Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Alliances Fund/Wikicredibility Initiative:Wikimedians Strengthening Knowledge and News Credibility on the Internet

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statusFunded
Wikicredibility Initiative:Wikimedians Strengthening Knowledge and News Credibility on the Internet
This grant proposal will extend the work of the previous WikiCredibility Initiative campaign. The objective here is to continue helping communities of new editors, readers, technologists and other ecosystem members who rely on Wikipedia for verified information, sourcing, understanding and creating better processes and frameworks for content creation and information provenance with the help of Wikimedians.
start date2022-06-01T00:00:00Z
end date2023-05-31T00:00:00Z
budget (local currency)100000 USD
budget (USD)100000 USD
amount recommended (USD)100000
grant typeMission-aligned organization
organization typeNon profit organisation
funding regionNA
decision fiscal year2021-22
funding program roundRound 1
applicant(s)• Ahmed X. Medien
organization (if applicable)• Hacks Hackers, Inc.
Midpoint Learning Report 
Final Learning Report

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Applicant information[edit]

A. Organization type

Mission-aligned organization

B. Organization name

Hacks Hackers, Inc.

E. Do you have an account on a Wikimedia project?

Yes

E1. Please provide the main Wikimedia Username (required) and Usernames of people related to this proposal.

Kevin Payravi | User:SuperHamster

SJ Klein | User:SJ

G. Have you received grants from the Wikimedia Foundation before?

Did not apply previously

H. Have you received grants from any non-wiki organization before?

Yes
H1. Which organization(s) did you receive grants from?
City University of New York

Craig Newmark Philanthropies Newton and Rochelle Becker Foundation Elkes Family Foundation Mozilla Foundation Google Twitter Facebook Meedan Computer Research Association National Science Foundation

H2. Please state the size of these grants from the following options.
Above 50,000 USD
H3. What type of organization (s) did you receive grants from?
Government, National NGO, International NGO
H4. What percentage of your program budget do other funders contribute to?
More than 75%

1. Do you have a fiscal sponsor?

No

1a. Fiscal organization name.

N/A

2. Are you legally registered?

Yes

3. What type of organization are you?

Non profit organisation

4. What is your organization or group's mission and how does it align with the Wikimedia movement?

Hacks/Hackers creates, fosters and connects communities of professionals and researchers with diverse backgrounds in the disinformation/credibility space in order to raise the profile of reliable, credible information for all.

Wikimedians form a robust group within H/H. We work together through grants, workshops and webinars to elevate, find useful ways and partnerships to integrate learnings and tools from Wikipedia into the larger information ecosystem.

5. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has. (optional)

Hacks/Hackers sponsored WCNA in 2019 with planning help from WMDC.
1. https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2019/Main_Page
2. https://misinfocon.com/wikicredcon-record-number-of-attendees-participate-in-6th-annual-wikiconference-north-america-212d8c54b127

The Credibility Coalition - Credibilitycoalition.org Wikicredibility Initiative - WikiCred.org NewsQ KNoW Science Vaccine Safety Edit-A-Thon series - https://newsq.net/activities/know-science-vaccine-safety-edit-a-thon-series/

Grant proposal[edit]

6. Please state the title of your proposal.

Wikicredibility Initiative:Wikimedians Strengthening Knowledge and News Credibility on the Internet

9. Where will this proposal be implemented?

United States of America

10. Indicate if it is a local, international, or regional proposal and if it involves several countries?

International

10a. If you have answered international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.

The project will occur mainly online/remotely due to the ongoing situation with Covid-19 in several parts of the world. The project however will seek to engage different communities from different, professional, geographic and language backgrounds. It is intended that the project's participants may be from anywhere in the world.

10b. Are there any specific sub-regions or areas where your proposal will be implemented?

The project will more or less span three main geographic regions (but not limited to since the focus will be language and not geography):

North America (Canada + US) LAC region, Spanish-speaking and American indigenous language(s)-speaking Wikimedians North Africa and West Asia region, Arabic-speaking Wikimedians

11. What is the challenge or problem you are addressing and why is this important?

Address new communities and include new stakeholders in the conversation of Information and knowledge reliability (veracity, information provenance) as it travels to and from platforms like Wikipedia to other information environments and settings.

12. What is the main objective of your proposal? Please state why you think partnering with Wikimedia Movement helps to achieve this objective?

This grant proposal will extend the work of the previous WikiCredibility Initiative campaign.

The objective here is to continue helping communities of new editors, readers, technologists and other ecosystem members who rely on Wikipedia for verified information, sourcing, understanding and creating better processes and frameworks for content creation and information provenance with the help of Wikimedians.

13. Describe your main strategies to achieve this objective?

Mapped activities and work will include:
  • Organize a series of workshops with targeted audiences (students, editors, technologists, internet platform policy professionals) on the topics such as:

a) Editing new articles b) Evaluate reliable sources c) Discussion of inclusivity of reliable sources guidelines among a spectrum of less represented communities (e.g. language, gender) d) Discussion of new tools and prototypes developed thanks to WikiCred microgrants

Continue to support organizers, trainers through acvitiy-specific micogrants.

14. Are you running any in-person events or activities?

No

15. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified content knowledge gaps?

Geography, Language, Important Topics (topics considered to be of impact or important in the specific context)

16. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or thematic focus.

Education, Climate Change and sustainability, Public Policy, Open Technology, Diversity

17. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select all categories that apply.

Geographic , Linguistic / Language, Digital Access

18. Please tell us more about your target participants.

In this "phase 2," will federate the organizing work and focus on language and regional specificities with existing and new partners including WMDC, WM Mexico, Wikimedians of the levant, Wikimedian academics at the University of Sydney, Arizona State and Wikimedian librarians that WikiCred has partnered with in the past.

Hacks/Hackers is home of the Credibility Coalition community where event and workshop participants may choose to remain active. Hacks/Hackers run community meetings, newsletters, a job board (newsletter), a community blog as well as additional subgrants for organizers on the topic of misinformation, information reliability and integrity to maintain engagement with and within its community members.

19. Do you have plans to work with other Wikimedia communities, groups or affiliates in your country, or in other countries, to implement this proposal?

Yes

19a. If yes, please tell us about these connections online and offline and how you have let Wikimedia communities know about this proposal.

- Wikimedia DC board members are advisors on this project.
  • Hacks/Hackers is working with WNCA North America steering committee towards an in-person 2022 conference (early-stage planning).
  • Hacks/Hackers ran/runs continuously webinars with Wikimedia Mexico and organizers from affiliate smaller groups.
  • Hacks/Hackers has funded WPWP contests in 2020 and 2021 for Arabic language content and plans to continue its involvement with Wikimedians in the North Africa/West Asia region

19b. If no, please tell us the reasons why it has not been possible to make these connections.

N/A

20. Will you be working with other external non-Wikimedian partners to implement this proposal?

Yes

20a. If yes, please describe these partnerships.

- Global Voices online through the Rising Voices project
  • Arizona State University
  • Internet Archive

20a. If yes, indicate sharing of resources from these partners (in kind support, grants, donations, payments).

- Network effect to recruit participants, engage new participants in webinars, disseminate the call for participation, workshop proposals
  • In-kind support (volunteer labour hours), curriculum development

21. Please tell us how your organization is structured.

Hacks/Hackers is organized as a 501(c)(3) with a board: https://www.hackshackers.com/about/organizers/ with a lawyer and financial advisor.

Hacks/Hackers engages directly its community members in its projects through paid contracts. The labour and working hours budgeted for this project may be pooled in from/with other similar partnerships building and workshops organizing work on other similar projects via the special project manager and signatory on this grant proposal.

22. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?

The special project manager for this project will be Ahmed Medien. He will be the main partnerships and relationships manager as well as define the scope of work during the project duration. Ahmed Medien previously managed the WikiCred grants, call for applications, funds disbursement and projects success.

Jennifer Lee, director of the Credibility Coalition will continue to advise on this project.

SJ Klein and Kevin Payravi, WMDC board members will continue to advise on this project as well.

Ahmed Medien will report to advisors on work development and will work with the financial advisor to provide detailed and accurate financial reporting of the funds disbursed, utilized during the project.

23. Please state if your organization or group has a Strategic Plan that can help us further understand your proposal. You can also upload it here.  

No

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation[edit]

24. What do you hope to learn from this proposal?

We want to continue to realise the core mission of Hacks/Hackes which is to foster and create space for professionals with diverse backgrounds to engage in the challenge of disinformation and credible/authentic information online, on online communications systems.

We want to address targeted goals and questions such as is there a standardized format for engaging different diverse communities on the topic of credibility and reliable information that we can pass on to organizers? Can we assemble a template-like curriculum for teaching Wikipedia rules and processes to professionals who are tasked with creating the same frameworks on other platforms and technologies? Can we engage a larger community of technologists into the conversation around credible information, the offerings of wikimedia projects for the overall information ecosystem?

Core Metrics[edit]

25. Enter a description of the metric and a number in the target field. If the metric does not apply to you, enter N/A for not applicable.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics Description Target
Number of participants We aim to have several workshops organized through several Wikipedia chapters, communities and partner organizations. We want these workshops, webinars to be engaging for all participants and we believe 20-30 is an ideal number of participants for an engaging conversation, asking good questions and answers.

Since the workshops will target different communities. 20-30 is the number of new participants.

Hacks/Hackers has ties and contacts with participants who attended more than 10 webinars on the topic of credibility and wikimedia projects, knowledge gaps and integrity that we can pull from as well as other cross-discipline audiences.

20
Number of editors One project of WikiCred added 15 new editors to the platforms who each created a page for a local newspaper from their hometown or of interest in the Northwest of the United States.

We aim to continue to increase the number of new editors who will engage with this projects' conversations on credibility and reliable information and sources with improved citations, new multimedia content.

50
Number of organizers We aim to continue to engage with the organizers from the WikiCredibility Initiative first campaign and open up a process of open collaborations for organizers within the Wikimedia movement. In 2020, we engaged and funded the projects of a total of 24 organizers.

We aim to achieve a comparable number of 25-30.

30
Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project Description Target
Wikipedia Wikipedia, WikiCommons, Wikidata, Wikisource.

In 2020, WikiCred supports WPWP and Wiki Loves Africa as an incentive to improve content usage on Igbo, Swahili, Yoruba, Luganda, Hausa, Shona, Amharic, Lingala and Afrikaans.

The overall campaign garnered more than 90,000 edits.

In 2020, we supported a campaign to improve articles about black-owned newspapers in the USA and the Caribbean as a means to contribute to the authenticity of news and information sourcing from community newspapers.

In 2020, we supported the wikiproject the Vaccine Safety project by curating information portals, content and articles that also need to be improved.

In 2021, we supported the photo campaign for the Arabic language Wikipedia.

We aim to continue to identify larger themes of interest and improve and create new content in the topics of climate science, health and thematical areas that contribute to increased trust in media institutions and the journalism ecosystem

100
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A

25a. If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation. (optional)

Other metrics that we will collect are new organizations engaged in the field of media literacy and open-knowledge ecosystem that will choose to interact with this project and the Hacks/Hackers, Credibility Coalition host of projects and affiliate communities.

26. What other information will you be collecting to learn about the impact of your work? (optional)

We will create a basic framework of "capacity building" with partner organizations and individual organizers who will collaborate with Hacks/Hackers under the umbrella of this project either as trainers, speakers and offer them logistical support to run additional events.

By end of the project we will measure whether the organizations, organizers we support have or will have a standing organizing team around the topic of credibility and knowledge integrity on open knowledge platforms and if there a continuation of engagement beyond the project's duration.

27. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected?

We will refer to tools developed by the community to track metrics such as the number of edits.

For other project-wide relevant metrics, we use project management tools such as Trello to track specific details for each milestone as well as other database tools such as airtable and spreadsheets for data entry, management, extraction and analysis.

28. How do you hope to share these results so that others can learn from them?

Create a video of our experience, Make a short presentation of the experience

Financial Proposal[edit]

29. What is the amount you are requesting from WMF? Please provide this amount in your local currency.

100000 USD

30. What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?

100000 USD

31. & 32. Please provide a budget for the amount of funding requested.

Budget $100,000

G&A 25%

Staffing $10,000.00 Sub-grants $75,000.00 G&A $15,000.00 Total $100,000.00

33. What do you do to make sure there is a good management of funds?

Hacks/Hackers maintains a financial management system that includes internal controls and grant management standards. It is the policy of Hacks/Hackers to ensure segregation of responsibilities with regards to all aspects of the financial operations, and no individual staff member has the ability to initiate, approve, and review the same action. Hacks/Hackers takes care to ensure oversight of the operations of all grant supported activities.

Month-end financial reports are provided to project managers and the board of directors for managerial review. Project managers monitor program objectives and performance throughout the life of a grant cycle. Hacks/Hackers maintains secure accounting records that contain information pertaining to grant or subgrant awards, authorizations, obligations, unobligated balances, assets, expenditures, income and interest, and are supported by source documentation.

34. How will you contribute towards creating a supportive environment for participants using the UCOC and Friendly Space Policy?

We have developed a code of ethics and participation for all Credibility Coalition and Hacks/Hackers related projects that we abide by.

Credibility Coalition Code of Ethics and Participation

https://github.com/credcoalition/community-site/wiki/Code-of-Ethics-and-Participation

35. Please use this optional space to upload any documents that you feel are important for further understanding your proposal.

Other public document(s):

Final message[edit]

By submitting your proposal/funding request you agree that you are in agreement with the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and the Universal Code of Conduct.

36. We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

Feedback[edit]