Grants talk:PEG/Shared Knowledge/Annual plan 2014-15

Evaluation by the GAC

GAC members who support this request

1. To be honest I was kind of skeptical when initially clicking through to this grant proposal and certainly wasn't expecting to endorse it without some revisions, but, bluntly, it's really damn well put together. The budget is itemized, reasonable, and primarily either put towards programs we know have impact or programs that we could really use some more data on (which this will provide) in order to assess. It has evidenced significant community support, and nothing jumps out at me in it as looking terribly weird. I guess one minor comment might be that a title other than President for the employee may be preferable - in most places I am familiar with I would assume that the President of a small NGO was the unpaid head of its board - but that's a minor quibble, especially if that's not the typical case in Macedonia. Kevin (talk) 23:28, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
2. --Ilario (talk) 20:20, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
3. -- Roel (talk) 13:44, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
4. Rebuild, now more realistic. --Packa (talk) 23:08, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

GAC members who abstain from voting/comment

1. I refrain from evaluating this grant request because of my involvement as primary contact person.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 21:17, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

GAC comments

Dear Kiril, thank you for this submission. After some time I do see that community in Macedonia is growing and became stronger. I would like to know a little bit more about legal status of your organization Shared Knowledge. Is the organization registered in Macedonia? Also, you wrote you are in negotiating with the WMF. I would like to hear a little bit more about this (I know that is not usual to talk about something in the tame of negotiating, but I want to check the status of it). Also, can you provide information about community: how big is it, how many active volunteers you have, how big is your board and is the president the board member?--MikyM (talk) 09:52, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your questions Mile. Shared Knowledge was registered in March 2014 as a non-partisan, non-governmental and non-profit association of citizens. The Executive Board in its current shape consists of five members appointed to a two-year term, whereby one of these members serves as Chairperson. For the sake of independence, the President of Shared Knowledge, appointed to a two-year term, does not serve on the Executive Board. In addition, we have also agreed on appointing the members of the Executive Board in a year that does not overlap with the year of appointment of the President (see the bylaws for more details). With regards to the size of our community, the number of active volunteers on the Wikimedia projects in Macedonia is about 10, while the number of volunteers in our organisation is somewhat greater. Importantly, not all of the active members on the Wikimedia projects are active within the organisation since they reside in different cities or countries. However, some members from the community have already engaged in some activities independently, which created the opportunity to work on introducing them in our regular activities and thereby increase the number. We also work hard on hiring volunteers outside our community and expect a rapid growth of their number as well.

The process of negotiating has practically begun with an e-mail sent to Asaf Bartov and Bence Damokos in December 2013, in which we presented our future plans along with the intent to advertise a motion of no confidence to the work done within the current Wikimedia Macedonia. Then, we were advised to partner with the Affiliations Committee in order to resolve the situation. In January 2014, the question was raised on the village pump of the Macedonian Wikipedia and the community unanimously voted no confidence to the current Wikimedia Macedonia and supported our intent to establish a new organisation that will replace the current one and aim at overtaking its name and recognition as a local chapter. These results were then presented as endorsement from our community in a request to the Affiliations Committee, but it hasn't been answered yet even after sending a reminder. However, we didn't want to just wait for the decision upon our request and decided to carry out plans by conducting our regular educational activities, starting negotiations with several GLAM institutions, organising the photographic competition Wiki Loves Earth 2014 in Macedonia, and writing this grant application to seek support for the other planned activities. Now, as we haven't received yet response to our request from the Affiliations Committee for almost six months, our plan is to re-submit the request and report about the things that were successfully completed and those that will have to be in the near future.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 22:46, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Comments from the Wikimedia community

Tony1

I haven't yet properly read through this, but already I what I see disqualifies it from support. Sorry if this appears blunt and grumpy; so I want to foreground my default assumption that there's a lot of hard work, talent and goodwill among your members.

Here, as usual, is a raft of time-consuming requests for the right details (which is my mantra concerning level of detail in PEG applications, and is not directed specifically at the applicants, but is a systemic criticism). A larger request like this, in my view, requires stronger and more detailed justificaiton. I've only read the top part of the application itself, and the text above, which should have appeared in the application. It's a pity we now have to look in two places to get some of the essential information on the entity.

1. "five members appointed to a two-year term"—does that mean self-appointed?
2. "we have also agreed on appointing the members of the Executive Board in a year that does not overlap with the year of appointment of the President"—I don't understand it, and I'd love not to go to your bylaws. "the President of Shared Knowledge, appointed to a two-year term, does not serve on the Executive Board"—that's weird: I can understand a president/CEO having no vote on the board, but not even attending meetings?
3. So you want us to bankroll a breakaway group, and the original chapter is still incorporated and recognised by the WMF? You give numbers for your group (5/10/others) but not for WIkimedia Macedonia. The information about members and activities on this page is vague and unverified.
4. The start-date is perilously close. This doesn't help. What will you do when we reject the application? Plan B?
5. I'm confused as to who the president is (why not tell us?). And what position does Bojan Jankuloski hold? Why should we have to ask???
6. Primary goals of the annual plan: far too vague. Statements like "to increase the quantity and improve the quality of free content", "to raise awareness of the Wikimedia movement", and "to encourage participation on Wikimedia projects" are wasting the applicants' and GAC members' time. (Memo to staff: What instructions will minimise the risk of vague unhelpful text-bloat? No offence to the applicants: this is a system thing we need to work out.)
7. Measures of success: I'm not buying them unless there are numbers. This excuse is most unconvincing and suggests an unwillingness to do the research so that you and we know where things stand now: "Since this is the first year we submit an annual grant request, we're not able to set any numerical figures to measure the success of our activities."
8. Budget: renting a furnished office will enable you "to make significant savings in ... transportation expenses". Unclear. With a five-member board and five other active members, can't it be run from people's homes? 6000 euros for the shell sounds expensive; why does it need to be in a "prominent location"? I don't know how you'd ever test the "discount" in rent you presume from an agent vs the agent's fee. Real-estate agents are crooks the world around; why are you trusting this kind of tradeoff?

   The office will cost well over US$13,000; GAC's rules indicate that this is not within our ambit.

   Speakers as input device? Surely output.

   Projection screen and project: only for the office? Not for the education activities outside? This is premature for an office alone with so few active members.

   Library: what dead-tree documents are required? I'm surprised that all you need isn't online.

   No information about hours per week, f/t vs p/t, for "president" and WiR. I want to know how much per hour would go to the employee and how much would go in extra taxes and other on-costs. Please don't include transport expenses in the salary.

   300 euros for toilet paper? We'd rather office incidentals were packed into one item, please, although the snacks and refreshments are good as a separate line (and not cheap either).

   What are the flags?

   Business cards, like AffCom's, are a very very minor consideration. I could get plain ones done for 20 euros; why five times that price? How do they and a name plate make WMF sites better?

   The total for educational program is in the wrong column, as for all of the tables. Why do lines that are not part of the request appear in the same tables?

   I haven't gone through most of the budget yet, but it seems like a cut-back is in order.

Side note: AffCom seems to be a very unsatisfactory board committee for all of its bloated costs ($800 for business cards?). This is my take from the extreme tardiness in dealing with this matter, as well as from complaints on the WM-l about AffCom's slow progress in recognising new user groups. I'm unwilling to pick up the little bits because AffCom can't fulfill the most basic of its duties to the movement. Tony (talk) 03:17, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your extensive comments Tony. First of all, I'd sincerely appreciate if you spend some more time on thoroughly analysing our request since some of your questions and concerns have already been answered in different sections. Reading only the "top part of the application itself, and the text above" to infer conclusions as a GAC member is far from being sufficient. Anyway, the answers on the questions and concerns presented above are properly sorted in turn:

• Administration: Our bylaws clearly proscribes the way in which we elect our Board members: "The members of the Executive Board are elected by the Assembly of the Association." (Art. 25). Previously, it states: "The Assembly of the Association is the highest governing body of the Association and consists of all of its members." (Art. 20). The total number of our members who elected the members of the Executive Board was greater than the number of members of the Executive Board, implying that they were practically not self-appointed. The decision to select the President of the Association and the members of the Executive Board in a non-overlapping year, i.e. in a different year, was deliberately made in order to reach greater degree of independence. You've apparently misunderstood the relation between the President and the Executive Board because he is eligible to attend and participate in their meetings but ineligible to vote. The President of Shared Knowledge is Bojan Jankuloski. You're apparently deluded on the total number of members of our organisation. The names listed are those that will be actively engaged to administer the activities included in this request but not the total number of members in our organisation.
• Status: Regarding the status of our organisation, you can find a note in the request that links to the motion on the Macedonian Wikipedia where the community voted no confidence to the work of the current Wikimedia Macedonia and endorsed our members to establish a new organisation that will have to replace its work (The note was even part in our previous request for organising Wiki Loves Earth 2014 in Macedonia which you also evaluated!) In other words, the community has endorsed Shared Knowledge to be official representative of the Wikimedia movement on the territory of Macedonia on the level of any local chapter or other affiliated organisation. There are multiple reasons for collectively leaving Wikimedia Macedonia to found a new organisation and they have all been presented to the members of the Aff Com. Unfortunately, the members of the committee did not respond on our request and we decided to start our operations as Shared Knowledge with one of our priorities to overtake the name "Wikimedia Macedonia" in near future. A member of the Board of Trustees, people within the Wikimedia Foundation, and members of the global community were informed about our case and have informally advised us on how to proceed. Here, I'd also like to express deep disappointment from our members on your tone using the phrase such like "bankroll a breakaway group". You're always welcome to ask questions and we'll answer them at the ability of our best, but using hard words in case when you don't know how the things actually stand may inflict insult on the party you're referring to.
• Goals and measures of success: Firstly, we planned to detail the goals of every project and activity but then we decided to not delve too much and focus only on the most general only. The main reason for doing it is to keep the length of our request reasonable. The measures of success can be easily changed to indicate real numbers. We've got experience in many projects and activities and have also conducted research on the rest of them.

• Our measures of success will be promptly amended to include the information required. That is not a problem at all. We just did not know whether we need to go that much into details. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 15:57, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

• Budget: Despite of significantly reducing the expenses for furniture and transportation, the office located on a prominent location offers other benefits such as greater visibility to the environment, formality in the relations with external parties, free space for organising in-person meetings as well as meetups of the community, etc. Your comment on conducting the activities of the Executive Board from people's homes does not hold because of the following two reasons: (1) Shared Knowledge is an organisation, not an informal user group; and (2) the scope of our activities is wide enough so that in-person meetings are necessary. The role of the agent will be to search for the best options as a function of our wishes and negotiate on lowering the price which would otherwise cannot be properly done by anyone else. We don't know much about the experience with such agents in other countries but we trust in the expertise they bring and expect that it will pay off on the long run. The office will cost €6,250 which is much less than the $13,000 you're indicating. Note that other projected expenses are chiefly administrative expenses and result of the operations done in the office. The projection screen and the projector will be mostly used in the office and possibly for other purposes outside of it. As for educational purposes, the educational institutions in Macedonia are fairly well equipped as we haven't faced any specific problem yet. The amount of €300 is not specifically for toilet paper but for all hygienic and sanitary means, including soaps, detergents, towels, etc. The flags will depict the logo of our organisation and along with the business cards and the name plate are neat details that will have to increase the visibility of our organisation and thereby indirectly benefit our movement. The lines that do not contribute to the total amount requested but are part of the budget were included there for the sake of comprehensiveness. We could have done it in separate tables but it would have resulted in unnecessary lengthening of the budget and therefore we kept it in this form.

• The projector will be used in the office to hold various activities with groups of people, meetings with public, training, lectures, workshops, etc. It is therefore very important that we have one because we save a lot by having our own space at our disposal to conduct all those activities. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 15:57, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

• Working hours: The employee is expected to spend about 40 hours a week with a working time starting at 8:30 and ending at 16:30 every day from Monday to Friday. Excessive hours out of the regular working time as well as the necessity to work during the weekends due to the workload are not unexpected. The Wikipedian in residence is expected to spend the same amount of working hours but with more flexibility on the regular working time. Personal income tax rate in Macedonia is 10% and the proportion of total social contributions is 27%.
• Library: Releasing free materials from the National and University Library "St. Clement of Ohrid" in Skopje is only one of the activities that will be done with this institution. The Wikipedian in residence will also work in digitisation of the materials needed, organise lectures and workshops intended for the employees, promote our movement on public events, and collaborate on other projects that may benefit us.

• I (Bojan Jankuloski, the President) would like to make further explanation here: most things we need are not online. A small country like ours has only digitalized the classics of its fictional literature and ancient church manuscripts, so the vast majority of what we need to draw on in any activity related to this country is not online in any form. We are not scanning whole works here, neither are we scanning fiction. Most of what we need is non-fiction. That is precisely why we need the person to be there, scanning material (chapters, pages etc) to be used as vital source of information by our editors and editing groups, as source material for the creation articles, which will of course then be referenced. We have agreed witth he National Library that we may scan chapters of works of non-fiction, for the purpose of having several copies of chapters/pages on each chosen topics to be distributed as simple source to editors we organize. (The procedure will require a routine signing of consent-slips for that, but that is too technical for our purpose here). The role of the Wikimedia movement in this country is therefore pivotal in releasing information into the public sphere as articles, as most of our knowledge is trapped in the 'dead-tree paper' format mentioned. There is no other way that people can have access to the depository of the material to write articles from. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 15:57, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

• Plan B: Our annual plan can be easily separated into a dozen of smaller grants. However, the purpose of the annual plans is to compile them into one structured request for a specified period of time. We also find it a bit straggly and completely unproductive for the GAC members to shoot them out with multiple requests at the same time and artificially create a workload when they can be neatly arranged into single one.
• Aff Com: We hope that the negotiations with the Aff Com will be re-established and the Board of Trustees will finally grant us the right to use the name "Wikimedia Macedonia".

In addition, we can provide you with report in English about the problems within Wikimedia Macedonia, translation in English of the motion of confidence on the work done within the current Wikimedia Macedonia, and scans from the relevant documents regarding our organisation if necessary. The changes to the request upon your suggestions will be made immediately. You're welcome to ask additional questions or share other thoughts. Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 15:25, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

I've made the necessary changes in the application upon Tony's request. You can now find a note next to the projected starting date that indicates on the possibility of extending this date and the alternative dates that may be used. I've also amended the measures of success with real numbers and used their sorting to list the secondary goals of our planned activities.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 00:40, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Rejoinder

I'm trying to work out how offended to be. Actually, very offended.

• "You've apparently misunderstood the relation between the President and the Executive Board because he is eligible to attend and participate in their meetings but ineligible to vote." No, I haven't misunderstood; you haven't explained it. Why do you need to respond with a huge amount of irrelevant information? Just answer briefly, without insulting me.
• "You're apparently deluded on the total number of members of our organisation."—do you know how rude "deluded" is? You wrote above: "the number of active volunteers on the Wikimedia projects in Macedonia is about 10, while the number of volunteers in our organisation is somewhat greater". What the hell does that mean? And you still don't give a number or estimate.
• "you can find a note in the request that links to the motion on", and I'm gratuitously told that the note was in some previous application. Gee ... thanks. I don't have time to go hunting down links like that. You needed to explain it in brief, summary form, at the top of your application.
• "bankroll a breakaway group"—that is what it looks like to a reasonable person (unless you explain the context, which you didn't).
• This is the most unconvincing set of reasons I've seen for some time: "Your comment on conducting the activities of the Executive Board from people's homes does not hold because of the following two reasons: (1) Shared Knowledge is an organisation, not an informal user group; and (2) the scope of our activities is wide enough so that in-person meetings are necessary."
• "The office will cost €6,250 which is much less than the $13,000 you're indicating." More than $13K, actually, when you add the costs of running it, in your budget.
• "€300 is not specifically for toilet paper but for all hygienic and sanitary means, including soaps, detergents, towels, etc."—it sounds like a lot of money for items that cost almost nothing at a supermarket, even when not bought in bulk.
• "The lines that do not contribute to the total amount requested but are part of the budget were included there for the sake of comprehensiveness. We could have done it in separate tables but it would have resulted in unnecessary lengthening of the budget and therefore we kept it in this form."—No, please do put them separately. Or at the very least mark them (asterisk? italics?) so we know clearly that the total at the bottom in the wrong column doesn't include them. Basic.
• Working hours: well who cares what time they start and finish every day? I want to know the total working hours, which is what we're paying for. How much per hour? Are the social contributions on top of the salary, or taken out of the budget line? Please express it simply so we don't have to ask these questions. Tony (talk) 02:26, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the additional comments. I don't intend to get involved in an off-topic discussion and would directly address your concerns related to the request:

• Note: The note linking to the motion was part of both requests. You were not redirected to that one.
• Office: We think that running an office for our activities would make us stronger and more accessible to the external environment. The office will be also used for meetings with representatives from other parties and that is something which cannot be done elsewhere. I've never seen an organisation with the aim at partially professionalising its work to run activities from people's homes. As for the total cost, even if we assume that it's $13,000, I'm surprised as to how this is extremely high. The monthly expense for office rental in our country is relatively low compared to many other countries where it usually exceeds €1,000. The estimation for the cost of utilities was made by summing the individual cost for every component included: €80 for electricity, €50 for heating, €30 for water supply, €3 for broadcasting, €40 for Internet connection, €25 for phone line, and €20 for mobile phone line.
• Sanitary and higienic: Once again, we estimated a total amount of €300 or €25 monthly; it includes all necessary sanitary and higienic means that we need throughout the year. As for your wit suggestion, we always first plan how much money to take with before to go to the supermarket and make the purchase.
• Other lines: We use notes to indicate if the items will be covered from other sources. Notes are more convenient than using asterisks or italics leading to notes placed somewhere else in the application. No need to complicate when we already have the note in the same line. And all the totals are in the right columns. Please first check the changes that were made in the application before iterating the same things.
• Working hours: I've already explained that the employee will have to work 40 hours a week. The hourly salary is €5,25. Personal income tax and the social contributions are included in the amount and thereby not part of the budget as separate items.

I hope it's clearer now. Your comments are always welcome. Thanks.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 22:54, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Response. Yes; thanks for your efforts in providing greater (in some cases too much) detail, Kiril; if there were proper guidelines as to how much detail to provide, for what types of items, and in relation to how big a proposal, we'd both have been saved a lot of time and trouble.

I want to reiterate and expand on a point I made above: the FAQ for the PEG program clearly states:

"funding should not include permanent full-time staff or permanent office space". And "PEGs may fund part-time positions or full-time temporary positions with a limited focus and scope of work related specifically to the grant. Full-time staff and recurring operating expenses may not be funded through the PEG program, although these types of expenses may be funded through the APG program."

Given these clear statements, it does seem that the proposal should be modified to include only a part-time staff member. On that issue, I find €5.25 per hour, including social contributions, to be rather on the low side for someone who will have significant responsibilities—requiring logistical, interpersonal, and administrative skills. It might sound like gaming the rules, but I'd be much more comfortable paying a higher rate per hour, expecting a lot of the employee (Bojan), and cutting back to part time. We assume by default (and from what he writes above) that Bojan is worth investing in and paying above a subsistence rate.

The next issue is that even for a full-time employee, the activities look very ambitious to manage, and are described only in the most summary form. The application doesn't deal with how volunteers will work with the employee, which is usually a motivational issue. Can you re-assure us that there's a solid core of volunteers who are prepared to work with the employee? Who, briefly, would help with what (if you don't want to use real names, possible WP usernames, or just providing numbers of core people)?

The proposal for a rented office doesn't appear to be within the PEG rules, and should be taken to the APG program; perhaps there's a way to provide funding for upgrading internet access and consumables for a home office: would that be possible?

Please consider a more cautious approach to the programmatic activities as a whole. Even a less Herculean program would be a fine achievement by the group, and I must compliment you and your colleagues for their energy and planning, even if I find the latter too sweeping. The National Library activities, the scanning, etc, sounds particularly exciting, from waht Bojan writes above. Before adding more detail, though, I think you might discuss the general outlines with grantmaking staff, and whether the education, GLAM, administration, and community dimensions can be kept under manageable control for both Bojan and the volunteers. Tony (talk) 07:25, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Answer to Tony1

Thank you for the comments, Tony. Now I will attempt to answer your questions myself (Bojan Jankuloski).

• Pay: We are asking for a full-time position at the current pay rate as the most reasonable solution for our needs. You see, when the activities planned and the scope of my work is best suited for a full-time position, being, as you rightly say, rather comprehensive (but by no means hard to manage, as I will try to describe below). For that reason, we ask for that amount per month, even though it may seem humble by other standards. If I were to ask any higher, the workload would still remain the same, and it will therefore need to be much higher. That seems too much to ask for a group/chapter of our type and status. It is also worth mentioning that this is the norm in our country and it may be seen as odd or not sufficiently serious if the head person and employee is part time. Same goes for office space (explained further below).

• Volunteers and of volume of activity: All of the activities for the year have been thoroughly discussed and I can assure everyone that they are very manageable. We have our own (internal) plan that is more detailed and each project is broken down in periods and date ranges. Some of them are of such nature that have several parts occurring in different times of the year, while others are more intensive but shorter. As I said, all of them are very manageable and have been analysed to be so, but obviously do require full-time involvement on my part and work with various volunteers for each project.

Now, I will elaborate about the volunteers: During the past 6 months I have been intensively discussing volunteer involvement with a good number of people, part of whom have already had volunteer involvement in the movement or are active at our wiki and are interested in doing so. I have also 'recruited' yet others for particular projects who are keen on being involved. Each of them asked what their involvement entails and have agreed on participation. Furthermore, there is now about a dozen people who are to be our members and have already been assigned to various projects (who are obviously, pending). We already have people for nearly all of them. I am daily dedicated at recruiting members, and I have concluded that the interest is immense. Some of them will work on more than one project. Yet others are interested in no more than the QR-codes (2 projects). The museums are to be worked on by myself and two other people, taking pictures documenting, cataloging. Wikiexpeditions have been agreed with the sufficient number of people each time (it is stated in the financial break-down) and each of the participants are very keen and have lots of knowledge of history, geography etc. The Archaeoexpeditions are also already agreed on, and people area ready. Same for the Wikicrafts. The photography competitions, edit-a-thons and other forms of organized editing are nothing new with us, and always stir great interest and large participation (we had it at schools, universities or by general participation by announcements on social media and popular websites. I overdid it with the explanations a bit, but what I was going to say is that my half-year commitment to recruiting people has paid-off rather well and that we can now say that we have roughly 20 people who are willing to participate in these projects. To these, I should add all those who will be present at the editing sessions nature and culture photography competitions, who are recruited from universities, schools or the general public without any problems, as our past experiences have shown. The Lectures on Wikipedia are to be given by our most senior members and editors, all of whom have already done such things at the universities when they were training and recruiting together with the professors when we had our larger-scale editing projects. Lastly, we have a rather large and successful facebook group numebering some 39.00 members and growing. This is an excellent medium for recruiting and further growth, as has already been shown for the competitons.

• Offices: Similar to what was said above about full-time employment, in Macedonia not having an office is really poor practice for an organization. Every dog and his man has one. Not having it is really bad for our activities, and how we will be perceived by the public, present and future potential collaborators and institutions. I know a chapter already had offices granted throgh this very place (PEG) in the same manner. So, it seems that this will be nothing unusual and out of order. We are thinking log-term. Perhaps we can get the funds for office from here this year, and then ask that from the APG from next year onwards (then we will qualify to submit reqests there, and now we still do not). Moreover, I would like to emphasize the role that the premises will play as a meeting ground for all sorts of activities, presentations, lectures, gatherings, work with groups, volunteers etc. It is way better than struggling for space elsewhere, and will be perceived as not dignified and serious. I think office space really does play an important role in our development and success. I know my environment.

I hope my answers have made things easier for you Tony, and other reviewers. Cheers --B. Jankuloski (talk) 13:01, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Bojan, I see there is a strong dedication to the task, and that your role will encompass a number of dimensions, including social media. This augurs well for the proposal. However, I'm still of the view that the pay per hour is too low; and I'm old-fashioned enough to want to know why the rules say one thing (about full-time and office) and this is asking for another. I think that either the rules should be changed or the program should be adjusted: there's a mismatch here. There's also the issue of what happens after the year is over, after such a full-on program. But I don't want to talk more before the staff say something. Tony (talk) 15:23, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

• I'm aware that the rules of the PEG do not apply always in practice and there were some cases that support this conclusion. I'd say the main problem derives from the mismatch between the rules of the PEG and those of the APG. The two differences are in the eligibility criteria of the APG, which obviously disqualify some organisations to submit their annual plans there, and the time of accepting submissions, which in the case of the APG is just two times annually. In my opinion, the rules are a valid topic of discussion and proposing changes in near future may lead to their better understanding.

Yet, I think that the WMF staff members and other community members are aware of these difficulties, and so let the applicants, who are not eligible to submit their annual plans to the APG, to use the PEG programme for that purpose. The rules are apparently not written in stone and the criteria are relaxed. By doing this, we are following the already existing practice and we think that our requests have already been part of other plans.

Even if we did satisfy the criteria for APG, we had to wait until October to do so. But so far this has worked for others, so we so no reason why we should not submit it. They are aware of the issue and are obviously flexible to meet the needs of chapters/groups until they fix the issue formally.

We have already outlined certain activities for next year and intend to pursue a rich program and, for next year, we intend to submit the grant request to the straight to the APG in May (by then we would have qualified for it) and continue in that manner every year. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 08:37, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I think Bojan explained it very well. There really seems to be great divergence between the outline of the PEG and APG programmes. Though their names indicate to what type of grants should be submitted through each of these programmes, whereas PEG should deal with those applications requesting funds for projects and events and the APG with those for annual plans, the differences in the eligibility criteria and the period of accepting submissions make them less comparable. Probably, that's the reason why the PEG programme is set so flexible on accepting smaller annual plans as Bojan mentions in his comment. Best.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 09:38, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Kiril, sure. I'm now convinced that there's a lot of good in this proposal, and an admirable level of dedication by you and Bojan (which is why it's important to be sure there's yet more dedication in others around you to support the implementation of anything like this ambitious plan). I'd like to see some adjustments and more information in a few areas, but as I said above, it's now more apppropriate to discuss the complexities with the staff at this point.

What I do want to say is addressed not to you but to the staff: There are dangers in purporting to have a set of firm rules (in this case expressed in pretty much black-and-white wording), and then inconsistently or loosely applying them. Among those dangers are the slippery slope, and being later challenged by anyone who feels unfairly treated when you do strictly apply the same, or more dangerously, different rules. It's a "moral hazard", as Americans say. That is why I'm disappointed to have seen a certain looseness grow over the past six months or so. Apart from anything else, volunteer reviewers don't quite know where they stand. Nor do applicants. Rules should be updated promptly if there's a clear need, not left in abeyance until the next revamp of the process. It's open and transparent that way. Tony (talk) 10:44, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Comment from WMF (1)

Thank you for this detailed and ambitious proposal. You responses to the discussion have been thorough and informative.

As discussed above, PEG does not support full-time staff or offices. If the group's plan is to ramp up funding to an APG, then we encourage you to request funds for part-time staff, demonstrating impact towards an Annual Plan Grant. For reference, both Wikimedia Estonia and Wikimedia Serbia have demonstrated responsible growth with measurable impact, transitioning from PEG to APG. If not having full-time staff or office space changes what is feasible programmatically then please revise the request accordingly. We will then revisit the proposal. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:48, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Revision of the request

We promptly decided to work out our grant request upon Alex's comment and therefore we've converted the full-time job to a part-time and removed the office and the related expenses from our budget. Thus, the total amount requested has been significantly reduced, that is €13.346,00 or more than 20% from the previous total. The working hours for the part-time job were reduced to 75% of the full-time, i.e. 30 hours weekly, with a greater flexibility. In addition, we've also adjusted the hourly salary to €7.00 upon Tony's suggestion, and thereby the total amount for the compensation remained the same.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 09:47, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

Comments from WMF (2)

Thank you Kiril Simeonovski. Please find our questions/comments on the program plan below.

I have answered those questions that can best be addressed by me, while the rest have been answered by Kiril and two other members, who are particularly involved in them. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 15:42, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

• With the decrease in staff time, will the scope of projects also need to be adjusted? If not, how do you plan to manage the projects with decreased staff time?

We believe that the working hours are still ample, especially as projects will also have 'project managers' who will work with me and share the workload. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 13:13, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

GLAM

• WiR: Please note that the WiR needs to be an experienced Wikipedian in good standing with the community. Shared Knowledge will also need to sign a formal agreement with the GLAM institution (e.g. Memorandum of Understanding) to ensure the WiR will have all the access, opportunities, and tools needed for them to succeed in their residency. Not having an agreement and full support has been an issue in the past.

Yes, he has the support and the formal agreement is on its way. Has been slowed down somewhat by the fact that people are on their annual holidays now, but it should not be long. The decision has already been made by the head of projects at the library. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 10:04, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

• Digitization: We recognize the importance of digitizing materials, especially considering Macedonia's situation. However, the digitization needs to be of whole works so that a lasting resource is built, rather than just fulfilling a short-term need (in the case of digitizing just a few pages or a chapter upon request).

The primary idea with the WiR was to be a research librarian for all our needs (most projects), as we have nothing to go on at present. Our best solution is the National Library, where they keep the legal deposits of all books. There is no other way to have material to work with, as nearly nothing is online, except old manuscripts and classics. As I said, most of the projects will need this (including those below, where I answer about the writing part).

Fortunately, the library said that the WiR will need to digitize works for them (together with the other digitizing staff) as something in return for the favor, and that will be in the written agreement. They mentioned that he will receive training for that. These are indeed whole works and are such character that are very useful. But all of them are classical scholarship, old manuscripts, works of historical and national importance etc. They would be public domain by definition, so I think there should not be any problem in us having them as material, uploading them (or using them as Wikibooks). Most of the literature that we intended the WiR to research is however, not in the public domain and is to be used as resource to write articles (in most of our projects, as mentioned). Whether he is to make copies/scans of parts of them to be used by editors (individuals or groups) or merely providing us with the physical books, with the relevant chapters marked and annotated on separate piece of paper, his job will be vital to most projects as their resource. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 10:04, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

There needs to be a plan for the WiR's time even where there are no open requests for references. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 03:08, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

• Skopje Zoo: What is the zoo doing as part of this partnership? We would be much more comfortable with this project if the zoo shared in the costs. As with the WiR, we recommend having a formal agreement and including a workshop for professional staff on issues such as npov, talk pages, etc. (not necessarily how to edit). The zoo/staff should commit in writing to systematically reviewing the top 100 (?) animal articles on Macedonian Wikipedia. This way, the zoo benefits from the QR codes, but there is also an improvement of articles on wiki.

Yes, the formal agreement with the zoo is to be made, outlining responsibilities. Such workshops are planned, so that they can receive all the necessary introduction and training for matters that concern their role and even potentially for editing. In my last conversation with them, they themselves mentioned the reviewing as something they would like to do to ensure they are putting their name in the collaboration for something that is of quality. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 10:04, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

• Skopje Old Bazaar: We are not opposed to this project, but please note that QR projects that are only about placing plaques (without any planned activity to improve articles) have very low impact. Why are the plates for the bazaar 50 EUR each, while the plates for the zoo are 19 EUR each? 60 EUR for both the plate and the supporting mechanism seems very high.

This may have been not very clearly stated in the explanation. We are sorry if that is the case. As with the zoo, the QR-coded articles about historical buildings are to be improved as much as possible by dedicated groups with the help of the WiR (in his research capacity). One difference is that lots of object in the bazaar are already well covered on wiki, which, of course, does not mean that they cannot be improved. As for the price, the difference is due to the fact that these plates are to be made in a very different way and of different material, so that they can last and not be damaged. These are exposed areas on the bazaar and, unlike the zoo, their durability is much more of an issue. We wanted to have something that will last. There are a lot of tourists and locals going through the bazaar and these will serve everyone for time to come and will be a wonderful promotion of the movement. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 10:04, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

• Wikiexpeditions: Please note that we have seen varying levels of quality photos from past Wikiexpeditions. It is a good idea to review best practices in photographing monuments with participants. Please see the photo event program resources for reference. We hope to decrease the number of low quality photos uploaded (duplicate photos, out-of-focus, or photos with people in them). Will the expeditions combine both photography and writing articles? Ultimately, the most important measure of success of photo projects is the number of photos integrated on wiki projects. Please ensure that you are building enough time/resources into photo events for edit-a-thons or activities that focus on integration.

Yes, we always look at guidelines, best practices and others' successful experiences when planning the execution of projects. The expeditions are meant to have fewer people and far more attention to quality, noteworthiness and integrability on wikis. That was our very idea for them. Most of the field work is intended to be searching for noteworthy things, getting their stories or documentation and also taking pictures of many things that have no images as yet, but do have articles. The other main idea of this project is to namely write articles on the things we photograph and document. Hence the role of the research librarian, who is to work with other expert reference staff there to research all such subject matter and hunt-up works where the things covered on the expeditions are dealt with. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 10:04, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

• Museum of Macedonia: Generally, we do not support paying for professional photographers. Perhaps you can recruit some of the top photographers who participated in WLE/WLM to volunteer for this project.

The same applies to the musеum, as with other projects. Items are to be photographed, their cataloging data is to be transferred as metadata and into descriptions. They are meant to illustrate articles and we intend to research on them in the library (the WiR in his research capacity) and help make new articles inspired by the items we photograph and the information about them.

The photographer has to be a professional because those images will be a long-lasting and important resource. The museum will want to be associated with a decent project and that has to be done properly. However, there will be volunteers who will assist the process and the photographer him/herself. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 14:19, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

• WLM 2014: Regarding merchandise, we generally would like to give merchandise (pens, notebooks, mugs) only to volunteer organizers as a thank you gift and to prize winners. We also recommend trying to find volunteer jury members if possible. Will the project managers be paid an hourly rate? How many managers will there be and how was the 1,000 EUR calculated? As mentioned above, integration of photos on wiki is a large measure of impact for photo events. Please consider adding an edit-a-thon (or allocating one of your 4 planned edit-a-thons) between the submission date and award ceremony to focus on integrating photos in articles. Can you use some of the same material from the WLE video for WLM?
• WLE 2015: Same comments as for WLM. Can you use the same video from 2014?

Hi Alex, those photo contests are in my area of duty, so here are the answers:

About merchandise: in the past, we gave them to the all Wikipedians who came on the award ceremony and took part as volunteers, along with everyone who took part on the project, awarded contestants and guests who attended the exhibition of the awarded photos. The people who will use them after competition, are somewhat "walking" advertising for us.

About volunteer jury members: we tried hard to get at least one international volunteer jury member last WLE, but it's hard to get one. What we did last time and was successful, we paid €100 for each jury member mostly for their time and expert services. Our intention is to get professionals. And professional person has to be payed for their spend time on task, at least. Especiallly "president of the jury" (as we called him last two times: man with long CV as professional in art photography), is guarantee that awarded photos would be fair and with the high quality. Last December and last June, on the day of award ceremony, jury members answered many questions about photos of the photographers who were and who were not awarded. Their comments were useful for us, also.

About payment for organizers: we have two organizers, and the amount of thousand divide two, equal 500 euros, minus 55 euros personal income tax, remaind less than 450 for each organizer. Approximate 60 hours, less than 8 euros each hour. Please consider the fact that the amount of money for organizers includes real costs as: telephone bills they have to make for running the contest, transport, taxes, coffee etc. Two organizers would have to spend time (out of Wikipedia tasks) for: calls, meetings, go to shop and back for posters, pens, printed photos, and schedule everything goes well. Our experience shows that there were days when organizers had to spend at least 5 hours a day in order to set everything.

Thanks, yes, we will pay attention about the dates: to avoid the submission date of edit-a-thons and award ceremony.

About video: for sure we could use some of the parts of previous video. But, not the same one, because of the year of the contest, which is already mention on the video. The guy who created the video, has to spend as much effort and time, as he has to create a new one. -- Violetova (talk) 14:17, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Community

• Edit-a-thons: We have found that edit-a-thons planned in a series and around a specific theme are the most successful. Please see the edit-a-thon program resources. While the space is to be covered by other sources, we recommend trying to find an organization/GLAM that will donate the venue. Certificates and badges are not necessary for edit-a-thon participants. Stickers and barnstars should be a good reward.

We have been thinking a lot about ways to promote Wikipedia/media activities, gather participation and improve the reputation of our movement in society. We firmly believe that certificates and badges are really of value and a lot of help for that purpose in this country - a very valuable aid to everything else we do. We know our environment and know that it will work rather well. These are to be given to the best participants, not to everyone. And the given number is not just meant for the edit-a-thons, but for all the best participants in content-creation in all projects. They are inexpensive and effective form of non-material reward. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 16:24, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

• Editing competitions: Writing competitions are great! Please see the program resources for writing competitions.

Educational Program

• Faculties and schools: A main indicator of success for education programs is the recruitment and retention of professors who are committed to using Wikipedia in the classroom. Will you be continuing to work with the same professors at the Faculty of Economics in Skopje? How old are the primary school students?

Yes, we intend to continue with the faculty and we are also thinking about about including others (faculties of natural sciences, or agriculture, for instance). The primary school students are actually what is termed 'intermediate school' students in English-speaking countries. Their age is about 12-15. We have a volunteer in the city of Ohrid who gives talks and training in schools and two such chools have already had group editing projects, also led by their class teachers, who collaborate with our volunteer. We have already worked with high schools in education and editing (one in Skopje and one in Prilep) and are already thinking about going on with other high schools. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 10:04, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

• Lectures about Wikipedia: General information sessions about Wikipedia have not proven to have much impact. If you expect attendees to succeed in writing an article after the intro session, we recommend you plan for follow-up with the new users and some type of on-wiki mentorship.

We intended the lectures on Wikipedia to be only one part of this undertaking. After expressions of interest, we intend to organize group mentorship (both on some classroom premises and on-wiki) and assign topics, depending on people's interests. Than, we will follow up on them and then express public recognition for the good articles (on the next lecture and on the Facebook group). This way, the public will get information, training (those interested) and recognition for their work. This is meant to repeat several times during the year. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 10:04, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Equipment

• 110 EUR for a flip chart seems high. Are there other options?

We found an alternative, which costs 64 EUR. It is much simpler and lower quality, but it will do its purpose.--Igor Sazdovski (talk) 11:29, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Promotional Material

• Posters & Frames: It seems that you have already budgeted for posters in the specific program areas (lectures, WLM, WLE)

At first we planned to ask for promotional materials and posters as a total amount and then distribute it to the specific program areas. But then we decided it's much more effective if we ask for posters and promotional materials for every project separately and unfortunately we forgot to erase posters etc. in the "Promotional Materials" part of the budget. It's fixed now.--Igor Sazdovski (talk) 11:29, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

• Promotional materials: You have already budgeted for promotional materials in the specific program areas (edit-a-thons, WLM, WLE)

Same as "Posters & Frames"--Igor Sazdovski (talk) 11:29, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

• We will get back to you regarding what merchandise we can send from WMF.

Conferences

• We are generally happy to support participation in these conferences if there is a plan to share information and lessons with the broader community. Blog posts, meet-ups, workshops, and learning patterns are all good ways to share.

Volunteer Engagement

• Thank you B. Jankuloski for the details regarding volunteer engagement above. We are happy to hear you have recruited volunteers for specific projects. Is this documented on-wiki? If yes, please provide a link.

Yes, there are various volunteers for each of the projects, but unfortunately, we have none of them on-wiki. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 10:04, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Please let us know if you have any questions regarding the above. We look forward to your response. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

• Thank you, Alex. We hope that with these responses we have now answered all of your queries about the projects. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 15:42, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Compensation rates

Thank you B. Jankuloski for the information. We still have some questions regarding the project manager roles:

1. We do not think the program plan necessitates both a 75% staff person and project organizers for the majority of projects.
2. How did you calculate the compensation rates for staff and project organizers? Considering the cost of living and income tax rate (10%), the rates seem high. Please note we referenced this site for the data: Skopje cost of living.

Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 03:07, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Answer

Thank you, Alex. Here are the answers to your questions:

1. QR-code projects and WML and WLE competitions will have project managers. Тhe rest of the projects are entirely my own responsibility. (The process of negotiations and initial support-building is also my responsibility, and this applies to all projects). I will certainly be helped by various members and/or volunteers in their execution, but they will not be project managers or organizers.
2. The compensation rates we ask are based on the minimum rates for such positions in NGOs in this country. Indeed, many are paid higher, but we decided on a more basic compensation.

--B. Jankuloski (talk) 10:41, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Comments from WMF (3)

Thank you for the updates to the grant request based on our conversations at Wikimania. We are encouraged that the community is motivated, but we want to encourage you to plan conservatively, with a focus on a couple projects that can be completed successfully. We have the remaining comments on the requestː

• Conflict of Interestː An employee cannot be a board member or President of the organization. Bojan will need to resign as President before this grant request can move forward.
• Considering the request for an employee, we will not support project management fees for WLM or WLE.
• Please re-use the video from last year's WLE for next year.
• Please decrease the prize amounts for WLM/WLE. The first 5 prizes can remain the same, but there should only be one prize for top contributor (100 EUR).
• Why would the purchased equipment be property of WMF and not Shared Knowledge?
• I have added a budget summary table with only the expenses requested from WMF. Please be sure to update this table when you change any of the expenses. Please also be sure to double-check your calculations as some of the totals were off.
• If this grant request is approved, we will require an interim report at 6 months. The second payment will be sent after the review and approval of the interim report.

Please let us know if you have any questions. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 22:18, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your additional comments Alex. We held a general assembly this weekend to discuss these issues and work upon your comments.

• Bojan resigned as President of Shared Knowledge in order to avoid the aforementioned conflict of interest.

Thank you for dealing with this promptly. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 03:47, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

• If it's not possible to support project management fees for these two projects, then we're going to accept and remove these lines from the budget.
• There are slight changes that have to made in this year's video, but we think that it would be possible to re-use it.
• We unanimously agreed that the current set of prizes is good and any additional changes to it may have substantial impact on the results of the two contests. The idea beyond the five prizes for best contributors is to motivate people to upload as many photographs as possible and thereby increase the total number of free photographs and the total number of objects photographed. The increased quantity also leads to increased quality because the probability is always greater that the absolute number of quality images will also grow with the growth of the total number of images. Importantly, the latter worked very well in practice during the previous contests, especially during Wiki Loves Earth 2014 when Macedonia ranked first in both the total number of images uploaded and the total number of quality images on Wikimedia Commons. If we offer only one prize for the best contributor, many contestants would get discouraged and most likely not participate in the contest. On the other hand, if we offer more than five prizes, contestants would feel more comfortable to win one of the prizes with less efforts and would therefore not upload with the same pace. Economically speaking, the marginal benefit of the number of prizes offered follows a normal distribution and tends to its maximum when the number is neither very small nor very large. The gap between the marginal benefits and the marginal costs also increases until certain point, i.e. the optimal number of prizes offered. The theoretical underpinnings of this reasoning have been successful in practice with our previous photographic competitions and therefore we strongly believe that decreasing the number of prizes would have negative effects.

This is a reasonable explanation, thank you. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 03:47, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

• The ownership of the equipment after completing the planned activities has been a major problem in many previous grant requests. It would be much better for us if you suggest the equipment to be property of Shared Knowledge instead.

We agree that Shared Knowledge should be the owner of the equipment. Please make sure to create a page on-wiki where equipment loaned out to volunteers (like perhaps the digital camera) is tracked according to who checked it out, when, for what purpose, and when it was returned. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 03:47, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks for adding the summary table! I've updated it and double-checked all the amounts after making the most recent deductions.
• We plan to prepare progress reports each month, quarterly financial reports and impact reports on semi-annual basis.

Great! We will require one interim report and look forward to also reading the monthly progress reports. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 03:47, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 12:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Request for change

1. A description of the proposed change:
The 6th months contract with our employee (Bojan Jankuloski) past (actually, will pass at the end of February). Board's decision is: Bojan Jankuloski is still part time employee for the tasks he is doing well, i.e. to coordinate the projects with organizers, volunteers, coordinator, and all included; to purchase the items for the name of Shared Knowledge; to find venue for events; to contact with third parts according to the needs of the projects or in the name of Shared Knowledge when requested; to work with (and help to) education, community and GLAM coordinators of Shared Knowledge; to give a lecture about Wikipedia (in the case when the volunteers are occupied); etc.

Other person will be hired (part time) for administrative tasks in the next 6th months, with legal contract, because we need one, i.e. to deal with legal institutions in Macedonia as Centralen registar (Central Registry), Uprava za Javni Prihodi (Administration of Public Revenue), bookkeeper, bank and the other institutions in the name of Shared Knowledge; to create the other documents which are required by the Macedonian law, as we are Non Governmental Organization; etc.

Note: We are not asking for more money, we will just use and split the amount we already have approved, in the next 6th months. The employees would work part time. The Board members voted about how the compensation would be split: 60% - 40%.

2. A clear description of the special circumstances that require this change:
After several days of reviewing and discussion of the employee's work, the Board of Shared Knowledge become aware of, that the employee didn't finish the administrative tasks as expected or didn't finish them at all. This kind of duty for our employee is in his job description and he is payed for that. Actually, he did finish the urgent ones, with a help of a person chosen by him, who is not even member of Shared Knowledge. The members of the Board don't like this situation, because this is violating of the part of the contract about confidential of the internal data and other legal issues.

3. A clear description of how this change will affect other aspects of your project, including your project budget and your project's goals and activities:
Bojan Jankuloski is not fired, he will be relaxed with less schedule, but for less money. Let the person who will work on administrative tasks for Shared Knowledge be hired by Shared Knowledge, with legal contract, and will have to report to the Board directly. The new situation would help to the project's goals and activities to be done at time and with less lose of time and energy.

Regards, -Violetova (talk) 20:23, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Violetova. Thank you for this update. The request is reasonable, but we have a couple of questions:

1. Will the current employee and the new administrative assistant be compensated at the same rate? If not, please let us know what the updated rates are.
2. The 60%/40% seems quite high in terms of the admin assistant. Is this the same as the original breakdown of project vs. admin responsibilities?

Thanks, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 21:40, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Alex, thanks for the questions. Maybe I didn't explain well: the rate will be 60% for the project vs. 40% for admin assistant. That is how we calculate the salary in first place. Working on the project's tasks require more time and money then on the administrative tasks. The salary of 900 euros per month, will be split as following: the current employee will get 400 euros and the admin assistant 200 euros. The amount of 300 euros per month are taxes required by Macedonian law for both of them. Regards, -Violetova (talk) 22:29, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Violetova. Thanks for the clarification. The request is approved. We will definitely be interested to hear how the division of responsibility goes and if the allotted time/budget for administration is the best fit, or if adjustments will be made in the future.

Thank you. We are going to start with the process of hiring the other employee. The report will follow in the next few months, as we need time to see how the division of responsibility will go on. We hope for the best. Regards, -Violetova (talk) 00:56, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikiexpeditions

Hello, I`m Toni Ristovski, Board Member of the Shared Knowledge and project manager for Wikiexpeditions. We started with our first Wikiexpedition in Negotino and its region in April. You can see photographs about this successful Wikiexpedition already on this category (uploaded around 400 photos). We have and project page on Macedonian Wikipedia, on which we have a little description about our journey, photos from the people who has been in Negotino and a list with the new articles about this region (this is not finished). So, because we decided to go two times in this region and because we didn`t have to sleep in the town, we saved about one half of the money projected in our budget for this one Wikiexpedition. Also, for our third planned Wikiexpedition in the region of Mariovo, we successfully organise and buy cards for cycling tour around this region, so we will make a significant savings about this expedition, because we go with our bikes, sleep outside in tent with our sleeping bags and buy a food in supermarkets for couple days. So, because of all this, we think that is better to spend this money on additional equipment for our camera and tent for third Wikiexpedition. Savings from this two Wikiexpedition will be around 400 euros, so we plan to buy additional equipment for our camera in sum of 260 euros and for tent and other equipment for this unusual Wikiexpedition with bikes in Mariovo we plan to spend around 140 euros. Equipment for the camera is flash, which is necessary for our second planned Wikiexpedition in town Kratovo, who has a lot underground tunnels, old towers and bridges, also this flash is good for nocturnal events. Tent and other equipment for third planned Wikiexpedition is necessary for going to this cycling tour because all cyclist will be sleep in own tents and sleeping bags. Personally, I think that buying this tent will be good for other Wikiexpeditions in the future (next year again), because in our country we have a lot of regions who don`t have any hotels. This equipment will be paid with money from this two Wikiexpeditions, money from the other two will be spent according to the annual plan. Best regards. --Ehrlich91 (talk) 19:53, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Ehrlich91 . Thank you for the detailed request. It's great to see the event page, which articles were updated/created (so far), and the photos. We approve using the savings from the first two events to purchase additional equipment for the group. The same three people participated in the first wikiexpeditions. Do you have plans to include more or different people in the remaining two? It sounds like a great way engage new or newer contributors. Like all photo events, we are concerned mostly with quality over quantity. While you have the goal of uploading 1,000 photos for these four events, we'd much rather see high-quality, unique images rather than many photos of the same place. I really enjoyed looking at the photos uploaded already -- this is just a reminder for the future. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 21:43, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi Alex. Thanks for your response and your approval. I think you made a little mistake about the number of people participated in our expeditions. So far, we have a four different persons included in our journeys and we expect at least three more people on the other planned expeditions. However, thanks for your support and tips for this. --Ehrlich91 (talk) 17:59, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Participation in OSCAL 2015

Since Shared Knowledge was not allowed to send three representatives at the Wikimedia Conference 2015 as projected in the annual budget, we decided to reallocate the savings to supporting participation of our members in other conferences. That said, I was invited to participate as speaker in OSCAL 2015, an annual conference on open source and free culture in Albania, which is going to take place from 9-10 May 2015 in Tirana. The conference will be organised by OpenLabs, a grantee of the Wikimedia Foundation, whose members are part of the Albanian Wikipedia community and have been involved in causes related to the Wikimedia movement. My talk at the conference titled "The value of open knowledge: Evidence from the Wikimedia movement" will pertain to the role of the Wikimedia movement to increasing the amount of open knowledge and the ways of measuring its output and impact. The main goals of my participation are promoting the values of the Wikimedia movement in Albania, deepening the cooperation with the Albanian Wikipedia community, sharing experiences on carrying out mission-aligned activities and increasing the participation of Shared Knowledge in conferences other than those listed in the budget. The total cost for my participation is around 150 euros, including 40 euros for travelling, 90 euros for accommodation (3 nights with 30 euros per night) and 20 euros for other expenses (e.g. travel insurance, meals outside the conference days etc.). Thanks.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 09:42, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Kiril Simeonovski. Thank you for this detailed update. It sounds like OSCAL 2015 is a valuable conference for you to attend on behalf of Shared Knowledge and I hope that you will be able to share back your experience with the community in Macedonia. In general, we are cautious about funding participation in conferences, so please be sure to request any other changes of this nature well ahead of committing to participate. Thanks, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 21:32, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi Alex. Thank you for your approval and sorry for the belated request. I have already uploaded my presentation slides for my talk at the conference and plan to share further details afterwards. Best.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 08:46, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedian in residence

Our first Wikipedian in residence will start tomorrow, 16 of June 2015, in National (State) Archives of Republic of Macedonia. Regards, -Violetova (talk) 17:44, 15 June 2015 (UTC) This collaboration was announced in newspaper: "Wikipedian in residence will public the archive treasure of Macedonia" --Violetova (talk) 14:04, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikimania 2015

We have requested (1590 euros multiply two) 3180 euros for two persons from Shared Knowledge to attend Wikimania 2015 in Mexico. Unfortunately, the airplane ticket was 1660 euros per person, 465 euros was advance payment for hotel for one person, plus 300 euros were other expenses (meals, local transport etc.). One of the two selected members of Shared Knowledge cancel going on Wikimania, and we had only one member sent with Shared Knowledge scholarship. The budget spent was 2425 euros for one person. Regards, -Violetova (talk) 11:31, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Request for use of remaining funds for 2015

Dear Grant Administrators. Here is our Request for use of the remaining funds for 2015 after we had submitted our final report, to be spent between now and the new annual grant, effective 1 January 2016.

Here are our planned activities and the measures of success for each. Below you will find the table of expenses. We have total of 8,116 EUR remaining, and we are asking for further 850 EUR to be able to our projects. 832 EUR of these are meant as addition for the projects themselves, and 28 EUR are for bank fees.

Activities

All project activities are described in this grant request or in the draft-proposal for the 2016 grant.

Management and admin

• administrative expenses and compensations
• reimbursement for Polish participant at the CEE WikiCamp 2015

Projects

• 1 archaeoexpedition in the Veles region
• 2 wikiexpeditions
• 1 editing competition
• 1 edit-a-thon (no funds requested)
• European Science Photo Competition 2015
• recording physics experiments
• actors and theatre in Skopje Drama Theatre
• Wikipedian-in-residence at MANU

Measures of success

Archaeoexpedition

• 40 images made and uploaded
• 10 articles created and improved

Wikiexpeditions

• 400 images made and uploaded
• 30 articles created and improved

European Science Photo Competition 2015

• at least 10 participants uploading at least one photograph;
• at least 200 photographs uploaded;
• at least 70% of total images used in articles in three months.

Edit-a-thon

• at last 5 participants
• at last 30 articles created or improved

Editing competition

• at least 8 participants;
• at least 200 articles created or improved.

Recording physics experiments

• at least 15 experiments recorded;
• at least 50 articles in multiple languages enriched with the recorded videos.

Actors and theatre in Skopje Drama Theatre

• at least 20 actors photographed
• at least 20 images used in their articles
• at least 10 articles on actors improved

Wikipedian-in-residence at MANU

• 60 images scanned and uploaded per month
• 60 images used in articles per month
• 1 educational/editing event organised at MANU

Expenses

Administration costs

No.	Item	Description	Unit	No. of units	Amount per unit	Total amount	Currency	Notes
1	Salaries	gross salaries for the 2 employees together	month	3	900	2,700.00	EUR	3 months included. Two of the upcoming months and one salary for the month ending soon. Amount refers to total gross salary for both employees together.
2	Bookkeeping	Bookkeeping services for 3 months	month	3	25.00	75.00	EUR	Amount refers to the one past and two upcoming months.
3	Cellphone	Fixed monthly payment for cellphone	month	3	11.00	33.00	EUR	Amount refers to the one past and two upcoming months.
4	Transport	Bus pass	month	2	25.00	50.00	EUR	Buss pass for the Administration Manager to commute to work.
5	Travel reimbursement	Airplane ticket reimbursement	ticket	1	500.00	500.00	EUR</S.	Reimbursement for a return airplane ticket to participant from Poland at our CEE WikiCamp in August that is due to them (they paid themselves at that time).
6	Bank fees	fees for operating the account	month	2	28.00	28.00	EUR	Fees deducted for transactions, as well as fixed bank fees.
Total						3,386.002,886.00	EUR

Community

No.	Item	Description	Unit	No. of units	Amount per unit	Total amount	Currency	Notes
1	Editing competition	award fund	unit	1	700.00	700.00	EUR
2	European Science Photo Competition 2015	award fund+expenses	unit	1	1,100.00	1,100.00	EUR	1,000 EUR for awards and 100 EUR for other organisational expenses.
3	Wikiexpeditions	two different places	unit	2	320.00	640.00	EUR
Total						2,440.00	EUR

Education

No.	Item	Description	Unit	No. of units	Amount per unit	Total amount	Currency	Notes
1	Event	catering	n/a	1	300.00	300.00	EUR	A celebratory event at the Josip Broz - Tito High School to award certificates to students participating in the Educational Programme.
Total						300.00	EUR

GLAM

No.	Item	Description	Unit	No. of units	Amount per unit	Total amount	Currency	Notes
1	Physics experiments	award fund	unit	1	350.00	350.00	EUR	Compensation for recording and editing professionals.
2	Drama Theatre	taking photos of actors	unit	1	600.00	600.00	EUR	Compensation for professional to take portrait photos of about 20 distinguished thatre/movie/TV personalities that work at the Skopje Drama Theatre.
Wikipedian-in-residence
3	Scanner	scanner for Wikipedian-in-residence	unit	1	100.00	100.00	EUR	Scanner for the Wikimedian-in-residence to scan documents with.
2	External HDD	HDD to store files	unit	1	60.00	60.00	EUR	External HDD needed to store files scanned.
3	Compensation	compensation for 3 months	month	3	500.00	1,500.00	EUR	Three-month compensation for the Wikimedian-in-residence.
Total						2,610.00	EUR

Conclusion

Total funds currently at disposal: 8,116 EUR

Funds needed to complete projects: 8,736 EUR(tbc) 8,236 EUR

Additional funds requested: 620 EUR120 EUR

"Additional funds for laptop purchase:400 EUR

WMF Comments

Hi Bojan, Thank you for posting details about how Shared Knowledge proposes to spend remaining funds for the remainder of the year. The proposal includes an interesting set of activities and we look forward to learning from your experiences. Please see our comments below and notify us when you have replied.

Comment Hello Kacie. Here are our explanations about what we inted to do with the funds and what we can change in our parameters: --B. Jankuloski (talk) 08:46, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

• It looks like there are a couple of errors in the budget table, for example, a scanner is listed multiple times.

Comment Apologies, it was a mistake. It's corrected now.

• The budget for the science photo competition is high relative to the number of participants and images you expect. Either the budget needs to come down, or targets need to increase.

• You might consider asking volunteers or educators working with the physics video project to help create a list of science topics that need images, share tips for taking quality science photos, or lead photo tours at labs or scientific institutions with subjects that need images. This would at least help increase the number of images that can be used in articles.

Comment We can raise the measure to 500 images, but really no more than that, since this is science photography. We intend that several departments should participate in this, and that this is the very method to get the images or videos that are otherwise not very accessible to members of the general public.

• It is more important to focus quality rather than quantity, and number of images in use is one way to evaluate quality. Since the contest has already begun, we recommend that you increase the measures of success for number of images in use. You might consider offering a prize for the editor who incorporates the most contest images into articles, or host a workshop teaching contest participants how to add images to articles, and descriptions in commons that can be translated. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Comment In that case, we will retain the 200 images measure, and we will see to it that at least 70% of them are used in articles. This will be done in a community effort (wikiproject of sorts). We will look into having an award person placing most images in articles. Otherwise it can be a community undertaking. Thanks for the idea! --B. Jankuloski (talk) 11:21, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

• Please elaborate how the 500 Euro for organizational expenses for the science photo contest will be spent.

Comment The 500 EUR is meant to be spent on certificates and a jury should be assembled, so we need compensation for them, much like for Wiki Loves X. We had in mind to ask institutions such as the Faculty of Physics were experiments are recorded, as well as others, to participate. The idea was to focus the approach on them rather than the general public, that have far less access to science than these places.

• 500 EUR is 1/3 of the contest budget, which is already too high for a contest this size. We will approve funds for certificates and small tokens of appreciation for the jury, please adjust your budget accordingly. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Comment In that case, we can lower it to 100 Euros. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 11:21, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

• Travel reimbursement for CEE Wikicamp should come out of the remaining funds from that grant, not from your annual plan.

Comment Thank you for the reminder. It will be taken from that grant.

• Please give more background on the project to photograph actors. How/why was this project chosen? Why is it necessary to hire a professional photographer for the project instead of asking a volunteer with photography skills to do so?

Comment The idea is to take photographs of notable actors and other performers in the country, and place them in their articles on wiki. Practically all articles about these important people have no images, and this will address that problem. We require a professional because we intend not only to take good photographs, but also make short interviews with them, and also record clips from their performances.

• Thank you for providing additional context. Do the actors already have pages on Wikipedia, and if not, do they meet notability standards? How was the community involved in choosing this project, and which volunteers will be involved in preparing interview questions and incorporating videos into articles?--KHarold (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Comment Yes, all articles exist, and many of them are properly famous people; there are many images of them in the media, as well as guest appearances etc. but of course, none of them are freely licensed. Interviews and other preparations will be done by our own members. We are yet to decide which. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 11:21, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

• The targets for the WiR are low - just 20 images scanned and added to articles each month. Please explain how these targets were set, as well as how the monthly compensation was determined.
• Remember, WiR's are not responsible for writing articles, but rather to scan, upload and categorize images, and to train staff on how to add material to Wikimedia projects. The WiR can organize editathons or outreach to editors to encourage others to write articles using the scanned materials, but they should not be writing articles as part of their paid work.

We have reconsidered the WiR measures anew, and the new metric is 50 images researched, scanned, documented and used per month plus at least one editing event or Wikipedia lecture to employees for the month.

As for the compensation, this is the amount the previous WiR had, when he worked at the Archives, which was then approved. This is the same compensation.

• How many hours does the WiR work each month, and how many images per month has this person created in the past? Please track participation at staff editing events and lectures, and plan to track whether staff continue to edit using Wikimetrics. You might also consider using a survey to find out if employees find lectures valuable. This will help your WiR decide what activities to focus their time on. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Comment He was meant to spend about 8 hours there, as he is a volunteer at the Academy anyway. That will be his working time for us too. Since 1 October he has provided us with about 58 files and used them in articles (all the while, still borrowing a scanner, since his own pends on this request. No doubt productivity will increase when we give him his own scanner). --B. Jankuloski (talk) 11:21, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

• Is the project to film physics experiments part of the education program? If there is a professional filming and editing the videos, what role will students play in the project?
• Keep in mind that videos that do not have narration are used more frequently than those with narration because they can be used on any language project.

Comment It isn't part of Education. It is part of GLAM, a Science section of it. It is done in an educational institution (university labs with professors) because they are the most accessible. We work with a physics professor, in this case, who does the experiments and they are filmed in conditions that require suitable equipment.

• Who will be responsible for adding videos to articles? If there are students involved, please add measures of success for number of participants and new editors. If videos do have narration, you could produce two files for Commons, one with narration and the other without so that subtitles can be added. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Comment The videos will be added to articles by the members of our community, in an event for that purpose. The videos do not have any narration, because they are made to be international. Even the physical lables on things in the videos were written in English for that purpose. If tehre is any labeling that is in Macedonian, a translation will be inserted in the timed text, unless the file description itself (the one in English) makes it suitably clear.

Let us know if you have any questions or need clarification about the comments. Cheers --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 20:36, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi B. Jankuloski, please let me know when you have updated the budget to reflect the discussion above. Also, please clarify whether the WiR working 8 hours a day, week or month. Thank you, --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 23:05, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

@KHarold (WMF): The changes have been made now Amounts are lowered by the advised reduction (decided on -400 EUR) for the science photo competition. As for the WiR, he works 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 23:40, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi B. Jankuloski, your request for extension has been approved. Because you have already submitted a final report for this grant, we request that you submit a short report 60 days after the new end date with global metrics and lessons learned from new projects. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 18:04, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Additional funding for a laptop

Hi Kiril Simeonovski and User:Bjankuloski06, we have approved a request for funding from Violetova, which includes 400 euro for the purchase of a laptop to be used during the project. We are only able to fund equipment purchases for user groups, not individuals. Kiril agreed by email that Shared Knowledge would accept 400 euro to purchase a laptop for User:Violetova to use for the duration of this project. Please note that User:Violetova needs the laptop by January 4, 2016 to begin the first day at DARM. After the WiR project has ended, the laptop will be returned to Shared Knowledge and made available for other community members to borrow. We will send an email with additional information about the funds transfer. Thank you helping to support this grant project. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 00:18, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your notification Kacie. We are looking forward to proceeding with the transfer and the subsequent purchase of the laptop. Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 00:17, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Request for extension

On December 14, 2015 Bojan requested an extension for this grant through February 15, 2016 due to unforeseen delays in the theater photography project. The request for extension has been approved. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 20:05, 13 January 2016 (UTC)