Grants talk:Project/Rapid/WikiJournal 2020/Report

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello Mikael Häggström, and thanks for this report on WikiJournal's efforts this past year. Here are my comments and questions:

• Congratulations on your work in adding new editorial and board members to support WikiJournal. We also really appreciate your work in carefully developing technical editor responsibilities and a hiring process.
• Can you describe a more about what the significance of the Preparing for greater depth of metadata via STARDIT as it relates to WikiJournal? Is this supporting better accessibility or ease of surfacing journal content for researchers and other readers?
• Can you provide some more information about why a technical editor was not yet been hired? This is important to understand, because funding for this need was provided in this and the prior two grants (Grants:Project/Rapid/WikiJournal 2020 and Grants:Project/Rapid/WikiJournal 2019, but it appears the funding was not used. Have there been ongoing circumstances that prevented you from recruiting or hiring for this role?
• What did you learn from the trial run with a technical editor described in the report?

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:01, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Hello I JethroBT (WMF). These are my replies to the comments above:

• STARDIT is an open access data-sharing system being developed to standardise the way that information about initiatives is reported across diverse fields and disciplines, including information about which tasks were done by who. It also offers a way to add updates throughout the lifetime of an initiative, from planning to evaluation and reporting any impacts. It helps making standardised way to describe the ‘who’, ‘how’, ‘what’ and ‘why’ of initiatives, including WikiJournal. It is indeed supporting better accessibility or ease of surfacing journal content for researchers and other readers, such as more efficiently performing web searches for the information you want.
• Regarding technical editor hiring, we have already elected 6 people to share the task. We are working on creating official employment contracts, as well as obtaining employer coverage as required in Connecticut where WikiJournal is registered. It is likely to be set up in June. We are also consulting a lawyer regarding this, to map our best path forward, and with the associated fees we are definitely expecting to have spent our existing assets by the end of June.
• I think the main lesson from the trial run was a raise in the salary (raised from $5 to $20 per hour) because we preferred to have a greater choice of applicants, as well as a greater incentive of the technical editor to keep the position. Although there was no controversy, it has also raised the awareness of what items that are needed in employment contracts, such as reasons for ending the employment by either part.

I hope that helps. Let me know if you have any further questions. Mikael Häggström (talk) 19:44, 13 May 2021 (UTC)