Grants talk:Project/Rapid/VVIT WikiConnect/Semester II Activities (2019–2020)

Application received

Hello, Sumanth699! Thank you for your Rapid Grant submission. We have received a high volume of requests, which may delay our review, but please feel free to ping us to follow-up. We appreciate your patience and will respond to your request as soon as possible.

In the meantime, if your application is approved, we recommend that you review this information in order to process grants. If you have any questions or updates about your request or the grants process, please write us at rapidgrantswikimedia.org. -- All the best, Morgan Jue (WMF) (talk) 17:00, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

@MJue (WMF): Thanks for the confirmation. Sumanth699 (talk) 17:23, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Comments from WMF

Hello, Sumanth699; thank you for all the work you have put into putting this grant proposal together. The amount of activities and work you plan to undertake with this grant is inspiring. We have a few comments and questions we would like you to address:

1. We need to see more details in your budget items. You tell us, for example, that the Wikidata training course will cost 12000 INR. Can you give us more details about how this money will be used for this (as well as for the other training course, workshop, editathons, club meetings, and annual meet)?
2. You mention that the training courses and workshop will require external facilitation. What do you mean by this, and what is your plan to make it happen?
3. One of the items on your budget is for travel and participation support. Can you please give us more details about how this will be used?
4. Can you tell us the themes you anticipate for your editathons and photowalk?

— The preceding unsigned comment was added by MMontes (WMF) (talk) at 06:11, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

@MMontes (WMF): Hi Mariel, good to hear from you. I am KCVelaga, and I am actually replying on behalf of Sumanth699. I had a telephonic conversation with him, and he mentioned that he was travelling and clarified me on these questions. A little bit of background about me, I founded this Wiki-club, and have led its first annual plan, funded by a similar grant last year. Also for the sake of the record, I would like to mention that we've submitted report for the same. So get a better understanding of the current proposal and what we have done last year, it would be great to briefly go through the report.

1. For Wikidata training course; it'll be spread over three to four months with a combination of online and in-person sessions. The rough plan goes this way, the first online session will be about basic introduction to Wikidata and navigation through the project, then there will be an in-person session, where the participants will train on the basics of editing. The participants will then be given some tasks to complete (say create/improve 20 items). This will be followed by another online session where the students' work will be reviewed, some little advanced topics such as identifiers and data modelling will be taught, followed by some take-home tasks. Lastly, we will have a two-day in-person workshop where we will be teaching advanced topics such as using OpenRefine to import datasets, Querying Wikidata etc. The budget will be used for handouts during in-person sessions, and also some costs of trainers, and certificates.

• The format for Wikisource and MediaWiki training plans will almost be the same, a mix of online and in-person sessions.
• For edit-a-thons, the budget is for the local conveyance of participants and refreshments. Same is the case for club and coordinators' meetings.
• For annual meeting (with reference to our learning from the preceding annual report), we would like to invite 1-2 seasoned Wikimedians and let them share their expertise and knowledge with student editors of the club. In addition to that, it'll again include local conveyance of participants and refreshments.

2. In training courses, the culminating in-person sessions will include advanced topics, so we will invite external experienced Wikimedians for this. In such cases, since all the costs can't be borne through this grant, we will seek support from CIS-A2K.

3. Again referring to our previous report, one of the users participated in TWLCon's satellite event in Hyderabad. It is basically our strategy to groom leadership and connect budding students editors with the larger Wikimedia community.

4. Please consider go through our thematic edit-a-thons last year. Some themes we can say now are, 1lib1ref, Art+Feminism, Independence Day of India, among many others. Regarding photowalks, we plan to do one in a restaurant—documenting various dishes, and one at a handlooms factory.

Many thanks for reviewing our proposal, and engaging with us. Kindly let us know if you have any more questions. KCVelaga (talk) 17:53, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

@MMontes (WMF): To make sure that you received the ping. KCVelaga (talk) 09:55, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

@KCVelaga: Thanks for replying on my behalf. Sumanth699 (talk) 03:21, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Moved to Draft

Hello, Sumanth699 and KCVelaga. I'm chiming in to put this discussion and grant proposal on hold. First of all, thank you for your work on this grant request and for your interest in promoting Wikimedia, as well as for your patience with this delayed review process. In the last weeks, the movement strategy discussions have advanced and it is now very likely that support for Rapid Grants will have a different set of requirements in the new fiscal year that will begin before the activities in your proposal are completed. Given that you are applying for funding for several activities (versus stand-alone grants for each activity), we decided it is best to temporarily move it back to drafts. You will be able to revisit your application to make adjustments and resubmit once the new strategy and guidelines are in place in the next few weeks. Please keep an eye on the Rapid Grants guidelines page; also note that, going forward, this initiative might be better suited for an Annual Plan Grant. If you have time-sensitive projects that should be happening before the new fiscal year (July 1st), consider submitting individual requests for those between the 1st and 7th of June, 2019. Regards, MMontes (WMF) (talk) 20:02, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

@MMontes (WMF): Thanks for reviewing our proposal, we will be looking forward to the new funding guidelines and consider reapplying. Would be able to give us an approximate idea on when will the new guidelines be published? Also regarding an Annual Plan Grant, since our total budget is below US$2000, and we are not an affiliate, but a Wiki-club in college, I don't think we are eligible for that. However, we are looking forward to discussing more about this. KCVelaga (talk) 06:49, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Not Funded

Hello Sumanth699 and KCVelaga, thank you for submitting this request and continuing to engage with Wikimedia projects so deeply. Unfortunately, I am marking this grant request as not funded because it has several activities lumped into one. You will see in our eligibility criteria under #5 that we specifically ask that your project be "one discrete project, and not several projects performed through the length of the grant." We hope we can support you in the future on other projects you plan to undertake. Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 22:32, 5 December 2019 (UTC)