Grants:Project/Rapid/UG NWR-Hist/Aerial photography equipment

statusfunded

Rapid Grants

Aerial photography equipment for North-West Russia Wiki-Historians UG

Since the October 2020 North-West Russia Wiki-historians use drone to make aerial photographs of different notable objects in our regions, but we don't have one, so we needed to rent it or lent from friends. Our goal is to have our own drone.

targetCommons

start date10 November

end date10 November

budget (local currency)140,873.22 ₽

budget (USD)1,937.56 $ US$1,975.51

grant typeGroup

grantee• Красный

contact(s)• nik-bulykinmail.ru• catherine-yesmail.ru

organization (if applicable)• North-West Russia Wiki-Historians User Group

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Review your report

Project Goal

Briefly explain what are you trying to accomplish with this project, or what do you expect will change as a result of this grant. Example goals include, "recruit new editors", "add high quality content", or "train existing editors on a specific skill".

Since the October 2020 North-West Russia Wiki-historians use drone to make aerial photographs of different notable objects in our regions, but we don't have one, so we needed to rent it or lent from friends. In less than a year more than 500 pictures and 2 videos were made. The main problems of not having our own drone were:

1. High costs of drone renting in Russia (around 3500 ₽/50 $ per day) also you need to left 50-70% of its price as a deposit that is not often available.
2. Need to plan for a longer period about for what day we'll need a drone, what is incompatible with 50% of our photowalks that are rather spontaneous. Even if we lent drone from friends it also needs planning for 3-5 days.

Our goal is to have our own drone. Since October 2020 two of UG members learned how to use it and we're planning to teach more to give our subdivision in Petrozavodsk and members in other locations an opportunity to make high quality aerial photos. These type of photos usually are more informative than ground ones, also North-West Russia contains a big number of notable objects located on islands or in swamps, so not reachable on feet; drone can solve this problem.

Speaking of widely known status of a foreign agent, we insist that it works only if the grant recipient performs in political activity, but according to a Russian Federal Law № 272-ФЗ статья 2.1 часть 1 "Political activity does not include activities in the field of science, culture, art, health care, prevention and protection of citizens' health, social services, social support and protection of citizens, protection of motherhood and childhood, social support for disabled people, promotion of a healthy lifestyle, physical culture and sports, protection of flora and fauna, charitable activities".

Project Plan

Activities

Tell us how you'll carry out your project. What will you and other organizers spend your time doing?

Taking drone pictures and videos as much as possible.

How will you let others in your community know about your project (please provide links to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions)? Why are you targeting a specific audience?

Our UG has 3 channels where we publish news and discuss problems: VKontakte chat, Telegram chat and the mailing list. Also we plan to inform Russian Wikimedia community about this proposal during Russian Wikimedia conference at 25-26 September 2021.

What will you have done at the end of your project? How will you follow-up with people that are involved with your project?

Our main goal is to make and upload aerial pictures of every settlement, vicinity or other notable object to Commons. We understand that this is nearly impossible even in 10 years so we marked only a year and we're planning to make at least 750 drone pictures in this year.

Are you running any in-person events or activities? If so, you will need to complete the steps outlined on the Risk Assessment protocol related to COVID-19. When you have completed these steps, please provide a link to your completed copy of the risk assessment tool below:

In-person activities as photowalks are held in awareness of COVID-19: more than a half of our UG members are fully vaccinated.

Impact

How will you know if the project is successful and you've met your goals? Please include the following targets and feel free to add more specific to your project:

1. Number of photos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons: 750
2. Quality of photos used on Wikimedia projects as a consequence of the previous point
3. Minimum number of participants in drone photographs learning program: 4.

Resources

What resources do you have? Include information on who is the organizing the project, what they will do, and if you will receive support from anywhere else (in-kind donations or additional funding).

We already have a fast speed memory card that allows video recording in 4k; also two of us already know how to use drone.

What resources do you need? For your funding request, list bullet points for each expense:

Items	Quantity	Website of the store	Amount (In Russian Roubles)	in USD	Total	Note
Drone	1	Yandex.Market	118,990 ₽	1,636.58 $	118,990 ₽
Exchange rate fluctuations and bank fees	3%		3,569.7 ₽	49.1 $	3,569.7 ₽
Income tax	13%		18,313.52 ₽	251.88 $	18,313.52 ₽	Counts of Grand total
Grand total				1,937.56 $	140,873.22 ₽

Endorsements

• Very  Strong support the requester is known for making not only drone photographs but also producing English language reports about making Wikipedia better with drones. Here are the example photo-report number one, number two, number three. Pay attention: these are not just galleries, but illustrated textual "civil-journalistic" reports in English language aimed to promote Wiki movement over the world. Many of the photos made by requester are used for illustrating Wikipedia articles about different territories that had not photos. Many of Wikipedia articles on objects that already had "terrestrial" photos got awesome expansion by adding aerial ones to them. I wonder if there is a technical tool to determine Wikipedia articles in all languages that were inserted these new photos in recent time, since the requester started his wiki-drone activities. As for plain galleries, here is the latest one that made great impression on me. Sadly and unfortunately, requester had to use rented drones and spend personal money on it (we Russian wikipedians are constantly out of money because wikipedionism is not a source of money). He is in great need for an own drone so he has not to spend more and loose his enthusiasm because of this. --Ssr (talk) 07:59, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
•  Strong support Yes, we - UG NWR-Hist - badly need our own drone to make good aerial pictures for Wiki articles and other Wikimedia projects. Also drone is very useful not only in the forests, swamps and islands but even in big cities where houses are built so tight that it's quite inpossible to make pictures of architectural encembles from the ground. So I support this demand and hope that it will be successful. -- Екатерина Борисова (talk) 15:59, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
•  Support. As a member of the user group, I acknowledge the need for a drone. Whether the requester had have own drone (no need to rent one), it would free up some funds that could be spent on a wider coverage of wiki expeditions. Avsolov (talk) 08:16, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
•  Strong support. In Saint Petersburg and in the Republic of Karelia, there are a lot of interesting buildings and places that the requester could photograph with a drone for Wikipedia. --Andrew Krizhanovsky (talk) 20:49, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
•  Strong support UG NWR-Hist needs such a technique like a breath of air! - Erzianj jurnalist (talk) 08:01, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
•  Strong support I believe that it is necessary to buy a drone with the grant funds. It is enough to look at the uploads of the group members to confirm this. For example, only in the last trip to the Northern Ladoga region, industrial objects were shot from the air, previously these images were not on Wikimedia Commons. On my own behalf, I can add that I will definitely remind the UG NWR-Hist group members to use the drone if there are trips to the Northern Ladoga region again. Charoplet (talk) 13:41, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
• Very  Strong support One may see already uploaded photoes to be sure that the grant wouldn't be wasted. As well, it should be added that in our area there are a lot of places that are difficult to shoot in an ordinary way (i.e. hardly accessible, in the forests or in marshes). MaryannaNesina (talk) 14:36, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
•  Support — Niklitov (talk) 14:50, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
•  Strong support. This is very valuable activities, that should be supported by WMF. --Kaganer (talk) 10:01, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
•  Strong support I participated in several expedition of the group, ans I know one thing, the drom is very useful for this kind of activities.--Reda Kerbouche (talk) 06:29, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Participants

• Volunteer I want to help for the project from Thailand as a volunteer. B20180 (talk) 07:52, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

  That's good, how do you wanna help? Translating image descriptions to Thai? Красный^{wanna talk?} 14:27, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

  I think it would be wonderful if our colleague helps to develop Thai information on Russia using our photos. Help from another Thai users might help greatly. --Ssr (talk) 08:26, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

  My pleasure. I will help translate the image description into Thai. And may insert images in articles at Thai wiki. Believe that those images will be useful in the composition of the article. --B20180 (talk) 00:33, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

  That's great, thank you. Красный^{wanna talk?} 06:07, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

  @B20180: You may be accepted into NWR-Hist User Group as Honorary Ambassador in Thailand ;-) Kaganer (talk) 19:17, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

  Oh. You can add my user name in that User Group as you want. --B20180 (talk) 03:09, 29 September 2021 (UTC)