Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Say-It-Right:Wikipedia as a tool for preventing mispronunciation of names (ID: 21930417)

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Applicant Details[edit]

Please provide your main Wikimedia Username.

OtuNwachinemere

Please provide the Usernames of people related to this proposal.

OtuNwachinemere, Hesyomi, Timzy D'Great, Accuratecy051 Albertoblaq

Organization

N/A

Are you a member of any Wikimedia affiliate or group, including informal groups like Wiki Fan Clubs, emerging language communities, not recognized Wikimedia groups etc.? Please list them all.

Wikimedia Igbo User Group Commons Photographers User Group Wikimedia Nigeria User Group

Grant Proposal[edit]

M. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.

Say-It-Right:Wikipedia as a tool for preventing mispronunciation of names

Q. Indicate if it is a local, international, or regional proposal and if it involves several countries? (optional)

Local

Q2. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.

R. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has.

1. What is the change that you are trying to bring about and why is this important.

Deliberate names mispronunciation is often considered a micragression.

https://pavementpieces.com/african-students-says-mispronouncing-their-names-is-a-form-of-racism/ https://metro.co.uk/2021/02/05/the-mispronunciation-of-african-names-can-cause-lasting-damage-13999360/ https://standard.asl.org/18485/features/name-pronunciations-leave-lasting-impact-on-individuals/

Unfortunately, names of African origins suffer a lot from this type of microaggression so much so that LinkedIn had to introduce a name pronunciation feature. Wikipedia also has this feature but it isn't often used. This project aims to record pronunciations of names of individuals with live articles on Wikipedia to be stored as media files on Commons and utilised on the corresponding Wikipedia pages using the audio template.

2. Describe your main approaches or strategies to achieve these changes and why you think they will be effective.

We will work as a team to create awareness as well as build capacity of community members on how Wikipedia can be a potent tool for preventing mispronunciation of names. There will be a list of names and participants will be selected to represent the various existing Nigerian languages. I am certain this will work because i have applied same in a similar but smaller scale version of the project previously funded with a micro-grant from the Igbo Wikimedia user group. What we are trying to do now, this version, is to scale up by widening the scope and applying learnings from a previously successful project which focused mainly on Igbo names.

3. What are the activities you will be developing and delivering as part of these approaches or strategies?

We will organise online trainings focused on learning how to use Spell4wiki app and Audacity to record audio for Wikimedia Commons followed by online edit-a-thons to record names and link the recordings to their corresponding Wikipedia articles. There will be a list of names sorted into their various languages. The recordings will be done by indigenous speakers of the language each name belongs to. This is to ensure we have the most accurate pronunciation of the name. All recordings will be sorted into categories. The audio will be inspected to ensure it is of good quality and accurate pronunciation after which it will be linked to its corresponding article on Wikipedia.

4. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign or event? If so, please select the relevant campaign below. If so, please select all the relevant campaigns from the list below. If "other", please state which.

Not applicable

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

User: OtuNwachinemere - Lead project coordinator, Trainer and experienced Wikipedian User: Hesyomi - Quality check for audio User: Timzy D'Great - Trainer, recording audio using Spell4wiki and Audacity User: Accuratecy051- Quality check Wikipedia links User: Albertoblaq - Training and Quality chec

All members of the team participated in the previous, micro-grant funded project and have agreed to volunteer their time and resources for this project.

6. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified CONTENT knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.

Language, Cultural background, ethnicity, religion, racial

6.1 In a few sentences, explain how your work is specifically addressing this content gap (or Knowledge inequity) to ensure a greater representation of knowledge.

The content generated from this project will serve as pronunciation guide for names of a specific African heritage and its diverse ethnicities and will be usable within and outside Wikimedia projects.

Deliberate wrong pronunciation of names has been proven to be a form of racial discrimination. Hopefully, Wikipedia can be seen as serving as a effective tool to fight this discrimination.

7. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or THEMATIC focus. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work and explain the rationale for identifying these themes.

Advocacy, Diversity

8. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities?

Ethnic/racial/religious or cultural background, Linguistic / Language

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?

The target participants are members of the Wikimedia community who create, contribute and improve content on Wikipedia. Attention will be given to minority ethnic groups who do not have any formally registered wiki groups representing them at the moment.

There is already an existing WhatsApp group from a previous successful project and new participants will simply get absorbed into the group and all coordinations during and after the project life cycle will be communicated thereon.

10. In what ways are you actively seeking to contribute towards creating a safer, supportive, more equitable environment for participants?

The Wikimedia friendly space policy and UCoC will be strictly adhered to. There will be room for every participant to express individual opinions that align with project objectives. Also, because uploading media files would require increased internet consumption, data subsidy to cushion this expense will be arranged for.

11. Please tell us about how you have let your Wikimedia communities know about the planned activities and this proposal. Use this space to describe the processes you carried out to make the community more involved in planning this proposal. Please link the on-wiki community discussion(s) around the proposals.

I have discussed with all the proposed trainers and they have all agreed to volunteer for the project. I have also informed the Nigerian Wikimedia community thus : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_User_Group_Nigeria#Nigerian_names_Pronunciation_project

12. Are you aware of other Rapid Fund proposals in your local group, community, or region that are being submitted and that align with your proposed project?

No

If yes:

12.1 Did you explore the possibility of doing a joint proposal with other leaders in your group?

N/A

12.2 How will this joint proposal allow you to have better results?

N/A

13. Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedia partners to implement this proposal? Required.

No

13.1 Please describe these partnerships and what motivates the potential partner to be part of the proposal and how they add value to your work.

14. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select a maximum of THREE options that most apply.

Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Invest in Skills and Leadership Development

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation[edit]

15. What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?

I look forward to creating awareness and seeing Wikimedians utilise Wikipedia as a reference resource not only for textual and graphic information about indigenous data but also as a reference for correct pronunciation of indigenous names and a tool to fight the micro-aggression that is deliberate name mispronunciation.

16. Based on these learning questions, what is the information or data you need to collect to answer these questions? Please register this information (as metric description) in the following spaces provided.

Main Open Metrics Data
Main Open Metrics	Description	Target
Number of Participants	Including experienced editors	30
Wikimedia Commons uploads	Number of audio name pronunciation files to be uploaded to Commons	1000
Wikipedia Articles linked with audio	N/A	800
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A

17. Core quantitative metrics.

Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics	Description	Target
Number of participants		30
Number of editors		30
Number of organizers

Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project	Description	Target
Wikimedia Commons	Audio recordings of names using Spell4Wiki	1000
Wikipedia	Wikipedia articles that will have audio names linked to it	800
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A
N/A	N/A	N/A

17.1 If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation.

18. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support.

I will use https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org. Also, I would appreciate suggestions on tools to measure media usage across Wikis. Thanks

Financial Proposal[edit]

19. & 19.1 What is the amount you are requesting from Wikimedia Foundation? Please provide this amount in your local currency.

1141850 NGN

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

2730 USD

20. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X4dR5q4Ad8yAQzd_ktKEwSfmdeNOVOYpcDruf2EFIyA/edit?usp=sharing

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).

Endorse