Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/2024 National Book Awards and Nobel Prizes WikiPortraits Coverage (ID: 22741191)
This is an automatically generated Meta-Wiki page. The page was copied from Fluxx, the grantmaking web service of Wikimedia Foundation where the user has submitted their application. Please do not make any changes to this page because all changes will be removed after the next update. Use the discussion page for your feedback. The page was created by CR-FluxxBot.
Applicant Details
[edit]- Main Wikimedia username. (required)
jaydixit
- Organization
N/A
- If you are a group or organization leader, board member, president, executive director, or staff member at any Wikimedia group, affiliate, or Wikimedia Foundation, you are required to self-identify and present all roles. (required)
I'm a group leader of an informal Wikimedia group.
- Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)
Jay Dixit (user:jaydixit) is a WikiPortraits photographer who has covered the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, SXSW in Austin, and the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy—all in 2024. He has shot WikiPortraits of Conan O’Brien, Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, and Judd Apatow, among many other notable individuals. His photographs have collectively garnered well over 2 million views across various Wikipedias.
Main Proposal
[edit]- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.
2024 National Book Awards and Nobel Prizes WikiPortraits Coverage
- 2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.
2024-10-31 - 2025-01-31
- 4. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
International (more than one country across continents or regions) New York City, United States for the National Book Awards. Stockholm, Sweden for the Nobel Prizes. Oslo, Norway for the Nobel Peace Prizes.
- 5. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign, project, or event? If so, please select the relevant project or campaign. (required)
Other (please specify) WikiPortraits
- 6. What is the change you are trying to bring? What are the main challenges or problems you are trying to solve? Describe this change or challenges, as well as main approaches to achieve it. (required)
Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects prioritize and require using freely-licensed images. This presents a challenge when it comes to photos of notable people, because most published photos of notable people are press images with full copyright and non-permissive licenses. This results in a significant number of biographies with poor quality or no photos. This challenge is quite notable in itself, having been covered by various publications including the New York Times in their 2009 article, "Wikipedia May Be a Font of Facts, but It’s a Desert for Photos". While that article was written almost a decade ago, the problem persists, so much so that @badwikiphotos is an account on Instagram. The English Wikipedia category, "Wikipedia requested images of people", has over 5,000 articles in it.
An effective way to gather freely-licensed photos of notable figures at-scale is to go to where they are. Gage Skidmore is particularly notable for publishing freely-licensed photos of celebrities at pop culture conventions and political events. German Wikipedia has been covering the Berlin Film Festival with its Berlinale-Projekt since 2017.
Indeed, our SXSW WikiPortraits Rapid Grant project added photos that were added to over 70 wikis and collectively viewed up to a 14 million views per month in our peak month so far, April 2024 (thanks in part to some movie premieres!). Our early self-financed Sundance 2024 WikiPortraits project adds an additional 1,000,000 or so views per month.
We've also covered the International Journalism Festival and Cannes Film Festivals where our subjects have included Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa; Meryl Streep; George Lucas; and many more.
The National Book Awards are an annual set of US literary awards that is counted among the world’s most prestigious literary prizes and attract some of the most influential writers of today. The award counts among its winners authors such as Hannah Arendt, W.H. Auden, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Marianne Moore, Flannery O’Connor, J.D. Salinger, and many more writers who have contributed to the American literary canon.
The Nobel Prizes are widely considered the world’s most prestigious awards, conferring awards on individuals who have been deemed to have benefited humankind the most in the year preceding. It awards 5 separate prizes annually across a variety of fields including Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. The first four have a ceremony which take place in Stockholm, Sweden. The Peace prize is given out in Oslo, Norway.
With this grant request, we will be subsidizing travel for housing for photographers and uploaders for taking and processing photos for Wikimedia Commons. WikiPortraits will help them obtain press credentials.
- 7. What are the planned activities? (required) Please provide a list of main activities. You can also add a link to the public page for your project where details about your project can be found. Alternatively, you can upload a timeline document. When the activities include partnerships, include details about your partners and planned partnerships.
For this project, we will take photos of two main groups at the 2024 National Book Awards and one group at the Nobel Prizes.
- Nominees to the National Book Awards, including those who have Wikipedia pages. We will write a program to quickly identify which people already have Wikipedia pages.
- Attendees to the National Book Awards who also have Wikipedia pages since a number of notable authors often attend even if they are not.
- Nobel Prize winners of Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Economics. (Note that the Nobel Peace Prizes take place the same day in Oslo, and we are debating if it makes sense to send someone there just for a photo of one individual or group.)
- 8. Describe your team. Please provide their roles, Wikimedia Usernames and other details. (required) Include more details of the team, including their roles, usernames, Wikimedia group, and whether they are salaried, volunteers, consultants/contractors, etc. Team members involved in the grant application need to be aware of their involvement in the project.
- Jay Dixit (User:Jaydixit): Jay has been a WikiPortraits photographer at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, SXSW in Austin and the International Journal Festival in Perugia, Italy. His photos include Conan O’Brien, Nick Kroll, Judd Apatow, Kirsten Dunst, Frank Oz, Frances Haugen, Nobel Peace Prize-winner Maria Ressa, Ray Kurzweil, and Vinod Khosla. PHOTOGRAPHER. VOLUNTEER.
- Harald Krichel (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Harald_Krichel) is a German professional photographer who has been an active Wikipedian since 2003, and has served as a member of the board at Wikimedia Deutschland. He has photographed the Berlin Film Festival for the last 6 years, and has attended other festivals in music or books such as the Frankfurt Book Fair, SWR3 New Pop Baden-Baden, Moers Festival, and the Rudolstadt Festival. He has also photographed portraits in the European Parliament, the Bundestag and several local German parliaments. PHOTOGRAPHER. VOLUNTEER.
- Frank Sun (User:Xfranksun): Frank Sun is a Brooklyn, New York-based professional photographer who is a foundational contributor to our WikiPortraits Project. Frank’s photographs have appeared in Interview Magazine, Marie Claire, and W Magazine. He has shot Miles Teller, Brie Larson, Scarlett Johansson, Gigi and Bella Hadid, Jeff Nichols, and Andre Agassi, among others. Frank has also attended Sundance Film Festival, SXSW in Austin, and Cannes Film Festival in France as a photographer for WikiPortraits, where he has shot Emma Stone, Chris Hemsworth, Anya Taylor-Joy, Aubrey Plaza, Lily Gladstone, Greta Gerwig and Francis Ford Coppola. PHOTOGRAPHER. VOLUNTEER.
- Kevin Payravi (User:SuperHamster): Kevin has contributed to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites since 2007, and is currently a co-organizer of WikiConference North America and Wiki Loves Monuments in the United States. He also serves on the Board of Wikimedia DC. He has served as a photographer for WikiPortraits at Sundance, SXSW, and Cannes. PHOTOGRAPHER. VOLUNTEER.
- Jennifer 8. Lee (en:User:Jenny8lee): Jenny is a co-founder of WikiPortraits, an adviser to the Wikimedia NYC, a founder of WikiCred project, film producer, and an adviser to SXSW Interactive. She is a volunteer for this project, but will help coordinate the logistics and the press credentials. LOGISTICS. VOLUNTEER.
(We might also be able to recruit a few more local photographers in New York City.)
- 9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities? (required)
There are two main target populations for this project:
- Notable individuals who have Wikipedia articles, particularly ones lacking a photo or need a better photo taken. The writers are often from communities that are commonly under-represented on Wikipedia photos, and the scientists could include a number of women.
- Editors of individual biography pages across all languages who are looking for photos of the subjects. Our WikiPortraits SXSW photos were used across over 70 language versions of Wikipedia with an estimated 14 million monthly views across all of them at peak in April 2024. These include ruwiki, hewiki, rowiki, nowiki, ukwiki, elwiki, viwiki, dewiki, itwiki, svwiki, kowiki, zhwiki, jawiki, arwiki, arzwiki among many others.
- 10. Does your project involve work with children or youth? (required)
No
- 10.1. Please provide a link to your Youth Safety Policy. (required) If the proposal indicates direct contact with children or youth, you are required to outline compliance with international and local laws for working with children and youth, and provide a youth safety policy aligned with these laws. Read more here.
N/A
- 11. How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community.
Given that WikiPortraits’ SXSW and Cannes 2024 photos were added on over 70 different language wikis, with a collective estimated 10 million monthly views in June 2024, we feel there is strong community demand for what WikiPortraits is adding.
WikiPortraits has a presence on the Wikimedia Commons, at Commons:WikiPortraits. We have also created a meta page to catalog related efforts called Wiki Covers Events and to share best practices. Among notable related efforts are the German Berlinale-Projekt.
Wiki Covers Events + the WikiPortraits initiative has also been discussed within the GLAM Global Telegram group, which has over 200 community members.
Last, at the Wikimedia Hackathon in Tallinn, Estonia, we discovered a number of affiliates and Wikipedians who were doing their own version of event coverage and thought it would be good to combine forces for resources such as scripts identifying speakers/performers/honorees with Wikipedia pages. As such we have reached out to partners in Wikimedia Canada for help in credentialing in TIFF, Wikimedia Deutscheland for their excellent volunteer photographers and Wikimedia Sverige for contacts at the Nobel Prizes.
Our origin story, for background: the WikiPortraits idea was originally the brainchild of Andrew Lih, a past Wikimedian Laureate, who presented on a Wikimedia panel at SXSW 2023 with WMF CEO Maryana Iskander. Andrew has done similar self-funded photography efforts and book festivals and comicons and saw the potential of SXSW for doing that on a larger scale. He has socialized this WikiPortraits idea in the GLAM Telegram group, as well as on Meta Wiki.
Jenny also discussed the idea at 2024 Wikimania in Singapore with Frank Schulenberg, who is the secretary of the Commons Photographers Users Group. He was so enthused that he decided to self-finance a trip to the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, and obtained an assignment letter from Nadee Gunasena at the WMF, which was submitted to the Sundance Film Festival press office by Jennifer. This then led to our SXSW 2024 WikiPortraits project, which has had its photos incorporated into 60 different wikis, and the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, which shot a number of global celebrities. We have also photographed the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, self-funded.
- 12. Does your proposal aim to work to bridge any of the content knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Cultural background, ethnicity, religion, racial
- 13. Does your proposal include any of these areas or thematic focus? Select one option that most applies to your work. (required)
Culture, heritage or GLAM
- 14. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background
- 15. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select one that most applies. (required)
Innovate in Free Knowledge
Learning and metrics
[edit]- 17. What do you hope to learn from your work in this project or proposal? (required)
This project — in conjunction with our film festival work at Sundance, SXSW, and Cannes film festivals in 2024 — is our first that emphasizes awards versus festivals.
It continues to build a repeatable and scalable template for experienced Wikimedia Commons photographers to get press credentials at well-established cultural awards events.
The Nobel Prizes may be the first where we have reached out to a wiki affiliate, Wikimedia Sverige, to get contacts for how to get credentialed. In most other cases, including film festivals, the credentialing process is explained on a website.
Our intent with this, as with our previous projects, is to elevate the Wikipedia presence at global-level cultural events.
Historically, volunteer Wikimedian photographers are not plugged into the media infrastructure that is built around credentials. Given the support of credentialing letters, we hope that the press office decisionmakers of these awards events will become more receptive to having Wikimedia photographers participate, as it only serves to amplify the cultural impact of their events across the many language wikis. This involves helping photographs build their portfolios to be submitted to the credentialing offices.
- 18. What are your Wikimedia project targets in numbers (metrics)? (required)
| Other Metrics | Target | Optional description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 50 | 50 targets who have Wikipedia pages or deserve one. |
| Number of editors | 5 | We have 3-4 photographers, 1-2 data upload people.
Our SXSW WikiPortraits photos were added to 70 wikis, we expect our Nobel Prizes to be similar while National Book Awards may be less since the authors, with the exception of the translation prize nominees, are primarily in English, and mostly come from the United States. |
| Number of organizers | 7 | 4 logistics organizers: Jay Dixit, Sara Komatsu, Jennifer 8. Lee, Kevin Payravi
3-4 additional photographers who will be organizing amongst themselves |
| Wikimedia project | Number of content created or improved |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 25 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 100 |
| Wikidata | |
| Wiktionary | |
| Wikisource | |
| Wikimedia Incubator | |
| Translatewiki | |
| MediaWiki | |
| Wikiquote | |
| Wikivoyage | |
| Wikibooks | |
| Wikiversity | |
| Wikinews | |
| Wikispecies | |
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
- Optional description for content contributions.
- 19. Do you have any other project targets in numbers (metrics)? (optional)
Yes
| Main Open Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| photos | 100+ photos of people uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, which will be used in different language wikis | 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 |
- 20. What tools would you use to measure each metrics? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support. (required)
We would utilize a tool like BaGLAMa to measure how many pageviews our portraits receive over time through their inclusion on Wikipedia articles and other Wikimedia projects.
Financial proposal
[edit]- 21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
- 22. and 22.1. What is the amount you are requesting for this proposal? Please provide the amount in your local currency. (required)
5000 USD
- 22.2. Convert the amount requested into USD using the Oanda converter. This is done only to help you assess the USD equivalent of the requested amount. Your request should be between 500 - 5,000 USD.
5000 USD
- We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
Yes
Endorsements and Feedback
[edit]Please add endorsements and feedback to the grant discussion page only. Endorsements added here will be removed automatically.
Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:
- Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
- Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
- Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
- Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
- Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).