Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Open Speaks:Building Wikimedia Project-Specific Media from Film Archives (ID: 22766407)
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Applicant Details
[edit]- Main Wikimedia username. (required)
Psubhashish
- 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)
N/A
- Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)
Main Proposal
[edit]- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.
Open Speaks: Building Wikimedia Project-Specific Media from Film Archives
- 2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.
2024-09-30 - 2024-12-30
- 4. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
International (more than one country across continents or regions) India, Nepal
- 5. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign, project, or event? If so, please select the relevant project or campaign. (required)
Wikipedia Asian Month
- 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)
Through this initiative, I want to bring attention to Indigenous and other low-resourced languages on Wikimedia projects. I will do this by using high-quality archived media in such languages that were unused or partially used in my original documentary films and other projects but are extremely valuable for Wikimedia projects. These privately archived recordings are unedited and lack subtitles, restricting their accessibility and other uses even if published.
The biggest challenge various low-resourced language communities face is the lack of funding for their languages' use, sustainment, and growth. Such languages also suffer on Wikipedia and its sister projects with poor representation. As Wikipedia is highly regarded by readers worldwide as a global and reliable information source, speakers are discouraged from finding the poor state of Wikipedia articles about their already vulnerable languages. Languages are beyond just written information about those languages in Wikipedia articles. Audiovisual language documentation fully represents languages and elaborates on how speakers speak languages naturally in different contexts and environments. Wikipedia (and Wikimedia projects) represent the pluralism and diversity of our world, and their content must reflect this. We have often seen how content close to people’s hearts, such as languages discovered in web searches, inspires people to translate and share widely. In a new digital economy of emerging content creators, Wikipedia is often referred to proudly for asserting historically repressed subjects.
I want to challenge this status quo of poor representation of audiovisual documentation of low-resourced languages on Wikipedia articles via Wikimedia Commons. As I elaborated on the issues and challenges using the Open Filmmaking framework at WikiConference India 2023 and later on a Diff post, most documentary films use a small percentage of recorded media. Documentaries also often reduce the linguistic details by focusing on a set narrative. Independent films with less funding do not have the privilege to release the unused media publicly. Even if they did, media without subtitles are inaccessible. Needless to say, the valuable labour, especially of language speakers, goes in vain despite the recorded unpublished media having a real-world need. Ten of my films have suffered this way. While I successfully convinced funders for Creative Commons license use, including the National Geographic Society, over 10 hours of recorded interviews in over ten languages are unpublished. On the contrary, Wikipedia articles about those languages do not include audio or video media. These issues aside, private media can be lost for many reasons. For instance, I lost 25% of recorded media in multiple Indigenous languages from a one-year documentary project.
I want to address the abovementioned issues by collaboratively creating accessible audio-visual media specifically for Wikimedia projects. As a long-term Wikimedian with ADHD and a background in filmmaking, my journey is at the intersection of open knowledge, accessibility and media. I will do this by identifying native speakers, language experts and activists fluent in languages poorly represented on Wikimedia projects, identifying suitable recordings from my archive, subtitling in English and/or the language of a target Wikipedia, and uploading the files to Wikimedia Commons. Since I own the recordings’s copyright, I will use a CC BY-SA 4.0 license to comply with Wikimedia projects. Though I see a larger scope for more languages, I will focus on four–five languages that are repressed widely and extremely ill-represented on Wikimedia projects, considering the short duration of this project. I do plan to expand this project progressively going forward.
Languages in my archive and their overall status quo: Kusunda (near-extinct; 1 native fluent speaker and 20-30 new learners in Nepal; 1 min partially accessible video by me on Wikipedia; 1h 20min recording in my private archive), Lambadi - Andhra Pradesh variant (2M native speakers; no Wikipedia audio/video; 16min in my archive), Jaunpuri (vulnerable; no Wikipedia audio/video; 74min recording in my archive), Jaunsari (endangered; 136K native speakers; 1 short inaccessible video on Wikipedia; 18 min recording in my archive), Bangani (vulnerable; 12K native speakers; 1 short inaccessible video on Wikipedia; 29 min recording in my archive) Bonda (threatened; 9K native speakers; short partially accessible 1:27 min video by me on Wikipedia; 1hrs recording in my archive), Ho (vulnerable; no Wikipedia audio/video; potential future Wikipedia; 4hrs recording in my archive); Balesoria (medium-resourced dialect; 231K native speakers; 2 min video on Wikipedia; 58min recording in my archive).
- 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.
I plan to conduct five broader activities: a) identify and onboard language speakers, activists, or experts (month 1), b) identify the recordings best suitable for Wikipedia articles/Wikimedia projects (month 1-2), c) subtitle those recordings (month 2–4), and d) edit (month 4-5), and e) publish (month 6) on Wikimedia Commons and use in Wikipedia/other Wikimedia projects.
a. Since 2014, I have collaborated with multiple Indigenous and other low-resource language speakers for documentaries and other language documentation projects. While they are very fluent in native languages, they are also bi/multilingual, which helps capture a very high level of linguistic details during subtitling. These experts also ensure wider dissemination of language material within their communities, which is the larger purpose of my work—giving the media back to the community who own their linguistic heritage. I plan to identify and onboard experts from a roster (see Marginalized Community Council that I founded in 2021 to build a language expert cohort: https://theofdn.org/activities/marginalized-community-council/) as my first activity.
b. Secondly, the selected experts and I will go through my film archives to identify media suitable for Wikipedia articles and Wikimedia projects. We will use a reduction framework (best recordings in archive, most relevant content within the archive for Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects, specific recordings capturing most information) to select the audio/video files. Video file type will precede audio, as most average mobile and desktop users prefer.
c. Third, the experts and I will subtitle the videos. While almost all the languages in my archive lack their own writing systems, we will translate them into English or another dominant language to encourage widespread translation.
d. Lastly, We will edit the media meaningfully—remove unwanted portions while keeping the cohesiveness and emotions intact—without jarring the final output. I have often noticed that the experts decide this best, and such decisions are best made during the subtitle creation. Edited videos and subtitles will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and included in English or other Wikipedia articles and any other relevant Wikimedia projects.
- 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.
Language experts:
1. Uday Raj Aaley (Kusunda-language lexicographer and researcher; I have collaborated with him for National Geographic-awarded documentary Gyani Maiya played an important role in reviving this near-extinct language)
2. Ganesh Birua (Ho-language activist, Wikimedian and former collaborator for a research project)
3. Gobardhan Panda (Bonda-language expert, lexicographer and author; I have collaborated with him for National Geographic-awarded documentary Remosam)
4. Taukeer Alam (Van Gujjari language expert, citizen ornithologist and conservationist; I had interviewed him for the award-winning documentary MarginalizedAadhaar and later advised for his language conservation project)
5. Subhashish Panigrahi (myself; I will volunteer without any fee for my native tongue Baleswari Odia)
Subtitle editing; audio/video editing: I will either outsource or provide professional service for this
Project lead: Subhashish Panigrahi (myself; I will volunteer to coordinate the overall project, to upload the files on Wikimedia Commons, and to include in Wikipedia articles/other relevant Wikimedia project pages.)
Volunteer Advisors:
1. R. Ashwani Banjan Murmu (User:R Ashwani Banjan Murmu; Santali-language Wikimedian and long-time collaborator; I have worked closely with him on several projects, including organising the first ever Santali Wikipedia workshop in India, creating a Creative Commons-awarded translation project and a book archiving project)
2. Chinmayee Mishra (User:Chinmayee Mishra; long-term fellow Wikimedian in my home Odia-Wikipedia community and collaborator on multiple on-wiki projects; Chinmayee is also the recent diversity conference organiser)
3. Jon Harald Søby (User:Jon Harald Søby; Norwegian Wikimedian and co-founder, Language Diversity Hub -- I have been collaborating with Jon and others during Wikimania 2018 in Stockholm, community discussions online later which led to creating LDH)
- 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)
The focus languages will be Kusunda, Ho, Bonda, Van Gujjari, and Baleswari, and the native speakers will be the primary participants. The language experts are already active as activists within each language community; they will bridge this project and the community, informing and discussing the project before the beginning. During the project, we will convene regularly to use the OpenSpeaks frameworks (https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/OpenSpeaks) in practice, and they will contribute to improving this open framework so that other activists can learn from it and use it. Each expert will choose discourse modes that make sense in their community context. We will document and improve OpenSpeaks on Wikiversity so that the learnings are widely available for Wikimedians and language activists. After completing the project, we will inform the language speakers about OpenSpeaks and the language recordings so they can access and use them. The experts will be the frontline bridges post activities to engage the community, and just like my prior engagements, I will continue collaborating with the community's post activities.
- 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.
As mentioned earlier, I have been in constant touch with the respective communities. Since the production of Gyani Maiya, my film in the Kusunda language, Uday and I have been in touch, have written an article about the experience and have been discussing for future collaborations. He has also helped take the film to the Kusunda community. I have been in constant touch with the Ho community, being involved in training, mentoring and collaborating on other projects, including a research project on web content monetisation in 2021. I also have been helping with their foundational natural language processing (NLP) resource building. Furthermore, a renowned Indigenous educator and scholar advised me to publish portions of the unpublished film media agreeing with the issue I have mentioned—documentaries reduce the linguistic details by focusing on a narrative. I collaborated with Gobardhan Panda from 2018 until 2021 during the production and publication of Remosam, a documentary in the Bonda language. Though we have not managed to work again together, we have continued our discussion related to the Bonda and Gutob languages. I also helped archive his book Remosam. Taukeer Alam is a fluent native speaker of the severely endangered and ill-recorded Van Gujjari language, whose interviews I partially lost due to a hardware crash. He invited me to advise his language conservation project. Similarly, I have stayed in contact with many communities and leaders, knowing what they have been working on, sharing with them media or advice that can be useful in their ongoing work, contributing to their work, and finding ways to collaborate further. The challenges I have cited above are mostly based on constant and ongoing community interactions.
Besides the above, I have been working, researching and publishing about low- and medium-resourced languages. Since 2017, I have been building the OpenSpeaks project to help activists document Indigenous and low-resourced languages as audio and video. I co-facilitated the Rising Voices Indigenous activist training program, and OpenSpeaks was used for the Wikimedia-awarded Oral Culture Transcription Toolkit.
- 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)
Linguistic / Language
- 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)
How do do improving Wikipedia entries related to Indigenous and low-resourced languages and speakers with audiovisual recordings contribute to long-term linguistic assertion?
How audio-visual linguistic resources help language activists?
How open knowledge projects like Wikipedia help low-resource languages and communities
- 18. What are your Wikimedia project targets in numbers (metrics)? (required)
| Other Metrics | Target | Optional description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 40 | 5 language experts and another 35 participants during community engagements. |
| Number of editors | 6 | There are already five Wikimedians involved (2 in project team and 3 as advisors) and one new Wikimedian will be from the language expert community. This is a conservative estimate while our goal will be to bring more Wikimedia editors from the community. |
| Number of organizers | 5 | Five language experts (mentioned earlier in question #8), including two Wikimedians |
| Wikimedia project | Number of content created or improved |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 10 |
| Wikimedia Commons | 30 |
| Wikidata | 20 |
| Wiktionary | |
| Wikisource | |
| Wikimedia Incubator | 1 |
| Translatewiki | |
| MediaWiki | |
| Wikiquote | |
| Wikivoyage | |
| Wikibooks | |
| Wikiversity | |
| Wikinews | |
| Wikispecies | |
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
- Optional description for content contributions.
Uploaded files on Wikimedia Commons will improve language and speaker community-related Wikipedia articles and Wikidata entries.
- 19. Do you have any other project targets in numbers (metrics)? (optional)
No
| Main Open Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 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)
1. Programs & Events Dashboard 2. Quarry for file, Wikidata and Wikipedia entry measurement
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)
6892.62 CAD
- 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.
4985.69 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).