Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Open Labs Hackerspace - Wiki Loves Maps (Albania)

Hi ElioQoshi Thank you for this grant request. It sounds like an interesting project and we are excited that you are doing a series of events! We are happy to support the project, but have two comments:

1. We do not typically pay for professional photographers to documents events and have found that community members are able to do this sufficiently.
2. Can volunteers use smart phones to obtain the geo coordinates? Having only one tablet to capture coordinates may make logistics challenging. We also typically only fund equipment for Wikimedia affiliates.

Once we have your responses and corresponding changes to the budget we can go ahead and approve. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Hey Alex Wang (WMF), thanksǃ Addressing your 2 pointsː

1)We have noticed from various events we hold, such as Wikipedia Weekend, that documentation promotes the event and helps with its post-mortem. Additionally, most volunteers are students and own low-end cameras (and smart phones even). Alternatives I can think of here are:

a) rent a professional camera (needs to be rented 12x then, 1x for each event). Which would be almost the same costs as paying for a photographer who has his own camera.

b) buy a professional camera and reduces costs in the long run for our community (including all other Wikimedia activities we do of course.

2)While most volunteers can use their smartphones, a central solution for Wikimedia projects could be provided by a device dedicated to this activity, which we had in mind for a tablet. Its screen is bigger and therefore easier to use for things like mapping, where the screen size is quite crucial.

While there are ways to map the coordinates on paper, it would definitely take more time to do that. The other ideal scenarios is using a Garmin device ( https://www.amazon.com/GPS-Navigation/b?ie=UTF8&node=172526 ), however they are quite expensive. Having this in mind, we thought of a tablet to be a great middle range solution in terms of price-productivity.

What are your thoughts on that? --ElioQoshi (talk) 08:28, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi ElioQoshi. Thank you for the thoughtful responses.

1. We understand the photography issue. Let's see how it goes using a professional photographer this once for the events -- hopefully you can get a mix of both general images to be used for Wikimedia project marketing and also images specific to the project. If this is a need that continues, I will encourage the user group to apply for the purchase of a nice camera to be shared with the community.
2. Having a larger devise to map with does make sense. As written above, we only fund equipment for affiliates. However, I spoke with Margott who agreed that the user group can manage the sharing of the equipment after this project is over since you all work closely together. Hopefully this works for you. For all shared equipment, we ask groups to create an equipment log. Please see this example.

Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 14:40, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Alex Wang (WMF) I've noticed that the volunteers have a very limited knowledge of wikidata. I have the feeling that the best strategy would be to use wikidata for "information storage" and use the proposed activity as a campaign also for a better understanding of wikidata. As a small community SQ-N should really take better confidence with wikidata as a tool, it would increase their productivity. I am not saying as a wikidata "fan" (I use it moderately). Also wikidata would be very useful to select missing images of the places they visit (e.g. wikishootme), and this is something I was working on, on it-N community.

So IMHO If they do this effort to "learn something more about wikidta" and show it around their user community, that would better.

P.s. sorry guys if I haven't used the second person addressing you directly, I started with "they" and I don't want to change it now :) --Alexmar983 (talk) 13:29, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi Alexmar983. Thanks for looking into this grant and offering suggestions on how to utilize Wikidata in the project. It's a good idea if ElioQoshi and team are interested in learning more about Wikidata. ElioQoshi -- if you are, I would encourage you to reach out to Alexmar983 for more thoughts on how to do this. It may be a steep learning curve for this grant, but something to think about for future mapping projects. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:11, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

I am here, just contact me...--Alexmar983 (talk) 10:47, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Dear Alexmar983 thank you for your proposal. It seems like working with Wikidata in this case is the way to go, but we would really need a lot of guidance from you or any other experienced Wikidata user since the majority of us involved in the project are newbies in editing and managing Wikidata. Alex Wang (WMF) , on another note the project so far has already produced two meetings, a full list of articles that need to be edited with geoinformation in different languages, a list of tools and templates that will make our life easier during the project and some beautiful photos during our meetings. Also, Margott is working with paws.wmflabs.org adding a lot of data and articles. --Leeturtle (talk) 13:59, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Look I am no "Prima donna", I can make a very specific request for help at the village pump on wikidata. Maybe I can also find some sq>3 users who knows wikidata, if that's ok for you.--Alexmar983 (talk) 14:07, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

That would really help Alexmar983. Thanks again. --Leeturtle (talk) 14:24, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Leeturtle I've contacted User:Liridon, one of the few active wikidata user who is of Albanian mothertongue.--Alexmar983 (talk) 14:33, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Hello Alexmar983, i know about Wikidata too and im part of this project as well so you can ping me also about this. User:Liridon and I are working together in a lot of other project at Wikipedia Albania, so we can work together is this one as well. (btw, i did we met at Wikimania in Esino Lario at Tobias workshop in July? ː) --Margott (talk) 06:51, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

I am sorry Margott are you asking if we met in Esino? I was not there. In any case I am happy that you have expertise. So if I may...

I introduced the word "wikidata" in the discussion, but I think it should be put somewhere in the grant. Something like "properties will be uploaded on wikidata". The target are d:Property:P242 (locator map image), d:Property:P242 (locator map image), Property:P2044 (elevation above sea level), d:Property:P1332 (coordinate of northernmost point) and the analogous for south etc. A good target would be if at least 5 active or new users of SQwiki learn how to insert geo-related properties (some of them) on wikidata. Now the reason why I also add the image (p18) is only because in my experience is one of the most simple properties to start with when you teach newbies wikidata, if they have ever uploaded images. And since a volunteer might be in that specific place without image, it is a good sinergy. Another simple target could be " a least 50-100 missing P18 images uploded". Of course Alex Wang (WMF) if you agree we can also increase a little bit more the budget for photography and reach a total closer to a round figure of 2000 USD. It would be nice if at least one of the missing images becomes a quality image on commons. We don't have a lot of them related to a Albania.--Alexmar983 (talk) 08:52, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Alexmar983 i dont think its a good idea involving Wikidata at this point of project. We have already started with edit a thons, and we have already a structured plan which articles will use in which workshops till December(when this project ends, in order to improve all of them) and mostly of the participants are newbies on Wikipedia itself so i don't think we can manage teaching them Wikipedia and Wikidata in the same time and editing all the articles planned. The goal of this project is Sq wikipedia, and Albanian related subject on other Wikipedias, not Wikidata. I mean, im ready to help you about Albania related stuff on Wikidata, but not as part of this project. Leeturtle what do you think? --Margott (talk) 12:04, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

in my experience, newbies understand geolocalization on wikidata quite easily. A simple target like 4-5 users to learn also wikidata is at your hand. Inserting it on a local template or as wikidata property, not a big difference. Again I am not a wikidata fan and do what you prefer, but think carefully about the part "IT Wikipedia (Italian Wikipedia with a focus in adding geo-information on articles about Albania)" . All lateral infoboxes are progrssively converted to wikidata on itwiki. See the small wikidata icons in it:Template:Divisione amministrativa or it:Template:Edificio civile. That's why I am here, because I've noticed that whilst I was reading. Putting them "everywhere" on local platforms and not on data, it is kinda of a duplicate of work.--Alexmar983 (talk) 12:24, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks again for the proposals Alexmar983. For me not having duplicate data makes sense as well. I will definitely put this for discussion on the next edit-a-thon we have for the project after doing some research on how to use Wikidata for geodata. --Leeturtle (talk) 18:51, 19 August 2016 (UTC)