Grants talk:Project/WikiInAfrica/WikiFundi

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2017

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2017 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community comments period, through 17 October 2017.

The committee's formal review for round 2 2017 begins on 18 October 2017, and grants will be announced 1 December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 02:47, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Question

I am anticipating a question that someone just asked us does these articles being written finally get merged to the online version of Wikipedia, or is the focus getting prospective contributors acquainted or to learn about the Wikipedia platform, allow trainings in very remote regions or places with critical access issues (no internet & electricity) and to build several soft skills (writing, research, etc.)”

At the moment, the focus is the second and the third one : 1) getting prospective contributors acquainted with the platform as well as to allow training in regions or places or situations with access issues as well as 2) building soft skills (not necessarily meant for active short term recruitment). The experiments done in the South Africa schools at the moment, or the primary schools writing activities in Mali, Madagascar, Tunisia and Guinea do fall in those goals. In those cases, since projects are being run into schools, they involve facilitators who support the teachers in using the plateforme and in the content production. Obviously, getting content produced back on wikipedia right now is simply not so easy. But as a person who organized or participated to quite a few sessions of newbies training, I can say that little quality content is produced during training sessions anyway. On the contrary, some people might feel more confortable knowing that their first steps are actually not publicly recorded.

However, we are thinking of finding a solution to get articles produced merged in the online version. It is not easy for a whole bunch of reasons. But this has been actively discussed during the Potsdam hackathon and a developer (Mark Hershberger, not to name him) has expressed interest to work on that point. Mark is working with Nasa with offline wikis and has a similar issue on how content produced could be collected back.

Well, no tool ever developed in just a few days. Even Kiwix. WikiFundi is less than a year old. We think iterative mode for improvement is best. Anthere (talk) 14:42, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Some concerns

I like this proposal although I have some concerns:

1. I do not see a clear project plan with a timeline showing when all activities and milestones begin and end.
2. Can you specify how the money will be distributed among participants and hired personal?
3. You did not provide a list of participants.

Ruslik (talk) 20:22, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Hello @user:Ruslik0. Good points.

I added the timeline. This is meant to be at a minimum 6 months. Release of the updated software should be ready before Wikimania in Cap Town. Communication elements (in particular explainer video) should be ready a bit earlier preferably. We expect to be meeting/talking with partners all along the project. Ideally report in August, after Wikimania (which is a good moment to get some feedback)

I added the names of the main participants (sometimes we are so deep into something that we forget the obvious...). I am essentially leading the effort (management) and will work on the educational resources, improvements to the user experience as reported by first users, as well as on the conception and partly creation of the tutorials. I am likely to take care of the raspberries and SD cards set up. Isla will rather work on the communication side, with the explainer video, the website, user guide, general communication etc. I take it both of us will work on the "partners" (most "uses" are likely to be in her geographical area, but I am more likely to attend hackathons and potential partners are located in Paris and Switzerland). Emmanuel will be our main tech contact when it comes to the software, but we set aside a little bit of budget in case we need to get help from other developers (either bug fixing or to work on the mediawiki extension used to do the tutorials or to work on fixing the tech part of the tutorials (using javascript... which I am not able to handle myself. We will seek help from the WikiMooc guys Jules and 0x010C). The other services are handled by various professionals (designer, translator/reviewer, social media manager, website tech), most of which we have already worked with in the past (but may vary depending on their availability etc.). I mentionned the participants names when the money is allocated to them.

Thanks

Anthere (talk) 21:10, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for WikiInAfrica/WikiFundi

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	8.0
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	7.0
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	7.6
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	7.2
Additional comments from the Committee: The project perfectly aligns with Wikimedia's strategic priorities. It has a great potential for online (and off-line for that matter) impact. I think that WikiFundi can be scaled and sustained after the grant ends because the hardware platform and the software it runs are not going to become obsolete for a long time. I don't understand what the intentions of this project are. This project has potential for significant impact in Africa wiki communities and partners. Moreover it can be adapted for other communities or scaled into something even bigger. The project is innovative, in my opinion - nobody to my knowledge has attempted to create an off-line environment for editing Wikipedia and to distribute hardware/software kits to do this. I think that the risks are low and potential benefits are significant. The success can be measured though I want to see the measures of success improved. I don't think this tool clearly solves any new problems This project takes in account past experiences to develop successful mechanisms. Risk during development stages is considerable. Measures of success are well established. The scope can be accomplished in 12 months (6 months are requested actually). The budget is realistic though I want to see how the money are going to be distributed among the participants and hired personal. The participant have necessary skills - they have already accomplished a lot in this area. Budget is considerable given the dimension of the whole project. Participants seems to have the necessary skills. The project supports diversity and has target communities in the Wikimedia movement - communities of Wikimedia contributors in Africa and other developing regions of the world. There is some community support. This project has some community support and targets specific groups. I support the project provided that necessary changes and clarifications are made.

This proposal has been recommended for due diligence review.

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal and recommended it for due diligence review. This means that a majority of the committee reviewers favorably assessed this proposal and have requested further investigation by Wikimedia Foundation staff.

Next steps:

1. Aggregated committee comments from the committee are posted above. Note that these comments may vary, or even contradict each other, since they reflect the conclusions of multiple individual committee members who independently reviewed this proposal. We recommend that you review all the feedback and post any responses, clarifications or questions on this talk page.
2. Following due diligence review, a final funding decision will be announced on Thursday, May 27, 2021.

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Round 2 2017 decision

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for a Project Grant.

The committee has recommended this proposal and WMF has approved funding for the full amount of your request, $23,500.00

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