MMontes (WMF)

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--Ixocactus (talk) 20:15, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Earth PH 2019

Hi @MMontes, I would to ask an update about my proposal. Thanks! -Maffeth.opiana (talk) 11:46, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

Possible grant for Wiki Loves Classics

Hi! The new WikiClassics UG is discussing this proposal for our first low-budget international initiative. Before we publish our minigrant draft here on Meta, we would like to ask you if it's possible to get a funding (no more than 1000 €) for thematic prizes in the minigrant program. Rumor has it that you are going to fund only one initiative for country and we are not a country. Nevertheless, we are very motivated to revise uploaded files in our field and rank them, so it would be nice to have some additional award for the best photographers. We plan to cooperate with the national chapters and geographical user groups and send them the certificate (and possibly the money) for the awards, once we have completed our selection. We can provide good social media coverage and a high-level specific jury, so it would be good for us to access few fundings. So the question is: can a thematic user group have access to WLM funding this August? Thank you very much, --Epìdosis 13:28, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi we will present our request in the next days if we have no feedback. If we don't have the money we will try to do our best to create some momentum, but it won't be the same.--Alexmar983 (talk) 20:15, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Hello, Epìdosis and Alexmar983; thank you for reaching out before you submit a proposal. We do intend to fund only country-based initiatives during certain contest months like WLM, so the initial answer is that WikiClassics UG would not be eligible for a grant for this contest. However, we want to understand the mechanics of how this thematic initiative would work to see if there is a way we can support it. I have the following questions

1. Would WikiClassics UG go through every single WLM submission and manually tag the relevant ones, and/or would be WLM participants around the world be expected to know about this special category and tag their images themselves?
2. I understand that Classic culture has been influential in several regions of the world, but are there, say, a group of countries that would be of highest interest for the WikiClassics UG (either because of the amount of Classic heritage in them or because that's where the User Group participants live)?
3. Has WikiClassics UG been in touch about WLM with the organizing team or specific organizers?

Regards, MMontes (WMF) (talk) 15:04, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi. I do not have a lot of free time so I give some answer, than we can reorder them.

As volunteers in the field we were going to revise the images soon or later so we will revise them in any case. We just do it more efficiently in a short amount of time. it looks like a lot of work but I was a manager of Wiki Science Competition, I know how to handle massive upload. During WSC2017 I revised 12000 files, mostly just me. And in 2018 I was the core organizer of Wiki Loves Tuscany, 11000 files in just one season (from 1000). So it's ok, we are expert users (even some commons sysops), I know the Montage people and also some of the WLM people. Some of our members are part of Board of Directors of national chapters, so we don't start brutally. Quite the opposite, we just took few weeks to study carefully if it was feasable. And we really think it is and it could be a wasted oppotunity.

The information will be done through social media to inform specific uploaders from the academia and, as said in our draft User:Epìdosis/Sandbox, we will inform all the UGs and chapters. Some of them already know. Basically the local managers will aslo know that, and we will provide them some material to make specific posts or tweets on their platforms as well. They can help us to add the hidden categories or not, but with cat-a-lot and other tools we should do it ourselves. We will take few months, there is no hurry before all the national finalists are declared and than we will quickly start our evaluation after our sorting (or revision of other's people sorting).

So even if it is a first time, people will be informed. The information might not be perfectly even, I expect certain countries to do it before other countries, but they will be informed.

We can contact WLM people right now more directly, we will actually do it as soon as we have enough feedback for the current draft on the UG's talk page (the idea was to link the grant proposal because once written it will be quite stable). We will try to do this event even with limited ressources but I don't expect them to be engaged the same way if we don't have few prizes.

Good news is that it will help a lot of small countries, UG-based iniaitives and areas from Northern Africa and Middle East. please do not think about the cultural heritage per se. For example we have a lot of users in Italy but most the temples and museums are owned by the State with no permission for WLM, so it's more limited there than in other areas. I expect good results from Albania or ALgeria where we have no UG user yet (but we hope to reach out a little bit better thanks to this). However, one of our founder is member of CEE and AffCom, so we should improve the network quite easily. But for sure we will just follow the upload, ou perspective first of all content-related. Our jury will probably be more influenced by the current composition of the UG because of personal contacts, but we also plan to ask for more jurors from other chapters and UGs, if they can find somebody relevant in the field at the academic level. Again, for us is useful outreach.--Alexmar983 (talk) 15:47, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Hello, Epìdosis and Alexmar983; thank you for your patience. I have now had a chance to discuss this matter with the WLM international team. Given the limited nature of funds for this contest and the vision to expand it to new countries this year, we have decided to prioritize national initiatives. We thought of two possibilities for you:

1. If you want more certainty about your ability to operate during this competition, we think that you could work in collaborating with the planning committees in WLM countries of your choosing. This means that, if they are interested in this work, they could write you into their proposals.
2. We understand you may want to maintain autonomy from countries and that you intend to undertake the work with or without financial support. In this case, you can write a brief Rapid Grants proposal with the understanding that we will wait until August 15th, when all country-based initiatives will have been submitted, and we will fund you if we have funds left after that.

MMontes (WMF) (talk) 23:23, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Hi MMontes (WMF) thank you. We can wait up to August 15th while still preparing the competition (which will be a useful effort for the content creation and the image management). The draft is ready and solid in the sandbox and we have already informed Ireland, Portugal, Algeria, Romania and so on. Due to the big numbers of countries potentially involved, I don't think that "writing in" just in some of them is a practical choice. It's not about autonomy per se, but mostly coordination. It will be already an interesting effort to coordinate the sorting part and the communication strategy, we have no manpower to include a finantial aspect. Certainly not the first time we do this, and with few weeks. Next year I wont' be involved in Wiki Loves Monuments in Tuscany so it will be easier on that side. --Alexmar983 (talk) 23:44, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello, Epìdosis and Alexmar983; I will then inform you as soon as we know if there are funds remaining to support you once the Aug 15 window for submissions is closed. Regards, MMontes (WMF) (talk) 14:37, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello, Epìdosis and Alexmar983; thank you for your patience. We have received the last submissions for WLM and I am afraid that we did in fact receive more countries than we initially expected, and our budget as is is insufficient. We are asking everyone to adjust their requests to a tighter budget. I am afraid that we won't have funds to support prize-giving for WikiClassics, but I thought of a possibility: if you are willing to work with one of the organizing teams in one of the participating countries (maybe Epìdosis and the group in Greece?), we could allocate a small amount in their grant (200 USD maximum) to print certificates that can be sent to winners. Does this sound like something you would be interested in, or would you rather pursue this initiative independently from WMF support? MMontes (WMF) (talk) 03:02, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

We would hav pursued the initiative in any case MMontes (WMF), it's necessary to clean up the files so nominating winners is no big deal. I would like to point out that in fact we have 1000 USD from a previous grant about the topic of classical culture we did not spent (I am finishig the report right now). When we send them back you will have 1000 USD more, so what about using those directly?--Alexmar983 (talk) 09:03, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello, Alexmar983; we are open to reallocating the underspend from that grant for your Wiki Loves Monuments initiative. To do this, you need to finish and submit your expense documentation and final report AND write a new grant proposal for Wiki Loves Monuments. Please send them to rapidgrants@wikimedia.org mentioning this conversation so that the Rapid Grants team can follow up. Once your report and documentation are accepted and your grant request is approved, you can use the underspend. If your report and proposal are ready soon, you should have approval with plenty of time to disburse the prizes. A quick note: tomorrow is my last day at WMF, but my colleagues at Rapid Grants are aware of this agreement. Best regards, MMontes (WMF) (talk) 01:27, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Perfect, now it's Wiki Loves Monuments final week of preparation but I almost finished to collect all the information for the old grant. The problem is that I could not find some receipts yet but I prefer to give this money from my pockets if I can reuse them for this initiative. That would be lovely, thank for everything, you were very supportive. --Alexmar983 (talk) 09:06, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Alexmar983: When you are making your report, make sure you read the Grants:Documenting project expenses page because it might help you document some of the expenses without receipt in ways that fulfill the WMF requirement. For this WLM grant, make sure since the beginning to choose vendors that will give you receipts, even if their services are more expensive, and ask for those receipts/keep them since the beginning. Wishing you an excellent WLM!

Wiki Loves Monuments in the Philippines 2019

Hi MMontes (WMF). Kindly review our proposal for Wiki Loves Monuments in the Philippines 2019 to start on September 1, 2019. Thank you. --Filipinayzd (talk) 16:41, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

soweego 1.1 rapid grant proposal

Hello,

I'm reaching out on Wiki to follow up with my previous e-mails regarding the soweego 1.1 Rapid Grant proposal: Grants:Project/Rapid/Hjfocs/soweego_1.1. I'd really appreciate if someone from relevant WMF staff could reply. Best, Hjfocs (talk) 13:56, 17 August 2019 (UTC)