GrantsBot

Overview

For more detailed information on GrantsBot, including the pages it updates, who to contact, and exact activities, see User:GrantsBot/Readme

User:GrantsBot is a tool designed and maintained by the WMF Grantmaking Learning & Evaluation team. The tool is used for three primary purposes:

1. Update pages automatically
2. Lead users automatically to their next steps
3. Simplify the idea or application process by automatically pulling in information

The Grantmaking team uses the bot because it makes several aspects of the work in Grantmaking a little easier by streamlining workflows and automating repetitive tasks. It simplifies both the WMF's team's work, as well as the experience of the community members who are creating new ideas/projects.

Example uses

IdeaLab

• CONTRIBUTORS: regular profiles are created by the users themselves. GrantsBot sorts this list so that the profiles of people who have been most active in recent weeks are listed at the top.
• IDEAS: regular idea profiles have to be created from scratch. GrantsBot does this by grabbing metadata about each Idea proposal (such as the creator name and the summary text listed in the infobox) and dumps those into a profile template. The different categories of idea proposal (currently 'new', 'participants wanted', and 'IEG draft') are then displayed on this page. This allows IdeaLab visitors to browse the current ideas without having to visit each individual proposal page.

Individual Engagement Grants

• DEADLINES: automatically notify individuals who created an IEG proposal of the proposal deadline

Known issues with GrantsBot

• Because these pages are frequently updated with entirely new content, it is not practical to translate them into multiple languages.
• Manual changes to pages (or page sections) that GrantsBot regularly updates will be overwritten the next time the bot runs. If you add categories, translation markup, or make copyedits, those edits probably won't be there next time you look. Pages that GrantsBot overwrites in this way are not meant to be viewed or edited directly: they are transcluded into other pages in an attempt to avoid the scenario of the bot overwriting someone's work.

More information

For more detailed information on User:GrantsBot, see User:GrantsBot/Readme