Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Research Fund/Visualizing sustainability and climate change on Wikipedia: a research in the field of information design to understand knowledge gaps, monitor and evaluate content and support Wikimedia movement editors and organizers

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statusnot funded
Visualizing sustainability and climate change on Wikipedia: a research in the field of information design to understand knowledge gaps, monitor and evaluate content and support Wikimedia movement editors and organizers
start and end datesJuly 2023 - July 2024
budget (USD)49,500 USD
fiscal year2022-23
applicant(s)• Iolanda Pensa, Evelin Heidel and Giovanni Profeta

Overview[edit]

Applicant(s)

Iolanda Pensa, Evelin Heidel and Giovanni Profeta

Affiliation or grant type

Institute of Design, SUPSI University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland; Wikimedistas de Uruguay; Institute of Design, SUPSI University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland

Author(s)

Iolanda Pensa, Evelin Heidel and Giovanni Profeta

Wikimedia username(s)

Dr. Iolanda Pensa - principal investigator - User:iopensa

Evelin Heidel - domain expert - User:Scann (WDU)

Dr. Giovanni Profeta - designer - User:G.prof

Project title

Visualizing sustainability and climate change on Wikipedia: a research in the field of information design to understand knowledge gaps, monitor and evaluate content and support Wikimedia movement editors and organizers

Research proposal[edit]

Description[edit]

Description of the proposed project, including aims and approach. Be sure to clearly state the problem, why it is important, why previous approaches (if any) have been insufficient, and your methods to address it.

Visualizing Sustainability and Climate Change is an applied research project in the field of design meant to visualize the status of Wikipedia articles related to sustainability and climate change, understand knowledge gaps, monitor and evaluate content and support Wikimedia movement editors and organizers. The overall goal of the project is to provide the Wikimedia communities with a visual tool which can support them in assessing overall quality of articles and driving content campaigns to fill the gaps and improve articles’ quality.

The project relies on previous research about the use of the visualization of Wikipedia data to analyze the content produced by online communities and it is based on the experience by Iolanda Pensa and Giovanni Profeta of the visual tool https://itwiki-scuola-italiana.toolforge.org/ (2020/2021): it adds languages, it improves its design (in particular the analysis of the template messages), it includes a landscape of the articles (an overall presentation of the articles and how they changed over time) and it automatizes the data gathering for different sets of articles.

Practically the project identifies a set of articles in multiple languages, gathers feedback and needs from the communities on the visual tool through a set of two surveys, it designs and develops the interactive prototype and it tests it with the communities to validate it.

The visual tool is designed to allow Wikimedia movement editors and organizers to access data and to use data to support their activities (i.e. prioritizing articles, using existing content from other languages, identifying consistent issues, monitoring changes among articles, communicating to stakeholders projects results and campaigns); we expect the tool to foster collaborations among multilingual communities and partners, to provide easy and relatable ways to document and communicate the impact that the Wikimedia communities are having on informing about a specific topics, and to understand were more capacity is needed for Wikimedia communities to better document sustainability and climate change.

The project is led by SUPSI in collaboration with Wikimedistas de Uruguay and it involves Wikiprojects on sustainability and climate change. For further information please refer to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Visualizing_sustainability_and_climate_change.

Personnel[edit]

  • Federico Benvenuti - community manager - User:Adert
  • Valerio Bozzolan - technical advisor (volunteer) - User:Valerio_Bozzolan
  • The project involves Wikiprojects on sustainability and climate change and volunteers and institutions engaged in those topics.

Budget[edit]

Approximate amount requested in USD.

49,500 USD

Budget Description

Briefly describe what you expect to spend money on (specific budgets and details are not necessary at this time).

The budget supports the costs of a community manager, a designer, a developer and a coordinator. The budget includes 15% overhead.

Please find a draft of the budget here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HngGh0ccOaWzRw8mrdoJucb0U2Te73g_biVoNsnOnzQ/edit?usp=sharing

Impact[edit]

Address the impact and relevance to the Wikimedia projects, including the degree to which the research will address the 2030 Wikimedia Strategic Direction and/or support the work of Wikimedia user groups, affiliates, and developer communities. If your work relates to knowledge gaps, please directly relate it to the knowledge gaps taxonomy.

  • Innovate in Free Knowledge (Create tools and partnerships to facilitate bringing content from other data and knowledge bases to our projects): by using information design and visual tool to support the communities
  • Identify Topics for Impact: by contributing to the topics of sustainability and climate change which are already considered by the communities "topics for impact"
  • Coordinate Across Stakeholders: by facilitating the cooperation among institutions and individuals working on sustainability and climate change
  • Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt: by providing the communities with a tool to monitor and evaluate their impact
  • Invest in Skills and Leadership Development: by allowing communities to access and use data analysis

Dissemination[edit]

Plans for dissemination.

The project will be presented to the Wikipedia community through the Wikimedia groups working in the fields of Sustainability and Climate Change. The whole project will be documented through a Wikimedia Meta page and the tool will be presented through a public online event.

Furthermore, a paper regarding the design and development of the visual tool will be published in a journal about digital humanities.

Past Contributions[edit]

Prior contributions to related academic and/or research projects and/or the Wikimedia and free culture communities. If you do not have prior experience, please explain your planned contributions.

Iolanda Pensa and Giovanni Profeta:

Iolanda Pensa is chair of Wikimedia Italia and chair of the Wikimania Steering Commitee. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Iopensa

Evelin Heidel is a domain expert in the field of sustainability and climate change.


I agree to license the information I entered in this form excluding the pronouns, countries of residence, and email addresses under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. I understand that the decision to fund this Research Fund application, the application itself along with all the information entered by my in this form excluding the pronouns, country of residences, and email addresses of the personnel will be published on Wikimedia Foundation Funds pages on Meta-Wiki and will be made available to the public in perpetuity. To make the results of your research actionable and reusable by the Wikimedia volunteer communities, affiliates and Foundation, I agree that any output of my research will comply with the WMF Open Access Policy. I also confirm that I have read the privacy statement and agree to abide by the WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes