Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2016-2017 round 2/The Centre for Internet and Society/Proposal form

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Preliminary remarks from WMF[edit]

  • Summary: Hello A2K Team. Thank you for submitting this proposal. In order to add a meaningful summary for the community review, I thank you for providing here on the talk page a shorter summary, the one included in the main proposal page between the tags <summary> and <end of summary> is too long! Thank you! Best, Delphine (WMF) (talk) 10:18, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hello User:Delphine (WMF), here is a summarized version of the plan

CIS-A2K is committed to serving Indic Wikimedia communities. For the upcoming year's work-plan, CIS-A2K proposes to conduct these activities:

  1. 4 focus language area communities: This year CIS-A2K will work with 4 focus language areas: Kannada, Odia, Marathi, and Telugu. Each focus language area has an exit strategy. This year, we have exited Konkani language.
  2. Non-focus language areas: Based on the feedback, suggestions and requests we have received, CIS-A2K would like to engage more with non-focus language area communities as well, through different workshops under Skill Building, Global Engagement, and Bridging Gender Gap initiatives.
  3. Skill development initiatives: CIS-A2K proposes to conduct 2 national-level skill development workshops: a) Train-the-Trainer and MediaWiki Training or Wiki Technical Workshop (see more)
  4. Bridging gender gap: In an attempt to bridge the gender gap on Indic Wikipedias, CIS-A2K would conduct and support a series of Wiki-events (see the work plan)
  5. Institutional partnerships: CIS-A2K would work with different institutional partners to a) bring in new editors from among enthusiastic students and scholars, b) free-license encyclopedic content and c) increase reach of Indic WIkimedia projects.
  6. City-based communities: CIS-A2K would work to strengthen city-based communities, such as WikiTungi.
  7. Global Engagement: CIS-A2K will follow some of the best global Wiki initiatives, and would promote those events and encourage and support Indic Wikimedians to engage with these (see work plan).
  8. Creating Movement Resources: CIS-A2K would prepare movement resources for Indic Wikimedia communities based on their needs.
  9. Working closely with user groups: CIS-A2K will be working closely with and supporting Indic User Groups. CIS-A2K also proposes to conduct a Wikimedia India Conference as an idea exchange and learning sharing platform.

Regards. -- Tito Dutta (talk) 07:18, 6 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tito Dutta thanks... but I will need a shorter version again. 2-3 sentences max. This is what comes at the top of the page to catch community attention. Thanks! Delphine (WMF) (talk) 15:02, 7 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

CIS-A2K during the proposed plan will work towards conducting and supporting activities with 4 focus language areas and 3 thematic areas (see details). In an attempt to engage with emerging Indian Wikimedia communities and User groups, we have allocated resources for activities across non focus language areas as well. It is our attempt to contribute to the overall movement by increasing the reach of Wikimedia projects, understanding the diversity of Indian communities and facilitate content which is qualitative and reflects the diversity of Indian communities.

Regards - Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 08:23, 11 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Lahariyaniyathi! Delphine (WMF) (talk) 08:38, 11 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Corrections[edit]

Hello friends at CIS!

Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 14:08, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Lahariyaniyathi Yes, please make the change. Delphine (WMF) (talk) 06:48, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Questions & remarks from the community consultation[edit]

Bytes deleted[edit]

A refreshing metric! I don't know about the Indic wikis, but often on Wikipedia the articles require significant cutting first of all, and only optionally some expansion. Of course brutal cutting or deletion may produce little value, but rewriting and condensing any existing content is a valuable activity. What proposed here may work or not, but an attempt is welcome. --Nemo 11:06, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Nemo,

Thanks for the feedback. We are also eager to learn from the initiatives to rewrite and improve articles. Such attempts of improving the articles will be our priority.

CIS-A2K aims to improve the quality of exisiting articles in the Indian language Wikipedia projects. Deleting articles is the last option and will be done after consultation with the community along with their approval. A2K would not be deleting any of the exisiting content but would initially work towards improving the article/content and only after attempts to improve the quality of the content have not yielded sufficient result will the deletion activity be suggested.

Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 14:37, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Lahariyaniyathi: It is an interesting metric, but I'm not sure I see how you would make use of it. Is the aim to maximise it, or minimise it? Would a metric looking at the numbers of pages affected by this work be more meaningful? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:59, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
CIS-A2K would like to thank you for the question. We have introduced this metric to set right a historical anomaly of sub-standard content being present on Wikimedia projects that A2K team considered as Focus Language Areas. The outcome of the metric is not to 'maximise bytes deleted' but to bring to notice articles/content that should be improved. We are hoping to report minimal numbers against this metric but explain (both in quantifiable terms and qualitative terms) what changes have been made to the content under this metric. The performance of this metric is inversely proportional to the efficacy of our Content Enrichment and Skill Building Initiatives. Such an arrangement will act as an internal check for our programmatic activities as well.
As a metric our aim is to minimise it but as a Quality Improvement Measure we would like to maximise it. Historically CIS-A2K has received critical feedback regarding the content that was introduced to our FLA projects both via content enrichment activities and WEP initiatives. Over the past few years we have introduced several measures to maintain the quality of content. This metric is inspired by the initiative of Telugu Wikipedians attempt to rectify the damage caused by machine translated articles housed on Telugu Wikipedia.
Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 14:12, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
As Liam stated below (if I'm not mistaken), it would say a lot more about the goal you want to achieve if you would measure the "number of articles improved" instead of using a statistic like "Bytes deleted" that can be spun both ways: If it's low, you didn't have to delete too much and the quality appears to be ok, if it's high, you were able to get rid of a lot of superfluous text and the quality also appears to be ok. In the end, it doesn't say anything at all ;-) Braveheart (talk) 14:49, 29 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Dear User:Braveheart, thank you for your response. A2K team has always attempted to imbibe suggestions and feedback in-order to serve Indic communities effectively. As shared metric number 3 already takes into account 'articles improved', A2K team decided to have employ a metric that provides an opportunity to re-look at the exisiting content.
We at CIS-A2K understand the risk you have pointed out, we wish to assure you that several checks and balances will be undertaken from our end to ensure that the system is not circumvented or the metrics are not "spun" to reflect positively in either case:
1. Progress report: Historically, we have documented the value of the bytes deleted metric down to the details and attempted to provide explanations for the same.
2. Community involvement: Communities have shown active interest in improving the quality of their Wikipedia by 'deleting' articles and these discussions have been documented on their respective Village Pumps.
3. CIS blogs: CIS-A2K's Community Advocates for our Focus Language Areas regularly write blogs on the online exercises they conduct in which community members are encouraged to prioritize improving the pre-existing "junk content" on their Wikipedia.
Apart from these, we engage the communities actively and they bring up any irregularities of our activities either directly to our notice or on talk pages and social media where we address these issues. We disagree that our grantee defined metric does not say anything at all. It provides for both qualitative and quantitative measures to track its progress. While the bytes deleted or articles improved might be the numerical parameter, audit of the exisiting content, reviving interest in improving articles, attempting to bring back experienced Wikimedians (who might have been away) back to Wikimedia projects, conducting thematic edit-a-thons to improve identified content, faming of policies regarding stub articles, its maintenance and follow-up activities can be a few qualitative measures that A2K team would like to initiate.
Please let us know if there is anything else, Regards Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 18:19, 30 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry Lahariyaniyathi, maybe I phrased my suggesstion incorrectly - I was not trying to make a point that you couldn't be trusted with interpreting the metric correctly. I was trying to point out that it will be difficult to discern anything meaningful from this metric without consulting other numbers. In that way it would be easier to use a metric that will show your success in this area right away. "Improved articles" would be one, but it's certainly not the only one :-) Braveheart (talk) 09:41, 2 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from FDC members[edit]

Risker[edit]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to review this proposal. I find the focus on leveraging the more technical skills of the community to be interesting, in particular. A few questions:

Dear Risker,
Many thanks for taking the time to engage with our proposal. We apologise for the confusions and attempt to answer your queries:
  • You indicate that you will be adding two new positions, but you say in Question 4 under table 4 that you anticipate spending approximately 58,000 USD for staffing in the coming year. That is a dramatic decrease from the current year (approx. 102,000 USD), and doesn't match what you post in your work plan, which indicates staffing at approx. 86,000 USD. Could you please verify what your actual expected staffing expenses will be for the period covered by this grant.
We will be adding two positions but these are not new positions. These positions have been indicated in the previous proposal. Community Advocate position for Kannada Language has been left vacant from November 2016 and the current intern working for Bridging Gender Gap has a contract till June 2017.
The dramatic decrease is because of the exit and merging of a few team positions. New recruits are not being recruited at the same salary level as the past team members (For eg: 2016-17 Projection for Program Officer Communication 14,555.03 USD 2017-18 Projection for Program Officer Communication is 8,910 USD). Also a Program Officer has been promoted to the position of Program Manager after the incumbent Program Manager exited the team. As this was an internal promotion and no new candidate has been hired to fill the position A2K team has been able to reduce its staffing costs.
Our staffing expenses will be 57,982.68 USD as mentioned under Table 4 of the proposal page. The work plan page takes into account both the staffing cost and the honorarium provided to Community Advocates(57,982.68 USD+27,855 USD) working across 4 languages (Kannada, Marathi, Odia and Telugu) and 1 thematic area (Metrics and evaluation) as well. However the honorarium provided to Community Advocates is considered as Volunteer Support and not staffing costs to provide autonomy for their work.
  • If this expense is lower than the previous year, please advise how you will be increasing staffing while lowering staffing costs.
New recruits are not being recruited at the same salary level as the past team members (For eg: 2016-17 Projection for Program Officer Communication 14,555.03 USD 2017-18 Projection for Program Officer Communication is 8,910 USD). Also a Program Officer has been promoted to the position of Program Manager after the incumbent Program Manager exited the team. As this was an internal promotion and no new candidate has been hired to fill the position A2K team has been able to reduce its staffing costs.
  • In a similar vein, your total expenses in Table 8 are lower than the amount you are requesting in this grant. Please advise if there is any information that needs to be corrected here.
Our total expenses as indicated in Table 8 168,637.68 USD (INR. 11,242,512.1) does not include Institutional Development Fee which is 18,000 USD (INR 1,200,000). We have not included this as there was no scope for this item in Table 8. After adding Institutional Development fee of 18,000 USD our total project grant stands at 186,637.68 USD. The excess 6,637.68 USD is in-kind support that CIS shall be generating for the A2K team.


Thanks, Risker (talk) 14:54, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 14:30, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Mike Peel[edit]

Thanks for submitting this proposal! I have a few questions:

Dear Mike Peel,
CIS-A2K is immensely grateful for your comments and questions as they allow us to clarify on matters of importance.
  • Are the numbers in Table 2 correct? They seem to show that you've already spend all of the previous grant, with some months still left to go? This is quite different from the numbers in the progress report, which showed you were underspending. I also don't follow how the projected amount at the end of the grant can be less than the actual amount spent by 1 March 2017, or is the projected amount excluding in-kind donations
  • The numbers on Table 2 are correct. They reflect the numbers as per the first installment of the grant ($89340.47) that A2K team has received. We are glad to inform you that during the time of drafting the proposal (21 March, 2017) we had utilised 100% of the first installment of the grant. We received the second instalment of the grant on 29 March, 2017 ($63831.75). The under-spending as reported during the Progress report (27 January 2017)was when A2K team had not yet organised its marquee events (TTT and MWT 2017 20-26 February, 2017). With these events and other programmatic activities we have utilised 100% of our 1st instalment of the grant.
  • You are absolutely correct that the 'projected amount at the end of the grant can not be less than the actual amount spent'. The projected amount is excluding in-kind support that can be calculated only after the completion of this year’s programmatic activities. We have mentioned the calculation of in-kind support support as a footnote for further clarification.
  • Table 2, as in the progress report, should be filled against the total amount of the grant, not against the installments. We try to keep an eagle eye view of progress and identify trends. The installments are calculated on a linear basis - ie. (TOTAL GRANT/NUMBER OF MONTHS) * 7 MONTHS OF THE YEAR for the first intallment for example. We know that expenses may be non linear (for example, an organization may have a great expense in month 5 that would unbalance their "monthly" spend). So working against the installments does not always give a good picture. Please correct table 2 below with strike through so that we can see the progress as designed and we'll integrate that new table in the proposal when we're done. Thanks! Delphine (WMF) (talk) 15:12, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • On staffing, there is an increase in 1 Program Officer without any note in the explanation of changes. Also, in last year's plan you were saying 10 staff members, whereas the current number here is 9. Can you comment on these please?
Apologies for not explaining the changes under Table 4. A2K team would like to recruit a Program Officer for Technical Operations during the July 2017 to June 2018 plan period. This position was active until November, 2016 after which the position became vacant. A2K would initiate the process to fill this position for the upcoming grant.
In the last year’s plan we mentioned 10 but during the current plan period a Program Officer has been promoted to the position of Program Manager after the incumbent Program Manager exited the team. As this was an internal promotion it resulted in merging of two positions and hence the decrease in staff numbers.
  • In both this year's proposal and last year's you've had very ambitious targets with folios uploaded to Wikisource, but at Q2 in this year you're at 3,700 of the 200,000 target, and you're aiming for 100,000 this year. How realistic is this target? (Don't get me wrong, 3,700 folios uploaded is fantastic anyway!)
There has been an initiative with Maharashtra Granthottejak Sangh where CIS-A2K had initiated digitisation of 1000 books pertaining to Maratha History, Public Life, Social Customs and Religious Practices. These books have been fully scanned and digitised, and we are currently under the process of verifying copyright issues and prioritisation of books to be uploaded with the help of the community members. This process has taken a lot more time than we anticipated and hence the poor performance against the metric. We are confident that this community consultation will be over soon and uploading of the folios will begin.

Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:20, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 14:39, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Liam[edit]

  1. As with the section above, I too am confused about how the "value of bytes deleted" metric works. I appreciate that you are trying to ensure not just improved quantity on-wiki, but improved quality too. But, can you explain:
    1. How you arrived at the goal/target of deleting "3,583,120" bytes (primarily in Marathi and Telugu WPs)? This is an extremely specific number.
      Deletion of bytes as a quality improvement practice on Telugu Wikipedia came out of Google Translate article prioritization exercise. More than 1,900 articles in Telugu Wikipedia have maintenance tags and need to be improved - most of these are machine translated articles that were created between 2009-11. Telugu Wikipedians found that the project had produced many articles which were of huge size and of poor quality Due to the huge size of the articles attempts to correct each and every line in order to improve them proved to be a demanding task.
      For example, A Google translated article about conspiracy theory on Telugu Wikipedia which initially had 127,078 bytes was considered as one of the articles that needed to be improved. The improvement in this case was deletion of 114,901 bytes. The article now stands at 12,000+ bytes. Another example is of an article about Kumara Mangalam Birla which had 17,491 bytes and after deletion stands at 8,491 bytes.
      A2K team has been engaged with scanning of 1000 books with Maharasthra Granthottejak Sangh and the scanning activity has been completed. For the upcoming grant period our efforts will focus on uploading these pages on Marathi Wikisource. During our test run we have found that OCR conversion of the scanned page generates around 20kb of junk data (OCR for Indic languages does not give 100% output and is dependent on the type of print, quality of scan and age of the book amongst many other conditions). A2K team intends to upload 100,000 pages on Wikisource during the next plan period and hence the 2MB metric.
      We have added values from all of our plan verticals to achieve the number ‘3,583,120’ Bytes
    2. In the same way that it is hard for an affiliate to claim obvious responsibility for any specific bytes added to a Wikipedia, how will you define which bytes deleted from these Wikis are appropriate to count in your report, and which are "organic" deletions?
      For any bytes deletion activity there is a three step process that A2K team would be following along with the support of community members.
      • Identification of stub articles: by employing cohort analysis we shall be selecting stub/junk articles that were created by editors initiated by A2K or in the activities organised by A2K.
      • Community Consultation: A consultation to arrive at the course of action for each article. Identified article can be deleted, identified article can be improved and editors who have created or worked on this article will be given further training.
      • Deletion of articles: A2K team would request the admins to delete articles that have not been improved despite various efforts
      The bytes that are deleted as per the community consultation and approval are the ‘organic deletions’ and these are the only bytes that will be reported. It is the aim of the A2K team to minimise this metric as it allows us to work towards improving the existing content. However with the increasing instances of non NPOV content finding its way on Indic language Wikipedia projects we believe that this is an important quality ensuring measure to be followed.
    3. Do you consider more deleted bytes to be a "better" or "worse" result than your target number? why?
      A2K considers 'more' deleted bytes as a worse result or a disappointing outcome. We feel this way because it would mean that A2K took the easy way out by deleting the content than investing in improving the content, increasing the skills of editors, providing better understanding of Wikipedia policies and making better references and resources available to editors.
Taking your three answers together: I think it is instructive that the numbers you have given here add up to 3,580,048 - not 3,583,120. The difference is small, and is completely not important to how it would affect wikipedia, but it illustrates my point: that this metric, and target, seems unnecessarily specific and quantitative... If your three-step-processes for deciding on content to receive this treatment are on a per-article basis, then why not simply count "number of articles which received quality-assessment/content-deletion". After all - this appears to be trying to be a measure of quality, not quantity, so why have such a very quantitative metric? Moreover, this would allow your metric to be a "positive" number (higher = better) rather than your current proposal which (according to your answer to no.3) is hoping to result in a LOW number. Wittylama (talk) 12:35, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Liam,
A2K team would like to thank you for your questions and responses. Your questions provided us an opportunity to reflect on our plans and metrics. This reflexive exercise has helped us immensely in gearing up for the proposed plan and use these discussions to inform our current activities. The total that we presented to your earlier question missed out our value of bytes deleted metric from our Global Engagement plan(3,072). We sincerely apologise for this. We'd like to reiterate that the focus here is not on numbers. Numbers help in achieving programmatic focus and direction; however the numbers are not the end result.
The shared metric number 3 already takes into account articles improved (created and improved) and the A2K team felt the need to provide focus towards the bytes deleted as well. Article improvement has several parameters; adding links, images, templates, etc. But these measures are already implemented by communities. Indeed, CIS hopes to enable such measures through empowering communities with our Skill Development work plan. However, the reason for using value of bytes deleted is to bring to the attention of community members the stagnant content already present on their respective language Wikipedias. For example, the Telugu Wikipedia community has made it a point to improve articles created by Google translate. This type of historical audit (we agree this is ambitious) of existing content with scope for improvement enables A2K to facilitate a discussion with the community members about quality of articles leading to qualitative improvement of the Wikimedia projects. Our aim is not delete more content as per the metric but aim to bring programmatic discipline into our initiatives. Regards Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 12:37, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  1. With regards to the "footprint tracker" metric:
    1. If this is a measure of outreach events that are a) organised by community members and b) only those about outreach; this means that any events organised by A2K and anything (organised by anyone) focused on supporting the existing community - are not counted?
      That's correct. No activity of A2K team in places/institutions where there has been an earlier initiative will be counted once a year in this metric. However the same is not true for Wikimedians. One of the aims of TTT is for the participants to conduct effective outreach activities and a prerequisite for participation in TTT is to be an active Wikimedian. We have observed that TTT participants are eager in conducting Wikimedia Orientation and Outreach activities in not only their native town and states but also explore inter state and inter district possibilities of conducting such events.
      If a new event (Wikidata, Wikispeech, Wikivoyage) related to new projects is conducted by A2K team, such an event will be counted under this metric. But an edit-a-thon or a Wikisource sprint with a partner institution involving community members will not be counted as per this metric.
      A2K will support all existing community members in conducting outreach events and will count the event under Footprint Tracker only if
      1. Community member provides consent to be included in this metric
      2. If there had been no prior activity at that venue.
    2. Furthermore, since "no one time activity will be included" yet you will "only count one footprint per city per project irrespective of the frequency of follow-up event" - does that mean that in order for something to count according to this metric, it has to be run more-than-once but will only appear in the statistics once, unless it is run in multiple cities?
      Yes. A2K team has been adhering the WMF directive of ‘discouraging one time activities’ and hence under this metric A2K will not be including exploratory meetings, meetups without a follow-up plan or celebratory events. If the same event is taken up by different communities at different intervals we shall be including that event under this metric. We’ll try to explain this with an example: Suppose CIS-A2K conducts or supports 4 Wiki events in Bangalore between 1 July 2017 and 30 June 2018, the region Bangalore will be shown only once in the map (metric). However, outputs of all these 4 workshops will be measured and presented using other metrics such as: number of participants, number of pages created etc.
      Illustrative image for projected regional training programs for the upcoming plan period. This also shows footprints.
I see. That is indeed a strict - but interesting metric to use. And I understand what you're saying about how, in your example, Bangalore would appear once but each event can be measured for the other metrics. Wittylama (talk) 12:35, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  1. I do not understand the way you have laid-out your SMART goals chart (This image). The proposal asks you to "list your goals and objectives for each program" and to ensure that each of the goals is S.M.A.R.T. - but the words listed in the middle of this graphic are sometimes conceptual (e.g. "outreach" or "reach" [which is listed twice] or "sustainable collaboration"), sometimes named programs (e.g. "Women in Red" or "Hyperlocal QRpedia" or "heritage walks") and sometimes quantitative targets (e.g. "1200 encyclopedic images" or "involving at least 65 active wikipedians"). These are all grouped horizontally by thematic area (Content, Skill, Instutional, GLAM) and grouped Vertically by each part of the SMART acronym. But... I don't understand how to read this graphic. For example "Facts matter" appears at the intersection of "GLAM" and "Measurable"; or "open assessments" appears at the intersection of "institutional partnerships" and "achievable". Neither "Facts Matter" nor "Global Guidance" are mentioned anywhere else in the document. Can you explain how I should use this graphic to understand how each of your projects indeed have SMART goals; and why the different words in the graphic were placed where they are?
    Apologies for the confusion, it was our intention to provide the FDC members and global Wikimedians an overview of our program structure via the above-mentioned graphic. A2K team has attempted to depict SMART programs instead of representing SMART goals of our programs. We sincerely apologise for the confusion. The conceptual terms were used to avoid lengthy text and repetitive terms, the usage of quantitative targets was to reflect our commitment toward RoI.
    The graphic was to be read from Right to Left with the following ontological construct: Through this specific initiative (sustainable collaboration), a measurable activity (Wikimedian in Residence) would shape up a program that will achieve (resource exchange) for the A2K team and shall result in movement relevant goals (increasing reach)in a time bound fashion (of initial level of collaboration during the program period).
    On closer inspection and multiple readings we have realised that the placement of these terms specifically and the overall table have not been easy to read and understand. A2K team apologises for the dense table and for not attaching a glossary or a footnote explaining the idea behind this graphic.
    We are attaching herewith two visualisations of SMART goals of our programs and SMART programs (as an earlier version has already been submitted in the proposal). Goals of the A2K team for the current proposal are in alignment with our strategy document submitted to WMF. Our proposal for July 2017-June 2018 have the following goals:
    • Cultivating new editors
    • Empowering the existing community
    • Content generation
    • Skill building and general service to the movement.
      SMART Table for CIS-A2K Goals July 2017-June 2018.
      SMART Programs of CIS-A2K July 2017-June 2018.
I appreciate all the extra effort you've gone through to make these new graphics to explain your meaning, thank you. I suspect the way you've interpreted the "SMART goal" concept - especially the SMART program idea - is very unusual. I cannot say that it is "wrong" (if it helps you define your programs better, then that's good!) but certainly makes it harder for people outside your organisation to understand. One of the purposes of using standard methods of describing activities (including, but not limited to, the "smart" methodology) is to make it instantly recognisable to other people what you're doing. See, for comparison's sake only, the SMART goals described for [[Grants:APG/Proposals/2016-2017_round_2/Wikimedia_Armenia/Proposal_form#1_Taking_wiki_deep_into_education|WM-Armenia's current annual plan proposal]. Wittylama (talk) 17:18, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  1. With regards to your "Global Engagement activities: I definitely appreciate that you are trying to find successful programs from other Wikimedia Chapters (and indicating in the summary table which chapter inspired you for each) and replicate them. However, I don't see how you have the resources to achieve the things that you're proposing. Example 1: the WikiMOOC (which you've said was inspired by WM-France and is described here by them has been a multi-year project with dozens of people involved and taking >2.000 hours of work - and is described in extensive detail in this section of WM-FR's current Annual Plan application. Your proposal description on this topic is three sentences long. Example 2: Your Technical Wishes project is also described briefly and without a clear allocation of resources (time, volunteers, staff, budget). By Comparison, WM-Germany (which you've specified as your source of inspiration for this project) as a whole software development department for this activity (as described near the bottom of this section in their Annual Plan. WM-Sweden has a project like this. I certainly understand that A2K is not proposing to do anything like on the same scale as those chapters, and that's fine!, but could you point to some more detail about how you are going to do those things with the resources you are asking for?
Thank you for your response on the Global Engagement part of the proposal. As you have rightly identified, the Global Engagements plan is an effort to learn from and adapt successful lessons from global chapters. To this effect, we have picked programs that are most transferable and well-suited for localisation to the Indic language communities. Since this is a fledgling attempt, we would urge you to keep in mind that our targets as well as our scale are made out accordingly.
With regard to Example 1, the aim of the proposed WikiMOOC is to work in conjunction with our Wikipedia Education Program in order to create a central repository of Wikipedia editing resources for the students. While performing its role of being an online course, this also enables us to demonstrate the platform and its use during our presence-based events. While catering to students on the WEP, this can also be used for display and distribution to the general public to raise awareness regarding the basics of contributing to Wiki projects.
With regard to Example 2, the Technical Wishes project will be a one-time event as it runs parallel to our Request page. This will surround our flagship event, MediaWiki Training. We would request participants from across the country to send in the specific technical bugs or errors they would like to see fixed(wishes fulfilled) during the event. These will then be collaboratively addressed during the sessions.
The attempt to work with pre-existing programs run by CIS-A2K is keeping in mind our limitations with regard to staff, budget and scale. A2K team would also like to bring to the attention of FDC members and global Wikimedians that the activities listed on the Global engagement page are not action items during the upcoming period. The resources that have been budgeted for ‘global engagement’ vertical will enable for us to study these best practices, introduce them to Indic WIkimedians and micro version of some of these best practices will be implemented during the program period. We understand these plans are ambitious and we have created a safety net with regard to time and volunteers by combining these new projects with the ones that already exist. Please let us know if there is anything else. Regards. Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 15:37, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
In this reply you say that the Global Engagement projects "are not action items during the upcoming period" and are are actually only listed there for studying best practices and implementing test/micro versions. This appears to contradict what is written on the plan which states: "The work plan table below details the Global Engagement initiatives proposed by CIS-A2K for the upcoming grant period." Are you saying that you do NOT intend to implement all the items listed under subsection "4: Implementation" in this funding period? (As summarised in the table in the subsection called "Work Plan": Indi Spring 2017; Hyperlocal QRpedia; Wikimedian in Residence; Wiki Loves Libraries; Wikipedia Asian Month; Wikispeech; WikiMOOC; Technical Wishes; Women in Red; Dalit History Month; Facts Matter)? Wittylama (talk) 17:18, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
With regard to Question 3, we request you to note that while we hope to implement all the global best practices and initiatives that we have listed, don't aim to replicate the scale of these initiatives. We are indeed taking small steps and hoping to have an impact that can be either documented by numbers or represented by lessons learnt. Regards Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 12:37, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]


Dear Risker, Mike Peel and Liam,

Many thanks for the questions, we request a little time to provide comprehensive answers to the questions raised. We shall be publishing our responses very soon.

Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 04:33, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We have answered the questions inline. Please let us know if there are any other queries.Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 15:37, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Laurentius[edit]

  1. You made and interesting choice of grantee-defined metrics; they point in the direction of a focus on quality and structured activities. The way in which they are defined or you plan to work with them is not completely clear to me, but I see that there are already other questions addressing those points. - Laurentius (talk) 08:16, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks Laurentius for engaging with our Proposal page and Work plan. A2K is attempting to build a sustainable communities across Indic community projects and hence our choice of tracking footprints and bytes deleted as grantee defined metrics.
    We have provided our response to the questions raised by other FDC members regarding the grantee defined metrics. Please let us know if there are any other questions or observations. Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 15:24, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Thanks for the metrics histograms, they make things visually clear. I was wondering:
    • Marathi is higher on participants and newly registered, but lower on content pages; Telegu is the opposite. What is the reason of that difference? (that might be for exemple a difference in the activities, or maybe Telegu is a more mature community and you focus more on content and less on bringing in new people?) - Laurentius (talk) 08:16, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      There are two reasons for this structural difference:
      • As you have rightly pointed out Telugu community is a more mature community and we are focusing on improving and consolidating content enrichment activities. With the Marathi community our aim is to gather a critical mass of users, readers and editors before we launch into content generation activities.
      • Due to the non availability of Community Advocate from June 2016-December 2016, A2K could not follow-up on its earlier outreach activities and lost some steam. We will need to have regather our base and hence the difference. Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 15:24, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Bytes deleted apply almost exclusively to Marathi and Telegu - why? - Laurentius (talk) 08:16, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      A2K team has always worked closely with the communities while formulating new plans and proposing activities. Of the four language communities that we work closely Telugu community has already embarked upon a cleaning drive of junk articles and Marathi community members have expressed their wish to do the same. However the consensus on Kannada Wikipedia and Odia Wikipedia is towards improving the articles rather than deleting them. Hence a large section of the Bytes deleted metric is coming from Telugu and Marathi language plans. A2K team will however attempt to identify articles/content across all verticals of its engagement and improve such articles/content. As a last resort these articles might be deleted and the resulting bytes will be indicated against this metric. Thanks and regards.Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 15:24, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Bishakha[edit]

Like some other FDC members, I too was confused about how the "value of bytes deleted" metric would actually work - and by the specificity of the number. I note that you'll have answered these questions above, but I have a follow-up question. Last year you'll used "absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects" - was there a specific reason for dropping the "added to" this year? Bishdatta (talk) 09:30, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Bishaka,
We apologise for the delay in replying. CIS-A2K team had an internal discussion regarding your question and hence the delay in responding. The reason we dropped "added to" is because the Shared Metric number 3 already takes into account content pages created. In order to avoid double count, we are only taking into account value of bytes deleted. We are very grateful for the questions raised by various FDC remembers in explaining this metric. A2K team must acknowledge that these questions and discussions have helped us to achieve greater clarity about the way we have defined our metrics and how we shall be integrating them in our activities. Thanks and regards Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 12:45, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Questions from WMF[edit]

Hello CIS friends,

Here are a few questions for clarification of your proposal. Some of those have already been addressed by FDC members above, so just answer them in one place. Thank you!

  • Grantee defined metrics. Can you maybe explain further this metric? It is not very clear how you would measure success of failure with this metric, ie. does the value of bytes deleted need to be lower or higher than your targets in order to be a success? Delphine (WMF) (talk) 14:00, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ideally, A2K would feel that this metric would be a success if we clock lower deleted bytes than what we have proposed. This would then mean that A2K has been able to add/increase quality content and not just deleted the content. We have explained these metrics as a response to the questions and queries raised by Mike Peel and Liam. Please let us know if there are any other questions or if any of the points are unclear. Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 17:09, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • In Table 2, actuals (today) are higher than projected (end of funding period), unless you’re expecting a reimbursement from someone, these numbers are probably wrong. Please reassess the table here on the talk page before we see how to best correct it in the proposal. (See bolded numbers in table below) (see Mike Peel's question on this) Delphine (WMF)

(talk) 14:00, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Table 2

Financials for the current funding period
Revenues or expenses Planned (budgeted) Actual, until one month before the proposal due date Projected
Currency requested US dollars Currency requested US dollars Currency requested US dollars
Revenues (from all sources) 6,272,045[1] 91,509.13[2] 10,700,000 [3] 155,393 [4] 10,500,000 153,195
Expenses 6,233,748[5] 90,950.38[6] 10,700,000[7] 155,393 [8] 10,500,000 153,195
Dear Delphine, we have re-worked the table taking into account your suggestion of 'against the total amount of the grant, not against the installments'. With this new calculation our earlier Table 2 would prove to be incorrect. Please find below the updated table and suggest further action. The increase in projected revenue and expenses is due to in-kind support generated by the A2K team.
Thanks Lahariyaniyathi, this looks much better to me and easier to understand. Can you please use strike through in that table on the proposal and correct all the numbers? Thanks! Delphine (WMF) (talk) 20:13, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Table 2

Financials for the current funding period
Revenues or expenses Planned (budgeted) Actual, until one month before the proposal due date Projected
Currency requested US dollars Currency requested US dollars Currency requested US dollars
Revenues (from all sources) INR 10,500,000 153,195 INR 6,123,045 89,335.22 INR 10,700,000 [9] 156,113 [10]
Expenses INR 10,500,000 153,195 INR 5,386,537 78,589.57 INR10,700,000 [11] 156,113 [12]


  • What does RoI look like in the context of institutional partnership? Delphine (WMF) (talk) 14:00, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • RoI in the Institutional partnership context means three areas of impact: a) Creation of quality content b) Increasing reach and c) Utilisation of resources (both financial and non financial such as venue, studio and internet facilities, Library and reference systems). Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 17:32, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Under Staff and contractors section, question 3, you mention that spending on staff in the current funding period is going to be ~ 102kUSD and that it will be about a little more than that (~ 58kUSD) in the upcoming period. Since CIS-A2K is adding two FTEs, these numbers don't make sense. Can you confirm what this means? (See Risker's question above)
    • Since we have merged the position of Program Officer (Institutional partnerships) with Program Manager and the new recruits are not offered salaries of the previous positions (new recruits start with a lower salary compared to last year's budgeted amount) we have been able to drastically reduce the salary cost. If the honorarium paid to Community Advocates is taken into consideration the total staffing cost will amount to 85,837.68 USD. Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 17:32, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reserves: in order to better understand your context can you confirm whether there are reserves at CIS level for the whole organization or whether reserves are not needed/required/customary in India? Delphine (WMF) (talk) 14:00, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • We still have trailing decimals in a few places (with too many numbers after the dot), notably for the number 57,982.6815 that appears twice. Please correct those in one go and add the diff here for trackability. Thank you. Delphine (WMF) (talk) 14:00, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hello, we have made these changes. Thanks for the support. Please see the diff of today’s edit.

Thank you Delphine (WMF) (talk) 14:00, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Regards Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 17:32, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Notes[edit]

  1. ↑ (149,000 In-kind support for all the activities)
  2. ↑ (2,173.91 In-kind support for all the activities)
  3. ↑ (200,000 In-kind support for all the activities)
  4. ↑ (2,918 In-kind support for all the activities)
  5. ↑ (149,000 In-kind support for all the activities)
  6. ↑ (2,173.91 In-kind support for all the activities)
  7. ↑ (200,000 In-kind support for all the activities)
  8. ↑ (2,918 In-kind support for all the activities)
  9. ↑ (INR 200,000 In-kind support for all the activities)
  10. ↑ (USD 2,918 In-kind support for all the activities)
  11. ↑ (INR 200,000 In-kind support for all the activities)
  12. ↑ (USD2,918 In-kind support for all the activities)
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