Grants talk:IEG/Growing Kannada-language Wikimedia projects with a digital library

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2015

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2015 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 2 2015 begins on 20 October 2015, and grants will be announced in December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

Marti (WMF) (talk) 01:57, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

comments from Thepwnco

@Omshivaprakash: hello and congrats on your grant proposal being confirmed as eligible for review! I have a few questions for you - and generally would like to see more details about your project activities before the formal review period begins (I am part of the IEG committee).

• You've identified a key problem - the lack of quality articles in certain languages (because of the lack of access to verifiable sources). Your aim with this project is thus to support and facilitate the creation of new, high-quality articles. Could you indicate how many articles you expect to be created through this project? And on a related note, how many new editors do you think need to be involved in order to meet this goal?
• Your earlier project Pustaka Sanchaya sounds like it was very successful! Will you seek to bring in new editors by reaching out to those who participated in Pustaka Sanchaya? If not, how do you intend to recruit people to participate?
• I don't quite understand how will you use the Pustaka Sanchaya digital library index during this project. Here is my understanding: using the metadata (of some 5500+ books) available from Pustaka Sanchaya, you will encourage people to create either infoboxes for books (with the hope that having this will enable/encourage better referencing practices) or new articles for books. Is this accurate? If not, can you please help me to understand?
• You mention that you will "provide an interface to edit Wikipedia" but it is not clear to me why a separate interface is needed. Is the idea that this will allow you to automate the process of creating infoboxes from metadata?

thanks in advance. -Thepwnco (talk) 18:57, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

@Thepwnco: Thank you very much. I'm answering to your questions below.

1. a) Out of 5400, we are expecting around 500 articles related to important Kannada books to be created. Along with that, we will have author & publisher (Notable ones) pages also created. We would like to keep the hard limit open so that we can enrich Kannada wikipedia with as much good articles as possible. As I understand that the IEG requires a measurable output from projects, the above said limit hold's good for a 6 months project. b) With a crowd sourced activity the above limit can be reached by introducing 300-500 new editors. Keeping the platform open, would definitely involve more new editors to achieve the goal.
2. Sanchaya has had it's success through word-of-mouth activities through social media channels. People passionate about Kannada and Technology have always helped by joining hands or encouraging those who're really interested in such projects. We would definitely be reaching out to all people who involved themselves in Samooha Sanchaya crowd sourcing platform to achieve the goals for Pustaka Sanchaya. The other plans we have to recruit new editors is to effectively use the supportive regional news papers/media to spread the word about the work to reach larger audience across Karnataka and abroad. We will also be reaching out to bloggers community, friends who're into publishing industry to support this activity as they can help us bring Book lovers together. We are looking forward to create workshops/open house talks to make people aware of Wiki Editing. It would be a Wiki Loves Books initiative around Kannada wikipedia.
3. Pustaka Sanchaya is already helping people search valuable Kannada books in Unicode. The index will be made more user friendly to point out whether there is an article around Wikipedia for the book they search. Request them to create a new articles by using a page overlay guides + additional infoboxe's etc generated using the metadata. The page overlays will be explaining how wikipage can be created or enhanced. Pustaka Sanchaya - provides links to the original projects i.e. DLI & OUDL online libraries where the books are originally hosted. We will also be providing links to news paper reviews of the books if there is any. This would help enhancing the existing articles.
4. We won't be creating a new interface to edit wikipedia, but we will have an interface which guides them step by step to make use of Pustaka Sanchaya meta data and create wiki pages. Yes, we are planning to create a base template for each book/author/publisher with the meta data information along with reference links to the books. This should give them a quick learning capability to new editors to know how infobox works on Wikipedia.

Do let me know if I have answered all of your questions. I would be more happy to expand them in detail. I'm travelling at the moment but I shall respond to the questions as soon as I get connected online. Omshivaprakash (talk) 18:35, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Comments from Superzerocool

Hi, thanks for your proposal: it's very clear and well docummented. I have two comments

• Please, use a table for the budget. ;)
• I see your "measures of success" and I don't see numbers to measure (except 5500). Please use some numbers to measure if the project is successful or not. I say it because "Avoid stub in the metadata..." is a great object and it helps you to evaluate if you accomplish the main objetive, but, what happens if there are a few books with incomplete metadata (ie, 10%): the project is a success or a failure?.

Thanks in advance =). Superzerocool (talk) 12:29, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Dear @Superzerocool: Please post a link to this budget table to help. Geraldshields11 (talk) 19:23, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Dear @Superzerocool: I have put the budget in table. Hope that is what you were looking for.

To answer to your next query, Kannada wikipedia is going to benefit with the best of the books from the 5500 total books available in the index as of now. The digital libraries meta data had major issues such as accuracy in the manual information type into the database, incorrect transliteration used to type the names etc. Through our crowd sourcing activity, we have sorted most of those issues to identify the correct author, book names and publishers. We would be extending this activity to sort the books based on the year of printing, copyright status etc - sort them further based on the importance of the literature etc. Initially we are targeting to see 500 best articles to be created on Kannada wiki. Followed with pages relevant to the notable authors and publishing houses.

* 500 best books articles

* Notable authors & publisher pages

* 300-500 new editors to join hands

But not limited to any hard coded numbers as such.

About the future of the project:

We are also working on building the index further with the references and supporting materials that our local news papers can provide, hence it would be a continuous activity even after the initial 6 month project. The books which are not relevant, without metadata can be easily verified as not a deterrent to the project success. DLI & OUDL digital libraries are one of the largest of the scale here in India. The activity should help us learn how small or large the project might be for other 20+ Indic languages. Omshivaprakash (talk) 20:09, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Language

I like that this project is focusing on a language and region and not just specific aspects of a region. Geraldshields11 (talk) 19:23, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Growing Kannada-language Wikimedia projects with a digital library

Scoring criteria (see the rubric for background)	Score 1=weak alignment 10=strong alignment
(A) Impact potential Does it fit with Wikimedia's strategic priorities? Does it have potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	7.8
(B) Innovation and learning Does it take an Innovative approach to solving a key problem? Is the potential impact greater than the risks? Can we measure success?	7.0
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in 6 months? How realistic/efficient is the budget? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	7.5
(D) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support? Does it support diversity?	8.3
Comments from the committee: This project fits with the strategic priority to improve quality by mining a database for references and citations. It encourages innovation by exploring two methods of recruitment and engagement of new editors: focused attempts at content creation and outreach to communities already active on other crowd-sourcing platforms Sounds like this project could be expanded to other Indic language projects, specifically book metadata. Have concerns over project timeline. Approach seems a very innovative workaround to address lack of access to verifiable sources and copyright challenges of full-text digitization. Given that the budget is so low, I think there are little to no risks. Minimal risk given the low budget Sounds like the project team has necessary skills and relevant experience. Would also like to see entry of data in Wikidata. Are there more specific measurable targets besides book identification and number of new articles? For example, how many?

Round 2 2015 decision

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for an Individual Engagement Grant.

The committee has recommended this proposal and WMF has approved funding for the full amount of your request, $2,400

Comments regarding this decision:
We’re excited to see this well-developed crowd-sourcing platform build on previous efforts to make digital library holdings widely accessible. We appreciate that you are now leveraging that work to create well-referenced Wikipedia articles. We look forward to seeing an experienced community organizer and FOSS advocate catalyze the development of an emerging community of Wikimedian volunteers in the Kannada language.

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
2. Review the information for grantees.
3. Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
4. Start work on your project!

Questions? Contact us.

Thank you very much! Omshivaprakash (talk) 17:33, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

WHAT'S THE PROGRESS?

WHATS THE PROGRESS SO FAR ON THIS PROJECT ? nOTHING SEEN ON KANNADA WIKIPEEDIA. --106.51.140.247 03:27, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

We have initiated the project related activities officially from 15th December. On wiki activities would start majorly in February though project page creation with details for participation in local language is already initiated. Monthly report will be updated here this weekend on meta. Thanks for your follow up. Omshivaprakash (talk) 04:14, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Still there is no progress or report. It is a good project and I am interested in the results. When can I see it?--223.237.244.114 05:12, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Grants:IEG/Growing_Kannada-language_Wikimedia_projects_with_a_digital_library/Midpoint We have updated the report here with all the bottlenecks we have in this project. We are also talking about this project during Wikimedia Conference India to share how our work can be replicated further. Due to unforeseen issues the project has not been running with the expected speed. People like you who believe that the project is good and makes a difference can definitely join in to help us take it to its final stages. Just an anonymous comment is not helping us here. Hope you understand. Thank you. Omshivaprakash (talk) 06:55, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Where is the output?

Where is the output of the project? I mean, the list of books and the articles on each book? I have not seen any page dedicated to this in Kannada Wikipedia. What I can see a sub-page in the user-page which also does not have any list of books or list of articles added about books. As per the project grant request, 4 outreach events were supposed to be held. When and where these events held? Can I get the links to those event pages?--Pavanaja (talk) 06:21, 17 January 2017 (UTC)