Grants talk:Project/Rapid/WikiJournal 2020

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello Mikael Häggström, and thanks for your proposal to continue supporting WikiJournal publications and their impact on Wikipedia content. Please accept my apologies for the delay in reviewing your proposal, as some additional time was needed to assess your needs regarding the technical editor as well as that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a broad, disruptive impact on our team. Here are my comments on the proposal:

• In your report from the WikiJournal 2019 Rapid Grant, you noted that The planned hiring of a technical editor was not achieved this year, as it required some further discussion and planning. A task group is currently accepting and reviewing applications, but the project will need to retain the grant funding for this purpose as also mentioned in #Remaining funds below. Could you describe what further discussion and planning was needed last year that made it difficult to hire your technical editor?

• Discussion and planning was mainly relating to:

• what tasks we would expect from a technical editor to perform (with result given at: WikiJournal_User_Group/Technical_editor#Contract)
• how to advertise for the position, which resulted in a reach-out among participants within the WikiJournal community (further detailed at WikiJournal_User_Group/Technical_editor#Hiring_process)

Have you identified a candidate or set of candidates for this position? I see that Masssly (talk · contribs) is named as a current technical editor on WikiJournal User Group.

• Yes, after performing the hiring process as described above, Massly was unanimously approved by the community (further details at Talk:WikiJournal_User_Group/Technical_editor#Discussion)

• I want to clarify that the Rapid Grants program's guidelines around compensation have changed since your first proposal. For most cases, Rapid Grants could not be used to fund individuals for their time. This is largely because the budget for the program is limited, and the consequence of funding compensation requests broadly would mean we would run out of, since these costs are often the most expensive. I have very recently provided some clarity around specific roles and needs we have funded previously for clarity. While a technical editor for a publication that supports Wikimedia content is not one of these cases, I am willing to grant an exception for this grant, especially as this was approved in the prior grant. However, it is not within the scope of Rapid Grants to support a staff or contractor role for this work year after year, and I will recommend that you request funding for this role and other staffing needs through the Project Grants program in the future.

• Thanks for the heads up! We will look into the proper method of applying for a grant for the upcoming year. Hopefully the project will have become a thematic organization or sister project by then.

• Have you considered creating a goal for your project around media mentions / media coverage, as this was a major achievement for your publications last year, and will support some of your other goals around participation and article improvement?

• Thanks for the advice! We have been tracking media mentions in the past for WikiJournal of Medicine (at WikiJournal_of_Medicine/In_news_and_media), but we can definitely work on updating those for each journal.

Please let me know if you have any questions. With thanks,I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 06:33, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the review, I JethroBT (WMF)! I have made replies following your questions above. Mikael Häggström (talk) 18:49, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

@Mikael Häggström: Thanks for these responses, Mikael. I have approved this for funding, but in order to process the request, please update your start date to be 25 May to allow for sufficient time to get your grant agreement prepared. You are welcome to adjust your grant end date accordingly. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:13, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

@I JethroBT (WMF): I have now updated the start date accordingly. I kept the end date as Dec 31 to keep our financial records consistent. Mikael Häggström (talk) 00:34, 24 May 2020 (UTC)