioned, we are only replying to the questions. As for your opinions, we recognise that you are entitled to them and do not wish to dispute them, especially on an avenue like a (closed) grant proposal.

• This project is meant for existing and preferably experienced editors and not novices. It is your assumption that we would involve editors with little or no experience.
• We do not plan to conduct edit-a-thons under this project. The grant proposal does not mention edit-a-thons at all.
• We do not intend to contravene any policies of any Wikimedia project nor do we encourage others to do so.
• Our activities do not involve real-time editing of articles as in an edit-a-thon or outreach workshop.

• “Am I correct in assuming that the volunteers will be choosen in a demographically-biased manner?”: In keeping with the goals of this project, the selection of volunteers will be balanced across different target demographic groups, which include diversity of language, gender, sexuality and, yes, caste.

• “Will you look for topic-area-experienced collaborators?”: Yes.

• “Is this the neo Gender-Gate-Task-Force?”: No, we do not claim to be any such body, group or activity.

• “I will fairly expect that many of these groups will raise their voice in unison against our long-established editorial-practices in the area, as a hindrance to editor recruitment. In that case, what is the role of the WP editorial community as to the development of the LM?”:

• All responses and feedback will be publicly documented. All learning modules will be published for community review. The role of the editor community would be no different than the standard role it plays in the public review of grant outputs and outcomes.

• As stated earlier, we do not intend to violate any policies.

• There is due process for changing policies; those who object to existing policies are free to initiate the process. Our aim is not to create a pressure group for policy change, as your comments seem to indicate.

• “Where do you stand, as to your evaluation of DHM?”: This question is outside the ambit of the community review of grant proposals. Like you, we are volunteers and members of the community. We have applied for and received the grant in that capacity. Our accountability in this matter is restricted to this grant. We have already stated that this is grant is not associated with DHM or its methodology. If you are seeking our general opinion on Dalit History Month, this page is not the avenue to do so.
• “How do you measure improved? On a side-note, pages created is a rubbish measure.”: By “improved” we mean the number of articles expanded and the word count / images/ videos contributed to each article. “Pages created” refers to the new articles created or new images or other media uploaded.
• “Do you think your development of LM can not only be able to increase diversity amongst the Wikipedian-editorial-community but also manage to avoid the very-familar problems that have plagued these type of projects/ ventures?”: We hope that we have answered your questions.

-- Rohini (talk) 13:06, 8 March 2018 (UTC) (On behalf of the project team)

Coming back

after a year or so, what are the final results of Grants:Project/Chinmayisk/Community toolkit for Greater Diversity? I searched a lot but did not seem to find anything. Some help would be appreciated. Just noting, that the last monthly updates was disseminated in September' 18 .......

At any case, I would like to have a few of my queries answered:-

2. You seem to have done the proposed workshop in October at Goa and I would be interested to know about how the invitees were chosen. Per the grant proposal goal (#2.3) and 2nd outcome (during the project), they ought to have been Wikipedia volunteers and 20 in numerical strength (Vide we will conduct a training and sensitisation program for around 20 Wikipedia volunteers active on initiatives geared towards addressing diversity gaps.....Around 20 members from different Indian Wikimedia communities will be invited to it.). Thus, I would like their SUL wikimedia user-name mentioned beside their names and more importantly about the reasons that led the strength to get (approx.) halved to 9.

4. Two Wikimedia users (Balogic and Bhallpoorva) self-selected(??) themselves as volunteers and you reached out to them. I do not note any further on-wiki correspondence. What role (if any) did they perform?

6. You wrote to Jim over the t/p that contextualising content for Wikimedia spaces will be done by experienced editors who will share this knowledge through their review of the content. Can you provide the user-name of the collaborators; in this part. locus?

8. Incidentally, your grant proposal mentioned that you will solicit feedback from various experienced community members (and also, issue a public call for community review of the modules once we publish them and publicly document the responses as well as explicitly seek feedback from the underrepresented demographics and publicly document the responses) about the draft-toolkit prior to inviting the 20 people for the workshop. Where, when and how did that happen? Please provide links to the venues, where they were advertised for potential feedback. And, please point to the venues, where you have documented the responses in a public fashion.

   AFAIS, the first mention of experienced community members is w.r.t the Wikimedia community. On a side-note, as indicated at your grants-proposal page, you were well-aware of existence of the India-Project-Notice-Board over en.wiki and other relevant noticeboards/village-pumps over other wikis. Unless the global-contribution-logs of both of you are playing tricks on me, I don't see a single post from you/Chinmayi along the course of the year over any Wikimedia wiki. I managed to find this single e-mail over Wikimedia-India-internal list from you and that's the sole stuff. So, I am very averse to buying ...tried our best to recruit module writers from the Wikimedia community in India and issued public calls..... And, it might be prudential to note that the mailing-lists are almost perpetually non-used now-a-days except by a self-selected few (this's a broader wiki-trend of moving towards the conduct of more transparent on-wiki business and a culture where any off-the-scenes stuff is frowned upon) and I can bet that a huge majority of the active editorial community of the Indic-Wiki-Project does not bother any about the mailing-list or even knows about it being existent.

10. You were also supposed to create a mailing-list to introspect and analyse the held workshop which was to later serve as a support group for all Indic Wikimedians working on the topic. (Vide We will create a mailing list to share the progress and lessons. This list will also serve as a forum for continuing discourse on the topic.) Can you please point me to the mailing list (and the thread-archives, it has generated till-date)? What's the criterion of joining these lists? I also got a link to this page (likely about the same stuff) which is blank.

12. This list of module-topics looks good but that's a blue-print. Now, since the workshop had already used these stuff as well as the CT(s) (per the orig. proposal vide We will conduct a program to disseminate our lessons and insights from the exercise of creating the community toolkit as well as to impart training on how to use the toolkit.) and you have already agreed to release it under a CC license, can you please upload them over Commons or point me to the uploads (if done)? Can you kindly upload the translated versions (vide We will translate our learning modules into at least two Indian languages.) too? I note that the tentative-publication date of the modules was 12 September, 2018.

14. Can you please upload the complementary podcasts and videos to Commons, too? (Vide The modules will be in the form of text articles, podcasts, and videos......The resource will be CC-licensed, publicly available, and subject to review by the community)

16. You were also supposed to create a website in the course of the grant (vide We will create an open platform, such as a FOSS-based website, for practitioners of the community toolkit to share their stories and experiences with onboarding new editors from diverse backgrounds, and their successes and failures during this process......website that comprises the community toolkit and participants’ stories and experiences of working on diversity issues after attending the workshop; can you please provide the link to the same? Since the website already contains CTs; that means you can choose to not answer Q6.

18. Can you kindly list the conferences that were participated by you and the transcripts et al of any talks et al that your delivered? (Vide We aim to apply to speak at conferences with these themes.) Per the grant-proposal-page, 3 international trips and 4 domestic trips (excluding Wikimania, for which you seem to have availed a separate channel of fund) were supposed to be attended.

    Incidentally, CIAS (who has mentioned your grant in a blog-post and the Goa-event) and is a self-declared event-partner mention yours' attending of RightsCon, 18 but that doesn't seem to be any linked to this grant. Or, I may be wrong.

20. Do you know of any existing wiki-tool(s); specifically coded to help fight these biases? How acquainted are you with the variety of tools available at ToolForge (hint:check them)?

22. The participants of that workshop are expected to hold atleast 3 trainings in their respective communities. Can you please point me to such efforts and the relevant metrics? That it mentions supposed registrations over Outreach Dashboard; I scanned across the multitude of entries but did not come across anything relevant. I might have missed it too; amidst the monstrous list and a link will be quite appreciated.

24. Can you please point to the status of the establishment of the support-groups who will facilitate creation of safe spaces and all that, as claimed in your proposal? (Vide Facilitate the creation of safe spaces by setting up a support group for all people engaged in initiatives to bridge diversity gaps on Wikimedia projects.) How's they are doing?

26. I heard from an acquaintance that you have given some presentation at Wikimania about this issue. Can you link to the videos (if available) or the slides or the transcript, as such?

28. Now, the most interesting stuff that I came across in the regard of the grant is this report which though interesting; seems to be a one-sided narrative, at-least about the Dalit issue, to my eyes. As much as I may believe that listening to them is quite-needed (we cannot ever speak for them), do you feel that there's any possibility that they may not be the sole harbingers of truth or that we, the volunteer Wikimedians (who have helped Wikipedia reach this fame) might not be right-wing-trolls and thus, might possess something worthy to rebut?

    This might be a good read.

30. Can you provide a list of people (who were interviewed in the process for creating literature-review) including the transcripts of those interviews. Also, how did you choose the interviewees? Feel free to hide the real names, (if you feel that I intend to go after them or something like that) and instead provide minimal designations like (1):-a participant at DHM, (2):-an editathon coordinator over these areas, (3):-a community-leader et al. Or use machine-jumble, which is the best.

32. About 9 months back, I asked you to comment on the broader locus of DHM and report whatever your thoughts were. You might believe that we ought to have dealt in some different/nuanced manner or that we fucked up entirely and lost contributors or that in light of our existing policies, our actions were correct but our wiki-policies needs to be changed into being more inclusive or whatever the heck. You responded to me by remarking that ....this is grant is not associated with DHM or its methodology.... and thus, refused to provide any opinion on it's locus. Months later, I discover that you are using that very locus to develop the background stuff of your modules. In my opinion, this's pathetic and does not bears well as to placing trust in your words. How do you explain that?

34. A meta-question. Can you elucidate your approach to literature review esp. the themes? Did you get answer to all your queries? Why is the age of the research cited , so old? (Wikipedia and gender gap is a hot topic and there's an abundance of high-quality sources from recent past. Also, the blog entry is from 2012, 7 years ago which is an eternity in Wiki-era.)

36. Another meta-question. In response to Jim's question about safe-space; you pointed to our article over en-wiki. That article contains quite a lot of criticism about the concept and has a detailed section about it (though with a few rubbish sources). In particular; if you search the academic corpus of work in this regard; prominent rationales against safe-spaces is that it leads to the build-up of echo-chambers, hampers free discourse and facilitates a retreat of individuals from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own. What's your comment(s) in the regard and how do you tackle that? Esp. that you had written In light of the activity on the proposal’s Discussion page in the past few weeks and our experiences in general, ......we anticipate that the project will get more unconstructive attention. A separate platform would give us more power to support the people who would work on this project.

38. You wrote that the grant also aimed to design strategies to respond to deletionism which is intended to subvert the presence and participation of the underrepresented demographics. How it is not extreme bad faith to not assume that the editors who are proposing contents for deletion are doing it not out of a desire to improve (quality-control) the encyclopedia? You are free to say that deletion-ism does hampers the presence and participation of the underrepresented demographics, (which is blindly obvious) but given that you self-proclaim to have an en-4 proficiency; you ought to know the meaning and motives emphasised by the usage of the word-intended. Clarify, kindly.

40. I also note that the due-date for the final report has elapsed 3 days back but AFAIS, you are yet to write one. When do you plan to submit that?

Thanks, in advance. Please write the answers in the relevant area. Additional comments are immensely welcome, below this line.Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 11:16, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

• @Winged Blades of Godric: Thank you for your continued interest in and enthusiasm about the project. The Project Lead and the Internal Project Advisor, that is, half of our 4-member team, are unavailable as of this week. The Project Lead has been travelling in low-network areas, where she cannot access the set of questions you have posted. We need roughly a week's time for her to come back online, after which we will post replies to your questions and also update the reportage of the project. -- Rohini (talk) 10:24, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
  

@Rohini: Thanks, that's fine. If you don't mind replying to a single query, are you able to note whether any of those 3 proposed training(s) (Qs. 10) have already happened? Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 10:38, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Winged Blades of Godric, I ask that you allow the team the reasonable amount of time requested to respond to these questions. Kind regards, --Marti (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Winged Blades of Godric and Rohini, I have consulted with our Trust & Safety staff about this post, and they have suggested I set the expectation that the grantees have the option to provide answers to whichever of these questions they would prefer in a different manner as part of the project report. So, I want to clarify that it is not the expectation of the Wikimedia Foundation that you must answer now solely at Godric’s request--though of course, you are welcome to do so. Should you prefer, however, it is also perfectly acceptable to point to your report for answers to whichever questions might benefit from more time.

Winged Blades of Godric, as posted already elsewhere, I remind you again to abide by the Friendly space policies.

Thanks, all!

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Pretty irrational points. If someone points me to a more-detailed project report (or whatever the heck), why am I to object? Or is it some bureaucratic way of saying that they might feel free to not answer these questions, which is obviously fine too. Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 18:18, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Also, Marti this is not an in-person-event to abide by FSP. Read the policies, that you link to. Regards, Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 12:35, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Please note that a new notice has been put up on this page and abide by that. --CSteigenberger (WMF) (talk) 10:12, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

@CSteigenberger (WMF):-Please note that your colleague has chosen to ignore a request for helping out. 13:23, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

New home for the project

The learning modules and allied material from the Community Toolkit for Greater Diversity project were housed at a dedicated website for the project https://wikiinclusivity.in/ at the time of the project launch in February 2019. However, this website has been down for about a year.

In order to ensure that the content created under the project remains publicly and freely accessible, the team is in the process of moving the learning modules and allied content to Wikimedia projects. They are available at the Commons Category: Community Toolkit for Greater Diversity.

This is not a fresh publication. The modules have been changed into the PDF format and re-homed from the website to the Commons without any substantive changes to their content.

An archived version of the project website from March 2019 is available here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210119203810/https://wikiinclusivity.in/

Please contact me with your queries. -- Rohini (talk) 15:01, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Meta Wikimedia project page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Toolkit_For_Greater_Diversity. -- Rohini (talk) 09:37, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Contact email address no longer being monitored

The contact email address mentioned on the grant proposal page (wikiinclusivity@protonmail.com) is no longer being monitored by anyone on the team. For private communication regarding the project, we suggest that you contact one of the grantees. The project ran from 2018 to February 2019, and is no longer being funded. So the project team/ individual grantees can respond to queries only in a volunteer capacity. For public communication, do use the Discussion page on the Commons. -- Rohini (talk) 15:05, 8 January 2023 (UTC)