Grants talk:IEG/Masterworks of Art in Wikipedia

Feedback

Thanks for your proposal! I have read it though I can't read the Czech project that you link to for background. I also believe that we need more highly skilled art historians on Wikipedia, but I am also amazed at the level of several people already working on art articles on Wikipedia today. I think an organized project specifically designed to improve the quality of specific artworks is a very good idea, and one that I would support. I think ways in which such a project can contribute to existing editor needs would be to carefully list the articles already created and the ones that need doing (so producing online catalogs to work from). Next, helping with infobox and stub creation based on Wikidata that is fed through such catalogs would be a good next step. Having a few examples based on highlights in leading collections is helpful for edit-a-thons and other outreach projects. Jane023 (talk) 21:04, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Note 1

I believe your proposal is a bit anti-Wikipedian when you state that "the most important and expected outcome would be a high number of university-educated specialists in art history with editing skills." I would suggest that such statements are not going to generate many friends here, even though we already have lots of such people among our current contributors. Firstly, you can't measure this, and secondly, it comes across as highly elitist, a Wikipedia no-no, as it implies that you would welcome their contributions more than the contributions of established Wikipedians. I do think it would be a valuable project to try and virtually recreate the entire painting gallery of Rudolf II, which has since his time been spread all over the world in leading museums. This would enable you take a more neutral focus and gain contributors in other parts of the world, while not concentrating efforts on Czech institutions alone. This would not only help Wikipedia, but also all those institutions who are the proud owners of some small bit of Rudolf's crazy collections. There are many artists who were solely employed by Rudolf and because their works have physically left Prague (and many left Europe!), their biographies are in a sad state because there is no wikilove for them from any one group. You probably have noticed by now that the art pages on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons tend to be very nationalistic, though as you point out, Bohemia doesn't even exist anymore. Jane023 (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

I do not see any contradiction between voluntary work and professional approach, but contributions to the project should increase quality. After all, the strength of Wikipedia lies in its competitiveness and evolutionary potential (which attracts me, former embryologist and molecular biologist, most of all). I have noticed, that while articles on medicine and sciences are actual, reliable and professional, referring to recent publications in respected scientific journals, arts often seem to be considered a "soft science", as anybody able to gather information on internet feels competent to contribute. I started to translate some articles on artists from en:Wikipedia, but found them useless and decided to rewrite them completely for cs:Wikipedia. Sorry, I have no ambition to trace artworks from Rudolf II collection at the moment, it would be time consuming and distracting. I do and will oppose any nationalism (I have had some rows with flagicon lovers) and will continue to remember german-speaking artists (both Jews and Germans) from the pre-War period.--NoJin (talk) 17:28, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer here, it helps me understand what you are trying to do, which is to increase the quality of arts articles on Wikipedia. I see that we are experiencing a lot of miscommunication, because though you claim that you oppose all nationalism, you are also only defining galleries located in Czech Republic as sources for your project. Please explain how this does not present a nationalistic bias in your project? I would be fine with it if you changed the title of your project to "Masterworks of Art in the Czech Republic". My point about Rudolf's artworks is not that you yourself need to trace these, but that it would open your scope to at least include artworks formerly located in the Czech Republic. Jane023 (talk) 11:42, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I would like to remember, that domestic art was not any isolated isle in Europe. Before World War Two, there was quite intensive traffic of artists. Some painters studied at Munich Academy, Antwerp, Paris, sculptors in Paris or Italy, domestic artists exhibited at Salon d'Automne or Venice Biennale, Rodin, Munch and others had exhibitions in Prague. Domestic art includes works by Jewish, German, Italian, Austrian authors. Some artists lived elsewhere for a significant period of their life (Mucha, Kupka, Sima, franta, Koblasa). The general idea of this project is to contribute to an awareness of the common European heritage, just opposite to any nationalistic views.--NoJin (talk) 16:13, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

I am trying to show you how you can increase the impact of your proposal by opening your audience, and not keeping it based on "just the collections of the galleries in CZ", especially since your title implies a world-wide view of the term "Masterworks". Of course I know that CZ has masterworks of art not created there, but often when you discuss one piece, you express the discussion in terms of others by the same artist. By opening your scope, you can benefit the curators you are contacting as well as Wikipedia. The whole point of Wikipedia is that we don't restrict ourselves to one collection, one viewpoint, or one master work. Often museums consider themselves the only expert on one work of art and their website will reflect this with an authoritative short article about a piece in their collection. If you compare museum articles to Wikipedia articles on great works of art, you will see that the museum only presents a fraction of the whole story. Please don't think I am accusing you of nationalism, I am just trying (unsuccessfully it seems) to help you with your proposal. Jane023 (talk)

I would change your goal to be "the most important and expected outcome would be a high number of articles on master works of art that were either created in CZ or are in the collections of CZ institutions". This enables you to accept contributions from all Wikipedians everywhere, not just those you visit. By opening up a page like "Ask a CZ curator" you can give the curators you meet the chance to participate by answering questions about their works of art, instead of just familiarizing them with our ways of editing. Yes it would be great if they all became editors, but I can tell you right now that won't happen, whilst there are so many other ways for them to contribute! Jane023 (talk) 08:34, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

The proposed title of my project was broad and general intentionally and I hope to attract wikipedians from other countries. On the other hand, to deliver some measurable results, I have to focus on a limited scope of activities (with respect to a working capacity of single human being). This IEG is an extension (outreach) of our main WikiProject Art Library and conforms with the original idea to present domestic art. It will be just an education mission with a humble goal to show people unexperienced with editing that it is not much different from writting a plain text. I strongly believe in Wikipedia potential to convert its users into editors once they experience how easy (and satisfying) it is to contribute. If they will be able to deliver some part of the new article or make corrections without any assistance will save my time for writting articles in Wikipedia.--NoJin (talk) 15:32, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Note 2

I just read the Czech "Wikiproject Art Library" you linked and it looks great! I would love to see all of those artists have pages on the English Wikipedia, and I am sure lots of other projects would be interested too (like the Polish and Hungarian Wikipedias, which are both very active in the art department). Maybe you could set up a Multilingual Challenge? Jane023 (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Note 3

Yes! I love the idea of "Wiki Loves Artworks", and I believe this should be your proposal title, not the one you have chosen. After all, what is a Masterwork anyway and how do you propose to judge that? Let people write about what they want, for example the portrait of their family ancestor that was once in the collection of Rudolf. You provide one list of works to begin with and open another list for suggestions from the community. Also for the photography bit, we already have en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Loves Art so you should just re-use that format for getting the pictures that Wikipedians can illustrate their articles with. Jane023 (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Scope

This sounds like what a Wikipedian in Residence does and it is not clear who will be writing the articles - are you referring to the attendees or to yourself? Remember, edit-a-thons notoriusly generate close to zero contributors over the longer term, and also, no paid editing is allowed, so if you get the grant you need to stick with project management and not article-writing. BTW, you cannot guarantee articles about artworks in the possession of each institution on the list - that would be a conflict of interest! What do you want to achieve with a statement like "The National Gallery in Prague, the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague and the Moravian Gallery in Brno are not members of the Association and will be addressed separately later." By excluding them, are you implying that your entire project is only focussed on the named institutions "about 30 regional galleries along with the National Gallery and the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague and the Moravian Gallery in Brno." If so, then that is your scope, but believe me when I say you will get more contributors if you widen your scope as I suggested in my feedback on Note 1. Jane023 (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

No, I certainly do not intend to write the articles on artworks by myself. I have visited one regional gallery recently and have seen a catalogue of wonderful items in their collection with photographs and complete documentation written by curators. Young curator at the gallery learnt editing and upload during my visit very swiftly and uploaded some paintings right away. She will be able to write an article and translate it into English or will ask somebody to do so. I am looking for native English speakers in Prague, who would help with proofreading. That´s all.

I do not exclude any institution, but regional galleries have often one or few curators and will need our assistance. I suppose, that big institutions will join in, once the project is running.--NoJin (talk) 16:18, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

It's terrific you inspired a young female curator to write a Wikipedia article! That's fantastic, and makes me want to sponsor your trips around the Czech Republic in the hope of gaining a few more converts. Forget about all the other stuff I said, let's just change this into a WiR project with a schedule of visits to specific people or seminars at the Galleries you have on your list, and then you don't need to worry about pesky measurable deliverables in your IEG grant besides checking off "been there, done that" boxes on a schedule presented in your plan. Jane023 (talk) 11:48, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Intended impact

You need measurable items here, such as a minumum number of articles generated (each translated article may count as one, so a small number of new articles translated across more than 3 languages could still yield a good result). Jane023 (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

There are 27 regional galleries in the Association and that is also the scope and impact of the first phase of this project. I will probably not be able to visit all of them personally in six months, but I may contact them also by means of the Associaton mailing list. My conservative expectation is to get one or two articles from each institution in this period.--NoJin (talk) 16:19, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Target audience

Not sure what you mean here - surely all Wikipedia readers benefit? Jane023 (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Community engagement

This is where you link your mail to the cultural partners email list and other notifications of your proposal on Wikipedia project pages etc. The main thing is that you need to generate readers of your proposal and hopefully, endorsers! Jane023 (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Measures of success

(see my feedback on Intended impact) You cannot decide whether photos are high quality without a jury or organizing a contest (see my note about Wiki Loves Art). You cannot guarantee articles by art historians or guarantee an influx of skilled editors (see my comments on Scope). Jane023 (talk) 12:23, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Quality of photographs is not an issue. Galleries have print quality photographs of prominent artworks for catalogues and detailed scans and multispectral images, etc. for art historians. A real problem is tracing owners of the copyright to artworks when artists died (less than 70 years ago). Sometimes, hiring a private detective agency would save time. I cannot guarantee any precise number of articles, as it depends on good will of people involved. On the other hand, such articles already exist in galleries and I have to persuade authors that it would be good for the gallery and for the art history in general to translate and publish them in en:Wikipedia. This is the experimental feature of the project, but the probability of failure is reasonably low (I am good negotiator).--NoJin (talk) 18:53, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

• Hello! From my point of view measures of success should be more measurable :) For example, not "new editors" but "N new editors" or "N % of new editors from those who you worked with during the project"; "new articles" - also, so quantifiable figure would be good here. rubin16 (talk) 18:06, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Sustainability & community engagement

Hi NoJin, thanks for submitting this proposal. It looks like you may have been using an older version of the proposal template, so I made some updates to your sections today, to help prepare it for review. Here are a few comments/questions I have from my first reading of your page:

• Please note the newly added "community engagement" section in your project plan, where we'd like to hear how you plan to engage the community to help you with your project :)

General support for our main project Art Library from the WM Czech Republic was declared, but this project aims at the en:Wikipedia and I would appreciate any comments and support from the international community.

• About sustainability for this project - it seems like much of the initiative relies on you having time to directly mentor these professionals so that they'll engage with Wikipedia. Although that's ok for a 6-month project, it doesn't seem particularly sustainable once the grant ends. What happens when we're no longer funding you to project manage? What happens when you stop having time to directly lead this initiative? Will all the work be done by then? Might you want to think about a strategy to build up a group of volunteers like you during the IEG project, so that after the grant ended there would a group that could sustain it for the long-term? Or, can you share more details about other ideas you have for helping to ensure this project doesn't end when the grant does?

I have no doubt about the sustainability of this project. Galleries and their curators are close partners of our project in cs:Wikipedia (Art Library) and their collaboration is vital. If this pilot project succeeds, there is a justified expectation that Ministry of culture might support its continuation, as it funds galleries anyway. As retired scientist, I have devoted full time for the Art Library project and do not consider anything else. Translations of complete articles into en:Wikipedia were our final goal from the start. So Masterworks of Art in Wikipedia is a necessary extension of our efforts and conforms with the basic idea to present our domestic art and collections to the international public. I have also notified The Czech Association of (professional) Art Historians (as a member) and asked for their support.

• About measures of success - I'd like to better understand your targets, in numerical terms, so we have a shared idea of what success looks like. How many articles/editors/etc would you aim for in the 6-months?

All members of the Association of galleries will obtain information about this project by email and I will make effort to visit personally as many of them as possible. The prime target are new editors of Wikipedia, articles on artworks come next. Supposing that basic materials for the articles are already available in galleries, the outcome depends on translations and editing skills. My conservative estimate is 15-20 editors and the same or better number of articles.

• Is English Wikipedia really the target wiki, more than Czech? If so, why? Or, why not both?

As mentioned above, our goal is to present domestic artworks (including collections of world art) and artists to the international public and interconnect it with wider trends, groups, schools of art. Mutual international exchange of artists was severely disrupted since the start of World War Two till 1960s and then again after occupation in 1968 till 1989. This is our contribution to repair the damage.--NoJin (talk) 16:17, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Best wishes, Siko (WMF) (talk) 18:53, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Comments to budget

I have cut 500 $ off the budget proposal. This money was a financial reserve for situations I was unable to assess and reflected some domestic specifics. When I wrote this proposal, I was aware that gallery may charge for the copy of photos (like NG in Prague - so it was omitted) and some curators may need assistance with English (people, who left school before 1989, have learnt only Russian. There is no pressure on curatorss "publish (in English) or perish!", in contrast to sciences, and they also have very limited options to publish in English). I will spare my personal budget, if necessary.--NoJin (talk) 09:01, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 1 2014

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 1 2014 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 1 2014 begins on 21 April 2014, and grants will be announced in May. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

question or suggestion

I am not sure whether my advice would really help you but I want to provide my feedback :) I would suggest to select so called "targets" from the whole number of people you are planning to visit: that should be the most friendly and open people who could join Wikipedia movement in the easiest way. Such a good start would work as additional support during communication with more strict people - you could tell them, that "I've already visited N galleries and they are already in our movement and could raise awareness of their work through the most popular website" :) If it is possible, I would also ask you to tell us your tips/arguments you use in conversations as part of your reports during the grant execution - that would be a nice advice to all of us rubin16 (talk) 18:09, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I thought from the start that we will not be able to execute our main project (Art Library) wihout participation of galleries and their staff. In 2012 and 2013 we have worked without any funding at all. It was wery difficult to colaborate effectively only by e-mail and I have succeeded to make articles on several galleries and their collections only thanks to a disproportionate expenditure of energy on both sides. I have set up some footholds in galleries in the past and met several regional art historians in Prague but personal contacts in all regions are crucial. I want to demonstrate that writting for Wikipedia is not much different from writting an article for a catalogue and hope to generate new editors easy way (or with a gentle pressure from my side). My principal argument is usefulness and popularity of Wikipedia as a source of information for students and other users, its international audience (for articles in English) and a quite obvious fact, that informations in printed media are already old and incomplete at the moment of edition.--NoJin (talk) 16:42, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Why an IEG grant and not direct funding by WMCZ?

Did you first propose this to Wikimedia CZ for funding? I can't see any discussion about this. Why can't they fund you directly, as it seems to be a CZ-only project. Jane023 (talk) 08:38, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

I have obtained information on this IEG programme from the Board of Wikimedia.cz and asked if I would try to propose a project. I suppose that Wikimedia.cz would not be able to support it due to budget limits.--NoJin (talk) 15:41, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Masterworks of Art in Wikipedia

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?	6.6
(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?	6
(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?	6.6
(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?	5.6
Comments from the committee: We appreciate the targeted approach to outreach on a specific region and topic aimed at quality improvement. The Czech-language promotional and how-to video might yield a novel outreach tool. Although not hugely innovative, there is measurable and potential impact. Success can be measured by looking at number of galleries visited and number of articles created or improved. There is often difficulty in teaching new editors and particularly getting professionals to contribute after merely single editing sessions. In that regard, the proposal may be too wide rather than deep - might it be better to have gathered enough community helpers so that 2-3 repeated editing sessions per gallery could have been arranged? Proposer is an experienced Wikimedian, but some questions remain about the ability of the proposer to accomplish the project’s goals with a target of English Wikipedia. No changes have been made to the proposal so far based on input from members of the English Wikipedia community, and we are uncertain whether the proposer fully understands English Wikipedia’s policies, which may differ from Czech Wikipedia. All work is scheduled to be conducted in Czech, and there is even money budgeted for translations, so we’re not sure why the target is English Wikipedia. Why not have articles added in the native language of the writer on the Czech Wikipedia and allow established English community members to create or update English Wikipedia articles as they see fit? We haven’t found any community discussion in the Czech Wikipedia so far, though we appreciate seeing support from the Czech Ministry of Culture. If the Czech Wikipedia is not a participant, that could be a concern to pay attention to.

Thank you for submitting this proposal. The committee is now deliberating based on these scoring results, and WMF is proceeding with it's due-diligence. You are welcome to continue making updates to your proposal pages during this period. Funding decisions will be announced by the end of May. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 23:59, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Round 1 2014 Decision

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 proposal and the proposer’s past efforts to encourage greater contributions about Czech art and artists to Wikipedia. As the target wiki for this project is English Wikipedia, though, it seems critical that the organizers have a very good understanding of that particular community’s policies and practices before beginning to train new editors to contribute there as well. We’d like to see more experience contributing to English Wikipedia from the grantee team, and more evidence of active collaboration with members of that community in the proposal development process. We’d also recommend against paying for translations from Czech articles to English articles, and would instead encourage you to consider volunteer roles for such tasks. Wishing you best of luck as you explore other options for encouraging Czech contributions to art-related articles, meanwhile!

Next steps:

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