Grants talk:Project/Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos International Team/2021 coordination

Proposal Clinics

Thanks for posting your draft proposal for the Project Grants open call! I wanted to make sure you are aware that we are hosting proposal clinics for applicants to discuss, ask questions and get feedback about their proposals. Participation is optional. If you would like to attend, you can find the dates, times and videoconference links posted at this link. Let me know if you have any questions! Good luck finishing and submitting your proposal for the February 10 deadline!

Warm regards,

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 16:22, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Reminder: Change status to proposed to submit

IMPORTANT: Please note that you must change your proposal status from "draft" to "proposed" by the submission deadline in order for your proposal to be reviewed in the current round. When your proposal has been successfully submitted, it will show up in the "Open proposals" list (it may take several minutes for the list to update after you submit it). Applications that are not completely filled out and correctly submitted by the deadline will not be reviewed. To submit your proposal, you must complete all fields of the application and then:

1. Click on "edit source"

2. Change "|status=DRAFT" to "|status=PROPOSED"

3. Click the "Publish changes" button.

Thank you,

--MCasoValdes (WMF) (talk) 02:26, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you MCasoValdes (WMF), we have now changed our proposal from "draft" to "proposed". Regards. T Cells^Talk 20:41, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, Round 1 2021 - Community Organizing proposal

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for review in Round 1 2021 for Community Organizing projects. This decision is contingent upon compliance with our COVID-19 guidelines. Proposals that include travel and/or offline events must ensure that all of the following are true:

• You must review and can comply with the guidelines linked above.
• If necessary because of COVID-19 safety risks, you must be able to complete the core components of your proposed work plan _without_ offline events or travel.
• You must be able to postpone any planned offline events or travel until the Wikimedia Foundation’s guidelines allow for them, without significant harm to the goals of your project.
• You must include a COVID-19 planning section in your activities plan. In this section, you should provide a brief summary of how your project plan will meet COVID-19 guidelines, and how it would impact your project if travel and offline events prove unfeasible throughout the entire life of your project. If you have not already included this in your proposal, you have until February 28 to add it.

The Community review period is now underway, from February 20-March 4. We encourage you to make sure that stakeholders, volunteers, and/or communities impacted by your proposed project are aware of your proposal and invite them to give feedback on your talkpage. This is a great way to make sure that you are meeting the needs of the people you plan to work with and it can help you improve your project.

• If you are applying for funds in a region where there is a Wikimedia Affiliate working, we encourage you to let them know about your project, too.
• If you _are_ a Wikimedia Affiliate applying for a Project Grant: A special reminder that our guidelines and criteria require you to announce your Project Grant requests on your official user group page on Meta and a local language forum that is recognized by your group, to allow adequate space for objections and support to be voiced).

Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community review period. By March 4, make sure that your proposal has incorporated any revisions you want to make and complies with all of our guidelines. If you have not already done so, you can make use of our project planning resources to improve your proposal further, too.

The Project Grant committee's formal review for round 1 2020 will occur March 5 through March 20, 2021. We ask that you refrain from making any further changes to your proposal during the committee review period, so we can be sure that all committee members are scoring the same version of the proposal.

Grantees will be announced Friday, April 22, 2021. Sometimes we have to make some changes to the round schedule. If that happens, it will be reflected on the round schedule on the Project Grants start page.

We look forward to engaging with you in this Round!

Questions? Contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 06:25, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Campaigns Team Feedback

As a long term advisor on this project, I am really supportive of the growth of the campaign. Last year was very intensive, and the organizing model is very similar to #1lib1ref that runs well with central coordination supplemented by regional and national contests or drives. For that reason, I am generally supportive of the project manager model for this campaign -- and as we see more content drives or campaigns function internationally, I think its strategic to support these kinds of campaigns in professionalizing early: the number of meta organizers able to coordinate them, with international cohorts of local volunteer organizers is limited. Other thoughts I have include:

• As I have been discussing with Isaac in the backchannels -- I think there is an opportunity reevaluate the prize strategy this round -- it was disruptive on a couple of levels. I would be very supportive of a thorough reflection on prize strategy changes in the documentation. Its not entirely clear in the current proposal that this is in the scope of work for this year. The WMF Campaigns team also plans to look at prize strategies in coming months (after #WikiForHumanRigths and #1lib1ref May)
• This is a detail thing but: are you budgets accounting for international shipping or distribution of physical swag? How do you plan to share it? Its not clear how the swag would go to communities.
• The plan focuses on growing in new countries -- I am also curious if there are plans to grow in new languages/geographies -- the last campaign was heavily dominated by English/French speaking communities and smaller languages in Africa. Where do you see the most opportunity for growth? How do you plan to grow into other networks or geographies? Have you considered facilitated regional ambassadors or similar to help with growing in those communities?

Anyway, generally very supportive of this campaign -- it was an important addition to the international calendar last year -- and it shows a lot of promise for growing, especially in smaller communities and with new editors. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 19:58, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Response to WMF Campaign Team

Thanks for your feedback, Astinson (WMF). We are happy that this feedback is coming at the time we have the opportunity to review our proposal and budget. Please see our response (bulleted) below:

• The prizes were a major concern in the last edition as many people believe that monetary prizes (as either cash prizes or gift vouchers)  could be problematic for a campaign of this nature. That was extremely useful feedback and this year, we won't be awarding  monetary prizes but a customized award plaque which is a perfect way to say thank you or recognize outstanding contributions. These award plaques reduced the budget of prizes by at least 50%. That also align perfectly with Wikipedia best practices on how to reward Wikipedia contributors for hard work and due diligent.
• We planned to use one or more of the large gatherings of Wikimedians such as  conferences (or meetings) to distribute the swag. From the look of things, it looks like we may not have such large gathering anytime soon. So, I have included a supplementary budget for shipping on the proposal. Thanks for pointing this out.
• Essentially, we have plans to grow in new languages and or geography but the focus would be more on languages and communities that are underrepresented on Wikimedia projects. So, I like the idea of a regional (or language) ambassador and this is something we will definitely consider in implementing the campaign this year. 

Thanks for your feedback and please let us know if you have additional questions or feedback. T Cells^Talk 22:29, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Hey @T Cells: -- shifting to an award plaque this year might be overcorrecting in that part of participation last year was definitely driven by the potential for some type of monetary or high-value reward -- a plaque alone might not be enough motivation -- there might be room to think/calibrate the prizes creatively here. I was more highlighting that it is worth having a discussion and documenting lessons learned from the next round of experiments. Other international campaigns mitigate this by awarding purchases of swag or equipment (for photography) so there might be a wide range of solutions -- we should definitely talk about this between now and the launch of the campaign .Astinson (WMF) (talk) 22:50, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

February 2021 (UTC)

@Astinson (WMF): Okay, that's fine. Maybe an award plaque and other gifts item that may not be too high (gift voucher under USD 200? or equipment). We should talk about this between now and the launch of the campaign as you have suggested. Although, we may not have the privilege to revise our budget after 5th of March 2021. T Cells^Talk 23:25, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos International Team/2021 coordination

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?	6.2
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	5.8
(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?	7.4
(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: It is hard to see a big impact. The project seems to be a general campaign to contribute to Commons and with no clear focus on a specific thematic. It would likely become a periodical proposal, and its main mission is supposed to be running a high-level, globally team to assist local communities. I do believe it does align with Wikimedia's strategy, in general. However, I cannot see there is a strong reason to support this proposal. The language or regional ambassador idea is great. It will help develop the leadership skills of volunteers. The project is not innovative because it pushes to contribute to Commons but it does not identify for instance which are the categories having lesser pictures. Basically there is not a clear strategy behind this idea. Since I consider this proposal as an organisation-facing proposal, I would like to see more details of their plan. For example, which specific tool will they pick for determining the impact? And why will they select it? This kind of information is necessary, especially for such a proposal. It is good to see someone thinking about how all the media generated through various campaigns and partnerships can be put to use on Wikimedia projects. While many campaigns try to do this after the initial upload period, it never worked well. Having a campaign focused on this theme is great. The point indicated in the plan about "Maintenance work" indicates basically that there is not a strong planning behind this campaign. It has the ambition to coordinate but there is clearl a lot of work to do afterwards to clean what has been done. I am excited to see there is a team organised by so many experienced users, even some of them serving as a Wikimedia steward. The only fly in the ointment is the gender ratio of the teams might need to be improved. As they already had an iteration, the team would have great learnings that they put to use for this iteration. It does have some strong support from communities. I do not see a real impact and the need to have a centralized coordination looking at the proposal. It seems a general campaign to contribute to Commons and to add images to Wikipedia articles, but does it require a campaign? The project mentions frequently a "campaign" but the goal or the topic of this campaign is not clear enough. I would have seen for instance a strategy with a pre-analysis to check what are the topics with lesser pictures, what are the categories of Commons who need images. The concept of "filling the gap" is present but more like an idea to develop rather than a clear "plan to action". The group has the ambition to coordinate local groups, but essentially what would be the message? "Go and take pictures"? The main activity is to design a framework, which is a fascinating idea, but the point to start to have meetings or "face-to-face meetings" (in time of pandemy) suggests that there is not enough experience to use a system of collection of data to drive a strategy. Slightly addressed to a "no". Lack of governance. Although some parts of their plan could be improved, this does a well-organised proposal. And it's meaningful for me to see many active users participating in this project. In addition, I am glad to hear Alex Stinson, which a Senior Program Strategist in WMF provided advice for this proposal as an advisor. However, for one thing, I am not really sure if this proposal should take priority over others to get funding. For another thing, I believe more participation from the WMF team is necessary for this proposal too. Therefore, before you make a final decision for funding, I would like to suggest the WMF team tries to start some conversations with applicants first. This is a good start. A suggestion is to think of how this campaign complements other major content generation campaigns such as WLM, WLE, and WLA. These are huge incoming streams of media, and it would be nice to know how this campaign's strategy can fit into the workflows of other campaigns. Also, currently the campaign is largely active in the African region, expanding to other geographies would be good. The project has great potential.

Opportunity to respond to committee comments in the next week

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal. Based on their initial review, a majority of committee reviewers have not recommended your proposal for funding. You can read more about their reasons for this decision in their comments above. Before the committee finalizes this decision, they would like to provide you with an opportunity to respond to their comments.

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 carefully and post any responses, clarifications or questions on this talk page by 5pm UTC on Monday, March 29, 2021. If you make any revisions to your proposal based on committee feedback, we recommend that you also summarize the changes on your talkpage.
2. The committee will review any additional feedback you post on your talkpage before making a final funding decision. A decision will be announced no later than Friday, April 22, 2021.

Questions? Contact us.

--Mercedes Caso (platícame) 05:08, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Response to Project Grant Committee

Hello, project grant Committee and thanks for your feedback. I'd like to respond to your comments and since the comments are aggregated, we have responded inline below.

1. It is hard to see a big impact. The project seems to be a general campaign to contribute to Commons and with no clear focus on a specific thematic.

   On the contrary, the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos is NOT a campaign that aims to contribute to Commons. It's a campaign that primarily focuses on the use of images collected from various photography contests such as Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Folklores and other media files hosted in Wikimedia Commons on Wikipedia articles. In the 2020 edition, this campaign added photos to more than 90,000 articles in over 270 Wikipedia languages.

2. It would likely become a periodical proposal, and its main mission is supposed to be running a high-level, globally team to assist local communities. I do believe it does align with Wikimedia's strategy, in general. However, I cannot see there is a strong reason to support this proposal.

   The Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos is a large campaign and involved extensive coordination of several Wikimedia Communities who are coordinating the campaign in their various communities. In the last edition, the campaign was coordinated in more than 20 Wikimedia affiliates around the world and includes engagement of multiple language Wikipedia. The campaign does align neatly with Wikimedia's strategic priority of innovative in free knowledge and WMF's goal of supporting more diverse modes of consumption and contribution to Wikimedia projects.

3. The language or regional ambassador idea is great. It will help develop the leadership skills of volunteers.

   Thank you. This was suggested by the WMF's Campaign team and we strongly believe that this would be net positive to the campaign implementation this year.

4. The project is not innovative because it pushes to contribute to Commons but it does not identify for instance which are the categories having lesser pictures. Basically there is not a clear strategy behind this idea.

   The scope of WPWP Campaign is NOT a campaign that pushes to Contribute to Wikimedia Commons. See our response at #1. This campaign is an innovative approach to solving a key knowledge gap (adding quality photos to Wikipedia articles where they are lacking). It is the only major campaign in the Wikimedia movement that focus on getting images hosted in Commons on Wikipedia articles.

5. Since I consider this proposal as an organisation-facing proposal, I would like to see more details of their plan. For example, which specific tool will they pick for determining the impact? And why will they select it? This kind of information is necessary, especially for such a proposal.

   Thank you. In the past, we have used hashtag tool to measure impact and that was helpful. This year, with support from the WMF campaign team and the developers at WMF, the tool has recently been improved and would be more efficient in tracking metrics and this is why we are using the tool. We hope this answers your questions.

6. It is good to see someone thinking about how all the media-generated through various campaigns and partnerships can be put to use on Wikimedia projects. While many campaigns try to do this after the initial upload period, it never worked well. Having a campaign focused on this theme is great

   Thank you. This is a huge gap and we are happy to adopt this campaign as an innovative approach to bridge the gap.

7. The point indicated in the plan about "Maintenance work" indicates basically that there is not a strong planning behind this campaign. It has the ambition to coordinate but there is clearl a lot of work to do afterwards to clean what has beeclearly.

   We know that many newcomers are interested in adding images to Wikipedia. "To add an image" is a common response newcomers give on the welcome survey for why they are creating their account. I occasionally respond to questions from newcomers at Commons help desk and the copyright village pump and one of the most Commons questions from new users is how they could add photos to Wikipedia articles. So, no doubt that campaigns such as this would attract new editors and there would be occasional mistakes from them. This is what we planned to clean up after the campaign. Generally, organizers are encouraged to do clean up after their campaign or contest and in most cases, it is done not because there was no strong planning before implementation but because it's the right thing to do after any campaign or contests involving new users.

8. I am excited to see there is a team organised by so many experienced users, even some of them serving as a Wikimedia steward. The only fly in the ointment is the gender ratio of the teams might need to be improved

   Thanks for your observation. We plan to improve the gender ratio this year.

9. I do not see a real impact and the need to have a centralized coordination looking at the proposal. It seems a general campaign to contribute to Commons and to add images to Wikipedia articles, but does it require a campaign? The project mentions frequently a "campaign" but the goal or the topic of this campaign is not clear enough. I would have seen for instance a strategy with a pre-analysis to check what are the topics with lesser pictures, what are the categories of Commons who need images. The concept of "filling the gap" is present but more like an idea to develop rather than a clear "plan to action". The group has the ambition to coordinate local groups, but essentially what would be the message? "Go and take pictures"? The main activity is to design a framework, which is a fascinating idea, but the point to start to have meetings or "face-to-face meetings" (in time of pandemic) suggests that there is not enough experience to use a system of collection of data to drive a strategy. Slightly addressed to a "no". Lack of governance.

   On the contrary, the Wikipedia Pages Wanting Photos is NOT a campaign that aims to contribute to Commons. This is not a photography contest and taking photos and contributing them to Commons is out of the scope of this project. It's a campaign that primarily focuses on the use of images collected from various photography contests such as Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves Africa, Wiki Loves Folklores and other media files hosted in Wikimedia Commons on Wikipedia articles. In the 2020 edition, this campaign added photos to more than 90,000 articles in over 270 Wikipedia languages. The "face-to-face meetings" will rarely happen and if we must meet "face-to-face", the WMF has designed a COVID-19 Risk Assessment protocol and we will follow this and other guidelines including social distancing, uses of facemask, hand-washing strictly. However, we have experience in using a system of collection of data to drive a strategy. See the 2020 edition of the campaign evaluation draft

10. Although some parts of their plan could be improved, this does a well-organised proposal. And it's meaningful for me to see many active users participating in this project. In addition, I am glad to hear Alex Stinson, which a Senior Program Strategist in WMF provided advice for this proposal as an advisor. However, for one thing, I am not really sure if this proposal should take priority over others to get funding. For another thing, I believe more participation from the WMF team is necessary for this proposal too. Therefore, before you make a final decision for funding, I would like to suggest the WMF team tries to start some conversations with applicants first.

    Thank you. The WMF's Campaign team is supporting this campaign and we are open to any conversation around this proposal and the campaign in general.

Please let me know if there are questions, comments or concerns that we have not significantly address. T Cells^Talk 07:59, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

On the WMF team involvement question -- we are thinking of this campaign as a case study in new formats of campaigns -- specifically small microcontributions with a target on new editors participating on Wikipedia-- and think its important to maintain on the calendar for the movement because of its relationship to the other photography campaigns. We are also observing it for lessons learned (for example the prize structure last year misfired in some community contexts, so we hosted an Office hour last week to discuss this challenge with other international campaign organizers). Moreover, the project is complex technically as well -- pushing both capabilities in the hashtags tool (which recently got a feature update to track images based on the campaign's needs) and is aligned with a new image suggestion feature in the Growth team tools that we are hoping will be available for the campaign soon. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 16:29, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Round 1 2021 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, $18,100

Comments regarding this decision:
The committee is pleased to support a different type of campaign that has proven an impact and that is led by a group of experienced wikimedians. They also value the campaign is being considered as a case study in new formats of campaigns -- specifically small microcontributions with a target on new editors participating on Wikipedia by the Campaign team at the Wikimedia Foundation. They also recognize that the nature of the campaign promotes collaboration among several Wikimedia communities across the world. The committee encourages the grantee to identify concrete strategies for expansion to other geographic regions, while it also continues to grow in Africa. They see the benefit to continue receiving advice and support from the Campaign team at the Wikimedia Foundation. The committee appreciates the grantee’s efforts to increase gender diversity in the organizing team.

NOTE: Funding of any offline activities (e.g. travel and in-person events) is contingent upon compliance with the Wikimedia Foundation's COVID-19 guidelines. We require that you complete the Risk Assessment Tool:

• 14 days before any travel and/or gathering event
• 24 hours before any travel and/or gathering event

Offline events may only proceed if the tool results continue to be green or yellow.

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
2. Review the information for grantees.
3. Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
4. Start work on your project!

Upcoming changes to Wikimedia Foundation Grants

Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation has been undergoing a community consultation process to launch a new grants strategy. Our proposed programs are posted on Meta here: Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021. If you have suggestions about how we can improve our programs in the future, you can find information about how to give feedback here: Get involved. We are also currently seeking candidates to serve on regional grants committees and we'd appreciate it if you could help us spread the word to strong candidates--you can find out more here. We will launch our new programs in July 2021. If you are interested in submitting future proposals for funding, stay tuned to learn more about our future programs.

Concerns related to grantee's ban on English Wikipedia

Concerns have been raised at the English Wikipedia Administrator's Noticeboard that this grant may be in violation of the meatpuppetry policy due to the grantee's indefinite site-ban from the project, imposed by the Arbitration Committee in 2016, and specific topic ban from images. It appears that T Cells did not disclose their ban during the grant application process. Courtesy pinging the members of the grant committee so that you may discuss the appropriate course of action in this situation: @Flixtey, Ilario, Léna, Lluis tgn, MarkAHershberger, MikyM, Netha Hussain, NickK, Rubin16, Ruslik0, Superzerocool, Thepwnco, Violetova, Jackiekoerner, Aotfs2013, KCVelaga, FULBERT, Masssly, Celestinesucess, T Cells, MassiveEartha, Joalpe, Oby Ezeilo, RockyMasum, NanaYawBotar, Yamen, Cherishsantosh, Shahadusadik, and Jwale2:. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:42, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

The ban applies only to enwiki. TCell can work in other projects or offline. Ruslik (talk) 20:54, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

I did not review this proposal (it came up late due to a human error and on a weekend I was particularly busy), so I am not the best person to comment on this. However, I think we had a due diligence failure here. In general, I do think that this is a valid project to receive funding, and I would be fine having T Cells as one of the organising committee members. However, if WPWP team creates a paid project manager position, a user having a ban on adding images to English Wikipedia sounds like a particularly bad candidate for managing a project on adding images to multiple Wikipedias. Unfortunately, this was not mentioned at all during the proposal review, while I believe it should have been — NickK (talk) 21:06, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Unclear lasting benefit

One way this project could've been useful is by facilitating editor recruitment, particularly from historically underrepresented geographical areas. However, the data does not show this is happening (on enwiki at least). Contributions are tracked in en:Special:AbuseFilter/1073 and en:Special:AbuseFilter/1158 (throttle). By picking out some of the most prolific contributors in the WPWP contest, who were not already established editors, it seems these editors did not go on to do any non-WPWP participation. See, for example, en:Special:Contributions/Aderiqueza or en:Special:Contributions/Olawunmi_Ogunkunle or en:Special:Contributions/Dolphyb. I will also note that on enwiki we did have an edit filter warning message that aimed to suggest editors get involved in other areas too. This is en:MediaWiki:Abusefilter-disallowed-WPWP. In general, some editors kept trying to save even despite this message, suggesting they weren't even reading it.

This means, in effect, we're just paying for edits, rather than this being an outreach effort with lasting recruitment effects. This paid nature of the contributions, along with some frequency of disruptive edits, contributes towards the bad feeling in regards to this contest on the English Wikipedia, where it has been subject to several administrative discussions this year and last. All in all, I'm not sure whether this is producing good value. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but I think there should be a closer analysis of the data before approving any further grants in the future. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 02:42, 4 September 2021 (UTC)