Grants talk:Project/Rapid/RU-NC/10 years of Lezgi Wikipedia

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

@Soul Train and Mugerganets: Hello Oleg and Murad, and thanks for this proposal supporting a series of contests and other activities in your community this year. Here are my questions and comments:

• It's great to hear about the user group's focus on develop and building content for Lezgi Wikipedia, and we appreciate your group's interest in supporting local language development in the Wikimedia movement.
• As it happens, this is the first time I have seen the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles used in a grant proposal as a basis for evaluation, and it's an interesting set of metrics to use. Thanks for introducing it to me. If I understand correctly, it seems that these activities are expected to support increasing the number of stubs and articles in the table, and potentially increase the median and mean article size as well. Is that correct?
• Based on my understand of the proposal, about 20 participants total are expected across different Wikipedia projects (Lezgi, Russian, etc.). However, each indidividual contest has between 3-12 formal prizes in addition to T-shirts and souvenirs that may be distributed. Taken together, and based on our usual practices for funding contests, this is a very high prize/merchandise budget relative to the total number of participants. Would you be willing to reduce the prize budget overall across the contests? Otherwise, if I have misunderstood something, please let me know.
• In terms of the contributions to Wikimedia Commons, is there a plan to support integrating these images onto other Wikimedia projects?

Please let me know if you need any clarity around my questions. With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 23:07, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Hello!

Yes, the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles project is a great way to grow small Wikipedias. So that these editions do not get hung up only on their topics, but develop a truly universal electronic encyclopedia. In the Lezgi Wikipedia, we have a section on the Main page with a list of 10 articles proposed for development/creation this month, as well as a direct link to this project in the Sidebar. According to the existing scoring system, it is more profitable to create large articles, because they are given 8 times more points. Participants such as Mugerganets, User from Dag, Migraghvi, Aslan Xasiyev, or Samurskaya can create such large articles — they are native speakers of the Lezgi language. I don't speak this language at such a high level (I'm ethnically Russian), so I may create stubs with all the necessary templates. And these stubs can be developed to full-fledged articles. In addition, there are dozens of articles that only need to add a few paragraphs, and then they will move to a higher “category” of articles that will receive more points.

As for the contests. We expect a large number of participants from the first contest about Dagestan (we decided to call it “Discover Russia. Dagestan”). We can see how many people participated in similar contests. For example, “Alumni and Mentors of Russia 2020” — 22 users from Russian Wikipedia, 22 — from editions in the languages of the peoples of Russia. “Wiki Loves Caucasus 2020” — 11 users from Russian Wikipedia, 3 — from Lezgi Wikipedia, 10 — from editions in other languages of the world. We don't know exactly how many participants there will be — I'm sure it will be at least 20, but it could be 50 or even more.

And about 20 thousand rubles for each nomination — it's my fault that I didn't write about it in enough detail. 20,000 rubles ($262.00) is the entire budget of the nomination, which includes the potentially high costs of mailing prizes. For the prizes themselves, we expect to spend approximately 12 thousand rubles for each nomination. And we have an average of 8 thousand rubles for postage. If we talk about the Lezgi Wikipedia, as well as the nomination in the (indigenous/regional) languages ​​of Russia, then all active participants live in Russia, and we do not expect large expenses. But even in the Russian Wikipedia, the costs can be very high, because among the editors there are many residents of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Germany, Canada, the USA (I'm not even talking about the citizens of Russia — for example, the distance between Khabarovsk and Moscow is more than 8 thousand kilometers) — this could dramatically increase postage. I think that we will have to transfer the saved money from some nominations to the others (at least it will definitely happen in the international nomination/outside of Russia).

2022 is the year of the cultural heritage of the peoples of Russia. As part of the “Discover Russia. Dagestan” contest we want to give the participants not prizes in cash, but real souvenirs — for example, valuable photo albums about cultural objects of Dagestan, Derbent, and so on. So here we need to take into account postage. As for the second contest (1000 vital articles), here we took the costs of Amazon/Ozon gift certificates that are given in the “Wiki Loves Caucasus” contest. If this amount seems too large (after all, it is designed only for users of Lezgi Wikipedia), then we can reduce it. There will be no postage required. How about 20 thousand rubles for Amazon/Ozon gift certificates for three winners? Soul Train (talk) 12:26, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

“is there a plan to support integrating these images onto other Wikimedia projects?” — Yes, sure! In the proposal, we wrote that Akhtynsky and Suleyman-Stalsky districts are very poorly represented in terms of the number of photographs of cultural heritage. Only 13 out of 189 objects in the table of the Akhtynsky district on Russian Wikivoyage have their photos. The situation with Suleyman-Stalsky district is even worse: 189 objects and not a single photo! First, we plan to add photos to tables on the Russian Wikivoyage, and also, if necessary, links to categories on Wikimedia Commons. And of course, the photos from the planned Wiki expedition will be very useful for illustrating articles about these districts/settlements in different Wikipedia editions. Soul Train (talk) 22:54, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

@Soul Train: Thank you for this helpful context and explanation. We will be proceeding with funding the proposal, and I'll contact you over e-mail with additional details. When you are able, could you update the budget table to separate the expenses related to the cost of the prizes from the expected costs for postage? It is OK if these are estimates and somewhat inexact, but we would like to understand the general value of prizes distributed as well as expected costs to ensure participants receive that prize / recognition for their work. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 02:20, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Done! Soul Train (talk) 17:02, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Notice of ineligibility

Approval has been formally withdrawn, and the proposal marked ineligible due to conflicts with relevant behavioral requirements for applicants. The applicant has been notified over e-mail. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 06:27, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Dear Chris,

please analyze the situation in more details, and reconsider the decision. Otherwises, I guess, the grant decision-making process is severely broken. The applicant's behavior doesn't contradict the Behavioral requirements: I checked it thoroughly. He was unduly blocked, and then, of course, unblocked. No user should became an "outlaw" for merely agreeing their country's actions (by the way, despite his comment was much less charged that some other's comments in the discussion he was answering to, he nevertheless later wrote that he shouldn't mention his support of the operation, disagreeing with the banner proposal should be enough). Please don't allow the politics to harm the Wikimedia Movement's ability to create a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.

So, please, check the details once more. Thank you in advance! Dr Bug (Vladimir V. Medeyko) 11:02, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Dear Vladimir, with all due respect, but unfortunately, I cannot agree with you.

A member of your organization has shown that he is incapable of showing compassion not only for sufferings of human beings, but also for members of Wikimedia community, who are currently under threat and whose lives are in danger.

His comment isn't just agreeing their country's actions, as you have written above, but is direct warmongering (I can point out with this diff that this person fully and consciously supports Russia's invasion in Ukraine, by which he supports the killing of Ukrainians by the Russian armed forces - even the wording indicates this directly). I also wonder if this this agreeing also supports the decision to block Wikipedia in Russia, which will be announced soon. This is fundamentally against the spirit of our community and the Wikimedia Movement, and I also have a big concern to issue financial support to the person who supports the actions of the government that plans to block Wikipedia for the article about the tragic event supported by the user.

We shouldn’t provide financial support to such people, we shouldn’t provide money from our donors to people who support sufferings and killings of innocent human beings.

I also doubt the sincerity of this user's latest statements. The apology wasn't even part of the original comment, it was added later (As you can see in the diff provided by you yourself), and it seems highly likely that the sole reason of the added "apology" is to get financial support from the WMF. This is not and should mot be the spirit of our movement. I want to point out again that we shouldn’t support and promote aggression on our platforms by supporting individuals who are in favor of aggression.--George M. (talk) 20:04, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

No, I don't need financial support from the WMF. Is it clear? Soul Train (talk) 03:58, 2 March 2022 (UTC)