Grants talk:Start

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Alternative overview of the research fund proposals under further consideration

A version of the list at Grants:Programs/Wikimedia_Research_&_Technology_Fund/Wikimedia_Research_Fund#Review_submissions enriched with some information from the linked proposal pages (in case it is useful for some people following this invitation to review them):

Proposal title	Applicants	Start – end dates	Budget (USD)
Extended: Opportunities for Supporting Community‑Scale Communication	Cristian Danescu‑Niculescu‑Mizil	August 2025 – August 2027	$105,000
The Anatomy of Coordination among Wikipedia Users	Marco Minici; Giuseppe Manco; Cristian Consonni	1 September 2025 – 1 September 2026	$41,294
WikipedAI: Investigating AI Collaboration and Conflict in Open Knowledge Systems	Patrick Gildersleve	1 October 2025 – 30 September 2026	$46,840
Informing Memory Institutions and Humanities Researchers of the Broader Impact of Open Data Sharing via Wikidata	Hanlin Li; Nicholas Vincent	15 July 2025 – 14 July 2026	$49,450
Exploring How AI Can Interpret Discussions Through an Insider Lens to Support Future Mediation	Soobin Cho; David W. McDonald; Mark Zachry	1 October 2025 – 1 October 2026	$47,598
Lexeme‑based approach for the development of technical vocabulary for underserved languages: A case study on Moroccan Darija	Anass Sedrati; Reda Benkhadra; Mounir Afifi; Jan Hoogland	1 July 2025 – 30 June 2026	$25,722
Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in the focus of scientific research – a research community‑building event in Ukraine	Anton Protsiuk; Mariana Senkiv; Natalia Lastovets	1 July 2025 – 31 March 2026	$12,115
Extended: Making Community with Wikimedia	Steve Jankowski; Richard Rogers	1 July 2025 – 30 June 2027	$149,976
Between Prompt and Publish: Community Perceptions and Practices Related to AI‑Generated Wikipedia Content	Anwesha Chakraborty; Netha Hussain	1 October 2025 – 31 August 2026	$8,571
Establishing a Critical Digital Commons Research Network	Zachary McDowell	October 2025 – March 2026	$14,300
The state of science and Wikimedia: Who is doing what, and who is funding it?	Brett Buttliere; Matthew A. Vetter; Lane Rasberry; Iolanda Pensa; Susanna Mkrtchyan; Daniel Mietchen	1 August 2025 – 30 July 2026	$49,450
Developing a wiki‑integrated workflow to build a living review on just sustainability transitions	Adélie Ranville; Romain Mekarni; Rémy Gerbet; Arthur Perret; Finn Årup Nielsen; Dariusz Jemielniak	1 September 2025 – 31 August 2026	$49,622
Navigating Today, Shaping Tomorrow: Studying the Role of LLMs on Wikipedia	Manoel Horta Ribeiro; Andrés Monroy‑Hernández	1 September 2025 – 31 August 2027	$143,202

Regards, HaeB (talk) 06:43, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Newer general support fund reports

I'm failing to find reports of some general support fund projects for the last couple of years. Should they be found somewhere under Category:Wikimedia Community Fund - General Support Fund or am I looking at the wrong place? It seem like there is Category:General Support Fund reports in FY 2022-23 but no newer ones. whym (talk) 05:12, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Why ?

@DSaroyan (WMF) hello. That /Tech is an official WMF funds for tech project, newly set up, and shared around at the Wikimania. Why hide a pointer to it ? Yug (talk) 10:38, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

Hey @Yug, I left a note on your talk page after rolling back. Thanks --DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 10:41, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

Project start date

I've got a question about the reasoning behind the project start dates. I understand that the grant payment ending at a specific time means that the paid portion of the project has to be after it. But if projects are designed such that they start after the "decisions announced" period, and only the paid portion starts after the grant payment, what is the issue there? Egezort (talk) 01:19, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Question about funding equipment

Hi there. I e-mailed this to the Latin America program officer, but there's no name listed for that so I'm guessing no one is following that mailbox.

I am interested in applying for a Rapid Grant to acquire a drone for the purpose of mapping a UNESCO World Heritage site Brazil. The outcome of this project would include approximately 14,000 high-resolution aerial images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, accompanied by documentation of the workflow for integrating aerial imagery, orthomosaics, SDC tagging, and OpenStreetMap.

The project would be conducted in collaboration with a local university.

In accordance with the Rapid Grants guidelines, I would donate the drone to Wikimedia Brasil (WMB), of which I am a member, upon completion of the project. WMB would then coordinate its use with other members of the community.

My main question concerns the requirement that “equipment purchase is allowed for groups, organizations, and affiliates.” In this case, the applicant would be myself as an individual, not WMB. Although I would be collaborating with the university, that is not a recognized Wikimedia user group.

Given this context, would it still be possible to apply for a Rapid Grant under these terms?

Thanks,

Rkieferbaum (talk) 11:53, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

My thought is that you consult and coordinate with WMB to budget the equipment, and then lend it from them for your project. It would be less tedious and more sustainable. They might probably have resources available to purchase the equipment. Why chose a long route? _signed, Aafi ^(talk) 10:05, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

@Aafi: the drone I need would consume a huge portion of WMB’s annual budget for projects, and in any case it would have to be included in next year’s budget. That would not fit my project’s timeline. I wouldn’t rule it out but at this point it’s really not an option… Rkieferbaum (talk) 11:38, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

Archiving

Can we set up automatic archive of old sections here? I would suggest copying that of Grants talk:Start, replacing the talk page name.

(unless perhaps we want to merge the page to Grants talk:Start to centralize) whym (talk) 22:29, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Whym, thanks for your suggestion. I'll move the page content to Grants_talk:Start to centralize everything, create a redirect, and it will follow the same archiving schedule. DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 13:50, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

Please fund more technical improvements / software development

Please fund much more technical development of key Wikimedia software – like MediaWiki or the Listeria tool – i.e. more development of wishes in the Community Wishlist and of issues in phabricator and less of everything else such as events, conferences, research, wishes-unrelated experiments or tools, etc.

I'm not saying those aren't important but until now technical development has been severely neglected and there are so many old urgent issues and much potential for big impacts such as for facilitating more volunteers to help with software development (example), increasing Wikipedia readership (exam ple), and saving lots of editors' time (example).
There may currently not be many grant requests for technical development of key Wikimedia software but I suggest the ones that are get prioritized and more often funded, that funds in that case are used more for technical development teams instead of for grants, that if thought to be necessary for more tech development (it isn't) more of WMF funds are being spent, and that more grant proposals relating to technical wishes&issues are facilitated. There's many supporting discussions, for example see Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Larger suggestions/1% (note that 1% would be way too little).

On a related note: where can I find the grant proposals so I can endorse the ones about impactful or important technical developments? This isn't clear on this page. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:56, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Community grants for software projects can be found by searching "T1. Describe the technical project" ([ https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=2025+%22T1.+Describe+the+technical+project%22&title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&ns200=1 example]), this returns community grant applciations which have checked that they are doing software projects. There is also Grants:Project/Rapid/Tech with tracking category Category:Tech Rapid proposals which doesn't seem to contain all grants as least Provelt grant is missing. --Zache (talk) 12:21, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! I just found the latter tech and added it to Category:Software development shortly before your comment. I suggest that if there's more categories like it, they're also added to that category or a subcat of it. The search query is interesting but do you know why it contains fewer items – worryingly just 4 as of now – than the TRp cat (19)? Prototyperspective (talk) 13:12, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective I think that they added the tech projects category to community grants first time at this year. This is one reason why nobody have added projects there yet. Afaik WMNO is doing some, CEE have their tech group and there is also d:Wikidata:Wiki Mentor Africa which is I think funded through Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/General Support Fund/Igbo Wikimedians User Group Annual Grant 2024 and Beyond. WMCEE is working adding Cat-a-lot wikipedia gadgets, WMA is working with ISA-tool and inaturalist. --Zache (talk) 13:54, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I don't yet know why it wasn't there before, e.g. if/where these grants were before and which implications the prior practice or this change has in regards to getting wishes & tasks implemented. Prototyperspective (talk) 15:11, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

What you mentioned is nearly nothing though. Available total budget of that CEE project 1.500 EUR – I think it's quite clear to people that this is nearly nothing. Why are there not more grants for tangible technical developments? These are severely needed, unlike more usually low-impact and virtually always much-less-needed 'research' which is what Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Research & Technology Fund/Wikimedia Research Fund seems to be all about. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:02, 22 January 2026 (UTC)