Grants talk:IEG/Capacitate student in Bangla typing through Bangla (bn) Wikisource and improve Wikisource

Source for books

http://www.dli.ernet.in/ has about 16664 copyright freed books in Bengali (already scanned)--Arjunaraoc (talk) 04:49, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Arjun, thank you so much for the link.--Bellayet (talk) 15:30, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Deadline reminder, and some early feedback

Hi Belayet and Mahay,

Thanks for starting this proposal draft - I know it takes a lot of time and energy and appreciate the detailed plans you've got here so far :)

Just a reminder that the deadline to propose IEGs for this round is 30 September. I hope you'll finish adding any remaining info and then let us know that you're ready for review by updating your infobox to status=PROPOSED!

Some first questions and feedback, in hopes it helps you finish your proposal for review:

1. I've added some more parameters to your infobox so that you can specify which participants might be advising or volunteering vs acting as grantees for this project, feel free to move names around as needed...if both participants are intended as grantees and would be splitting the project management part of the budget, please just move both names after grantees=
2. Please tell us a bit more about all participants in the project in your "Participants" section of the proposal - a link to a username is less helpful for reviewers than hearing from you both who you are and what skills you'll bring to your project.
3. I'm curious about sustainability of an idea like this after the grant ends - do you have any ideas about how or if the initiative might continue in the future, if it was successful? Do you think 6 months is enough to give the content a good boost and then volunteers might carry on from there?
4. Can you provide some concrete targets in your measures of success section? I'd like to have a clearer idea of the scale you're looking for - how many pages/books/students/etc would you want to have by the end of 6 months, in order to call this project successful?
5. Competitions and prizes, when done really well and carefully, can be a powerful incentive for doing something good. But the wrong sorts of incentives in prizes and competitions, used in the wrong kind of way, can sometimes end up encouraging people to contribute lots of messy content that other community members will need to clean up later. Baidu baike (the other Chinese online encyclopedia), for example, gives prizes like laptops to their most active contributors. Chinese Wikipedians have told me in the past that they think these prizes encourage Baidu contributors to plagiarize content from Wikipedia, and just generally create lots of bad content in order to win the prize. So, my question to you would be how you might anticipate this issue for Bangla Wikisource competitions, and how can you ensure that the contributions are good quality?
6. Finally, I'd suggest speaking with Bennylin, if you haven't already. He's been working on an IEG project involving Javanese typing, competitions, and Wikisource, and he might be able to share some useful lessons learned with you.

Let me know if you have any questions that I can help with as well!

Wishing you best of luck completing this proposal. Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 23:04, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi all, feel free to ask me about my experience, as Siko described above. I'm happy to assist you whenever I can. ✒ Bennylin 05:19, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Siko, I have done some changes at my proposal and try to clarify some issues according your feedback. It's nice to hear feedback from you and others to polish the proposal. I would like to request Bennylin too, please send me your feedback on this proposal.--Bellayet (talk) 06:33, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

• Hi all. Bellayet, Can you provide some numbers (besides participants and events) you are expecting to call this project successful as asked above by Siko? Also what you think of the concerns and questions in 5th point? -- ɑηsuмaη «Talk» 09:37, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Ansumang, thanks for your review. If you are expecting something like the number of pages or books we can type through the project. It is hard to predict/estimate how many pages we can do. Because it depends on community reaction specially how participants will react after attending the type-a-thons and their participation in the competition. Still we can estimate the number of pages as like if each type-a-thon participants can complete 10 pages on average, then estimated 350 participants can complete 3500 pages. Again we'll get more pages from the competition. But you can not estimate exactly the numbers of pages can typed from this project.

If you look at the time line you can see there is an activity "Proof Read the text" will run almost the same time with the competition. With this activity we can correct the pages as well can observe how the contributors are doing and guide them. We may call the community to do the proof reading if we got huge load.--Bellayet (talk) 14:17, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Sundanese Dictionary Wikisource Competition

Hi Belayet,

Am not sure whether you have seen Jakarta scholarship Competition (in Indonesian). It's pretty similar to what you are proposing, it is really successful and we have too many participants (all new 66 editors of them and never heard of wiki before). The competition manage to complete more than 500 pages of Sundanese-English dictionary with link to wikisource within two weeks with USD 300 as budget (online announcement only). I suggest to lobby hard and got commitment from university/ high school officials close to your location as a pre-project preparation if you don't want to do it entirely online (like us). Good luck! Siska.Doviana (talk) 09:57, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Siska,

Thank you so much for your valuable suggestions. Since Bangla dose not have free and workable OCR. Also Bangla typing is neglected in digital devices here in Bangladesh. So we are taking this opportunity to educate people in Bangla typing by engaging them at Bangla Wikisource content typing. And thank for your link again, I never see that link before. We may also need that kind of initiatives to correct and validate the large amount of pages produce from the project.--Bellayet (talk) 14:00, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2013

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 review. Please feel free to ask questions here on the talk page and make changes to your proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 2 begins on 23 October 2013, and grants will be announced in December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

Siko (WMF) (talk) 05:15, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Community Notifications

Hi Belayet and Mahay,
As you know, the IEG committee will begin their review of round 2 proposals on 23 October 2013. To expedite proposal review, I'm looking over the community notifications section of each eligible application. It looks like your Bangla Wikisource Village Pump notification links to the main page of that Village Pump. Please re-link it to your post's present location so that the committee can more easily follow up. Thanks.
Best of luck!
Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 20:46, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Along those lines, Belayet, I wonder if you can share some more context about the size/activity of the current Bangla Wikisource community? I know sometimes it is hard to get people to come over here to meta to comment or endorse proposals, but it would be really useful to understand if there are others in the Bangla community who are interested in supporting this proposal, Wikisourcers who can help handle any cleanup or organizing needed for content generated in typathons like these, etc. Cheers! Siko (WMF) (talk) 21:53, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

The community is very small and less number of edits per day. Since the start of the project I am the only sysop there. And most of the contributors are from Bangla Wikipedia projects. So there is no separate community right now for the Bangla Wikisource. What I can say more about the community! :) --Bellayet (talk) 13:48, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

I also would like to see more information about the existing community. Is this project more about working with the established community or recruiting an existing community? Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:23, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

As I mentioned above right now there is no separate community for Bangla Wikisource other than Bangla Wikipedia community. Most of the contributor here is from Bangla Wikipedia. They occasionally contribute to Bangla Wikisource. So initial plan is to working with Bangla Wikipedia community, but that might be a good drive for recruiting a new separate Bangla Wikisourcer community.--Bellayet (talk) 13:48, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Laptop

Hi Belayet,

I am happy that you seem flexible around the laptop line-item in your budget. As you may know, we do prefer to avoid making grants for for expensive equipment (computers, etc), mostly because they are a large up-front expense with a life span that can live long beyond the grant period. If the grantee already has their own laptop to use for a project, that is certainly preferable. When you mention "lending" it, is that what you had in mind? If so, what changes to your budget might you then make? If, on the other hand, the purchase of a laptop as absolutely required for this project to succeed, I'd want to know what you would do with the equipment after the life of the grant (ideally it would go back to the movement via some means?). Cheers! Siko (WMF) (talk) 22:20, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for late response. Some of the answer related to laptop you can find at the bellow conversation with Jayanta. If WMF allowed us to buy a laptop, we will use that at the next phase of the project if we can manage one. Otherwise we'll hand over the laptop to the Wikimedia Bangladesh Chapter. So that community can use that at any purpose of Wikimedia projects in Bangladesh.--Bellayet (talk) 10:57, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Type-o-thon

The project proposes to organize "type-o-thons". How will this work? How do people typically learn Bangla typing in Dhaka? How will these classes be organized? What partnerships do you have with teachers who already teach Bangla typing? Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:29, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Basically there is no formal curriculum exists teach Bangla typing in our country. Though Government of Bangladesh publicize that Bangladesh going to be DIGITAL, and they are working on that. But they are not taking care much about some basic things such as local language computing. Still they confused with ASCII and Unicode. As I know there is no course or topic included in the text books, where mass student can learn how to type in Bangla at their digital equipment. But for Bangla their exists some easy keyboard layout or input method like Avro and Probhat, which are basically phonetic keyboard layout and it is easy to learn typing Bangla if you can type English. But people are afraid to use them or have lack of knowledge about the tools. With this event we can inform students and show them how we can easily type.--Bellayet (talk) 14:08, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Number of participants

The project says that it expects 350 participants. Can this be explained more? What will all these people doing? Is this the total number of people who will be participating in any event? Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:29, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

We estimate on average we'll have 50 participants for each of type-a-thon. And we have a compitition. In type-a-thons these participants will type the text from pre-selected files through proofRead tool. They will got training on how to type in Bangla (who needed) and how to contribute in Wikisource and with proofRead tools. They will also know how to participate in the competition from the type-a-thon.--Bellayet (talk) 14:53, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

• In addition, I think it'd be better to reward T-shirts 50 to 100 participants who did best at the end of the competitions, what do you think? And how do you plan to set goals for the competition prizes? And what'd be the prizes? -- ɑηsuмaη «Talk» 09:59, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Giving more t-shirts to competition participants as reward is a good idea. Thanks for the idea. We still brainstorming on the goals or milestones for the competition. It may be 200 or 300 good quality pages. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.--Bellayet (talk) 14:53, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Project Management & laptop internet

Hi Belayet, Thank you for great initiative about our Bengali literature resource project. But I have seen few grey area about your budget proposal, like Project Management & laptop internet. Could you please give those details break-up for our under standing? Why need 350 T-shirts? Are you giving T-shirts to all participants? Typ-thon happened majorly in offline, So why needs Internet charges. Any one from our community can upload all content to Wikisource. Please explain all and give all breakup of all budget.Jayantanth (talk) 08:46, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Jayantada for your reviews and let me clear. The project required human efforts to manage the tasks such as identify potential public domain Bangla content repositories, making list of appropriate content, their information and collect them in digital medium, identify the quality or bug free files, making them uploadable for commons or local wiki by necessary adjustment at the files, Communication with the potential hosts, teachers, advisers for the event, Production of merchandise such as t-shirts and other prizes, prepare handouts and other material for event and many more tasks related to event management, online-offline promotion and other activities throughout the project. So we need the budget for project management. We enlist the budget for a laptop (500USD), portable internet connection (400USD for 6 month) and phone bills (100USD for 6 month) for the project management tasks and communications. T-shirt is the only give away item for the project. We estimated only 50 t-shirts for each event. And we have a competition also. Ansuman give me a nice idea above to use some t-shirts as reward for the competitors. So after the event if there more t-shirt left we can give more of them to the competitors. We never charged any internet cost for the events, that for the project management tasks. We are not going to typed the text any other place and post them later in Wiki. We need the internet at the events because participants will type and save the page directly at Bangla Wikisource through ProofReading extension and ULS input tools. In that way they learn the Bangla input method and how to contribute Bangla Wikisource. We hope hosts will manage the internet at the events.--Bellayet (talk) 14:00, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Charter funding

Bellayet and others, can Wikimedia Bangladesh fund this?
Do the Charters get access to funding from WMF, separate from IEG Grants program?
Thanks. :-)
--Gryllida 09:23, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Gryllida, Wikimedia Bangladesh is a pseudo chapter, which is not complete and registered. The chapter still run by a interim (not elected) committee struggling for the local registration. I don't think they are in position for any kind of grant program right now and till they got the registration.--Bellayet (talk) 10:19, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Bangla Wikisource

Scoring criteria (see the rubric for background)	Score 1=weakest 5=strongest
Potential for impact
(A) The project fits with the Wikimedia movement's strategic priorities	4
(B) The project has the potential to lead to significant online impact.	3
(C) The impact of the project can be sustained after the grant ends.	4
(D) The project has potential to be scaled or adapted for other languages or projects.	3.5
Ability to execute
(E) The project has demonstrated interest from a community it aims to serve.	3.5
(F) The project can be completed as scoped within 6 months with the requested funds.	4
(G) The budget is reasonable and an efficient use of funds.	3.5
(H) The individual(s) proposing the project have the required skills and experience needed to complete it.	4
Fostering innovation and learning
(I) The project has innovative potential to add new strategies and knowledge for solving important issues in the movement.	3
(J) The risk involved in the project's size and approach is appropriately balanced with its potential gain in terms of impact.	3
(K) The proposed measures of success are useful for evaluating whether or not the project was successful.	4
(L) The project supports or grows the diversity of the Wikimedia movement.	4
Comments from the committee: Bringing people together to type texts isn’t particularly innovative, but it may work. Focus on one of the largest global languages is worth attention. Proposers did not specifically respond to several of the questions asked so it was difficult to evaluate the plan fully. Concerns about the sustainability of the project after the grants end. Previous offline outreach efforts like this have had some unsatisfying results. Concerns about the need for IT equipment like a laptop. And if the university doesn’t have a network connection, the project may be unsuccessful from the start.

Thank you for submitting this proposal. The committee is now deliberating based on these scoring results.

Funding decisions will be announced by December 16. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 00:23, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Status update

This project has not been selected for an Individual Engagement Grant at this time.

We love that you took the chance to creatively improve the Wikimedia movement. The committee has reviewed this proposal and not recommended it for funding, but we hope you'll continue to engage in the program. Please drop by the IdeaLab to share and refine future ideas!

Comments regarding this decision:
We appreciate the effort put into this idea by the proposers. We also recognize that the size of this project’s budget, which is larger than on-the-ground outreach efforts that the local chapter has managed in the past, presents some challenges that we believe a local group may be better placed to oversee than WMF directly working with 1 or 2 individuals. We suggest that, if the Bangladesh Chapter believes this project should move forward, they submit it for a Project & Events grant. We’d also suggest avoiding expenses for equipment purchases, and to look for some committed partner organizations to help with the project, as we’ve seen this be useful for similar initiatives in other countries. Wishing you best of luck!

Next steps:

1. Review the feedback provided on your proposal and to ask for any clarifications you need using this talk page.
2. Visit the IdeaLab to continue developing this idea and share any new ideas you may have.
3. To reapply with this project in the future, please make updates based on the feedback provided in this round before resubmitting it for review in a new round.
4. Check the schedule for the next open call to submit proposals - we look forward to helping you apply for a grant in a future round.

Questions? Contact us.