Grants talk:PEG/WM RS/Wiki Loves Monuments in Serbia 2012

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Questions[edit]

Seems to be OK for me. Just two questions:

Technical support is basically creating and maintenance of the website. The design, programming efforts and subsequent maintenance are provided by WMRS as an in-kind donation. --FiliP ██ 05:48, 17 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Event Schedule[edit]

The proposal looks ok to me. Just a question on the event. Are you planning for a single event for price giving or will you have any upload marathons planned for the month? If so are these factored into this cost? -- Thuvack (talk) 09:03, 17 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your question Thuvack. The Event from Budget breakdown is prize giving event and press conference.--MikyM (talk) 13:48, 17 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the response. I am satisfied. Please see the transportation. Question on Tony's query. Others wise, I'm happy. Good luck with the competition. --Thuvack (talk)
Thank you too. I responded the question about transportation and conversion. I really hope you understand why we can not use online currency converter and our daily fluctuating exchange rate. --MikyM (talk) 14:20, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

GAC members who have read this but had no comment[edit]

Hey Kiril, preparation and implementation of this program began in June. As you can see at the top of the page, this is the part of our Annual Plan (it's open submission too, so you can take a look if you want). It was originally planned not to have separate request for our project, but during our consultations with WMF, we had a small downtime because there was a several priority global events / tasks like Wikimania etc. --MikyM (talk) 13:19, 17 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Mile for letting me now about this. It's worth mentioning that some activities have already started this June. I understand the intend to separate this request from the annual plan, because it 's easier for review now and may also save time.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 15:19, 17 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

GAC members who are studying the proposal[edit]

Currency etc[edit]

I'm new to this. The currency conversion issue seems to be not well explicated on the form. Euros appear as the converted currency almost entirely throughout the application, except for the total amount, which is in $US and € (without the Serbian dinars ... apparently symbolised widely as RSD rather than din.) Could the form ask for the rate of conversion used from the local to $US (as the FDC is doing), and keep to those two currencies? I make it 95.8 RSD to the $US, and 118.1 to the €. The Serbian currency has appreciated by more than 13% against both since April, but looks fairly stable at the moment.

Sorry to be dim, but what's in-kind by the Serbian chapter? Does it mean you've got a member who'll do it (very nice, if so)? Does it mean that the sum cited is at a heavy discount? If this is the case, I think an estimate of the in-kind component is standard practice (based on market rates for whatever his/her skill-level suggests).

Prizes: how many, and what's the breakdown? I'm all for high-value first prizes, but that's just a personal view, irrelevant to judging this application.

Promotional materials: will these be single-sheet colour brochures? I'm guessing they might be distributed to universities, schools, GLAMs, and other organisations that wouldn't normally access the chapter's online site.

There are no transport costs—ok.

Any possibility of reviewing the quality of pics, quality of equipment used, after the event? Might the chapter formulate a subsequent application for training; could this be used to identify outstanding contributors, some of whom might have substandard equipment? (Again, this is just fishing, so a "no" answer is perfectly acceptable.) Tony (talk) 06:22, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

+ 1 on the question of transport. Or has it been included elsewhere? --Thuvack (talk) 06:31, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Member from the team did not asked money for transport. In the budget we put 100€ for reserve if someone will need in the end.--MikyM (talk) 14:13, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And sorry, one more thing: I guess the chapter will write a press-release for one or more Serbian newspapers, online outlets, even broadcasters? Tony (talk) 06:57, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that is a given, but we didn't think it was necessary to include it in the grant request. --FiliP ██ 09:36, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"In-kind" by WMRS means that there is a volunteer member who will do that for free (me, specifically). As for prizes, we haven't decided on them yet, so no breakdown yet. We already have some promotional brochures (both b/w and full color) ready for print, so I'm guessing we'll use them. --FiliP ██ 09:36, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and thanks, Tony, for fixing the language of the grant. We tried to fix it up rather quickly --FiliP ██ 09:37, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly support not to use http://www.forexticket.biz/ because in our case it is not credible for us. This site shows middle rate and when we sell we use only and only lowest rate. You are welcome to use the official exchange rate of our bank. It is important to know that we in Serbia have a daily fluctuating exchange rate and it is not realistic to expect someone to make daily updates. --MikyM (talk) 12:05, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sure: but readers would benefit from knowing the multiplier at the start, so as not to have to reach for the calculator. My query about "in-kind" was that in kind is not part of a cash request, yet cash amounts appear. Tony (talk) 07:53, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
When writing a budget, all items have their cash requirements and are a part of the total. "In-kind" is one of the ways to cover some costs, but they do have some value. So, you can just ignore those items marked as "in-kind" from the totals and you'll get the total requested amount. Thanks FiliP ██ 15:20, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Tony, we know you are new in this and we understand what means to be new in something :) . I know who was difficult to me when I was new with grants (I do not talk about WMF grants only) especially when it comes to the global process where is a many different business/working policy. Each of us took time to adjust to it. I explained above to Kiril about date. We starting this in June, putting WLM in Annual plan, and preparing team p,,roject etc. It was originally planned not to have separate request for WLM, but because of the small delay we have received a proposal to put this grant separately.--MikyM (talk) 14:25, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Domain name[edit]

A quick question regarding the domain name item: at present my understanding is that the WMRS website is located at http://rs.wikimedia.org. If this is still the case, will the domain name being acquired here be only used for WLM, or is it something that can be repurposed to a general domain name for the chapter? I suspect there'd be more value for money getting (for instance), www.wikimedia.org.rs which can be used for future projects, and putting WLM at monuments.wikimedia.org.rs, than forking out for wikilovesmonuments.org.rs which would be of limited use once the event has concluded. Craig Franklin (talk) 09:09, 22 August 2012 (UTC).[reply]

Relatedly, I'm wondering about the repeating paying of money for hosting in different WMRS activities. Are you purchasing separate hosting packages each time? Can't the existing hosting for a past event (e.g. the GLAM conference site) be re-used to also host WLM content, with or without a separate domain pointing to it? Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 22:27, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Craig, we already have wikimedia.rs (and wikipedia.rs). That's one of the donations of our sponsor, Eunet. We are not able to get infinite number of domains from them (we have already a couple of small hostings and at least two domains; I am not sure how many there are). --Millosh (talk) 23:40, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Asaf, I checked with Mile what's the amount asked for domain and hosting and, according to the prices in Serbia, it's reasonable. Domain really costs ~30 EUR/year. We don't have our hosting yet, as all of our non-rs.wikimedia.org projects are hosted by Eunet. To be honest, I'd much more prefer to have good hosting at Hetzner, but that would cost us ~60 EUR/month. --Millosh (talk) 23:40, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
So for your €720 rather than €30 per year, you get better service and prompt follow-up if there's a crash? Perhaps it remains to be seen whether it's worth it. Tony (talk) 04:27, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We didn't ask for that. However, it would have more benefits than just having virtually unlimited place for WM RS sites. --Millosh (talk) 14:02, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Can you clarify which domain you are planning on registering then? It's only a minor issue that shouldn't hold up approval of this grant, but I do think that having a number of domain names and hosting packages spread across the place is probably not an ideal situation and one that is going to suck down more money than it should in the future. Craig Franklin (talk) 03:29, 26 August 2012 (UTC).[reply]
(Note that I am connected with this issue just because I am a tech person; thus, I am not a person who is making decisions for this particular project.) I suppose that it will be wikilovesmonuments.rs. Note, also, that this hosting package will be the first one which we rent. As noted above, other domains and hostings are covered by our sponsor Eunet. --Millosh (talk) 19:51, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Extending the project[edit]

Even though it was stated in the Grant application that the project will end by November 1, this is not the case in actuality. I am writing here to notify everyone that the project will be prolonged until December 1. The reason why we prolonged this for one month is the final stage of the project: announcing the prize winners, printing the photos and exhibiting them in a gallery. It was hard to find gallery space for this, so it took us longer than expected. However, we have found the place and the prize announcement and gallery event will occur in several days, so we will definitely wrap the project up by the end of November. --FiliP ██ 23:25, 14 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good! Thanks for the update. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 23:28, 14 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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