Grants talk:PEG/WM ZA/Joburgpedia 2015

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A decision has been made on this grant. Comments are still welcome on this page.

GAC members who support this request[edit]

  1. I liked the report for 2014 and see no reason not to fund the similar event of the same time with approximately the same budget rubin16 (talk) 20:46, 5 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    1. rubin16 Thanks Bobbyshabangu (talk) 00:37, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Agree with rubin16 here. I would, however, like to see a few of the "10 new wikipedia editors" you recruit make it to the organizing list of next year's Joburgpedia... Alleycat80 (talk) 09:40, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

GAC members who oppose this request[edit]

  1. Too huge cost in comparison with the benefit. Sorry I don't agree with the vision that the Global South doesn't have access to some sources to fund some projects. Considering the last two reports I suggest to look for external funds and for some kind of external sponsorships (why not to look for a sponsorship for the plaques?). 50 articles, 10 active editors and 350 photos doesn't justify two project managers. I looked in the impact of the last two years and it seems to me that this request will generate less deliveries of the last two editions even if the cost will be the same. --Ilario (talk) 13:08, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    1. We would love to have sponsors who advocate free knowledge and would sponsor us without expecting something in return, however to find such has been a bit of a challenge. We are still gratefull for WMCH, for availing € 500.00 towards the production and installation of QRcoded cream plaques in 2013. We however have made a request to the City of Johannesburg to fund the production and installation of the QRcoded cream plaques and it's a close system we don't know if and when will they get back to us. We want to try and be as realistic as possible. Last year we estimated digitization of atleast 250 photos and documents but we surpassed that by having 609 uploads. By having 2 Wikipedian in Residence based at our GLAM institution we are certain to double last year's work in a short period of time while easing the pressure that one WiR might have.Bobbyshabangu (talk) 00:33, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

GAC members who abstain from voting/comment[edit]

  1. MADe (talk) 20:47, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

GAC comments[edit]

My questions:

  1. Winning Prize for Writing Contest - what's the prize? Money? Some gadget?
    1. This is how we have broken down the writing competition. There will be one winner who will get Prize Money of about 432.90 USD. We will also have Trophies and Memorabilia for the runner ups which will amount to approximately 303.03 USD. Bobbyshabangu (talk) 23:48, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Schools Project - great to have school project and introduction of Wikipedia to schools, but what is the costs for? Please provide details.

Regards, Violetova (talk) 14:57, 5 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  1. We want to find a teacher and a student/s in a township (Meadowlands High School in Soweto) whom we will support and train on Wikipedia. This cost is associated with the gadgets we might need like WiFi router and Data Bundles and other unseen expenses we might incur. We will be doing the same with the Orlando East Library (also in Soweto). Both Places are heritage sites, they don't have internet or computers but have our QR cream plagues.Bobbyshabangu (talk) 23:43, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Community comments[edit]

WMF comments[edit]

Thank you for this request, and congratulations on securing endorsements from your local partners for this proposal. That’s a good indication that you are making progress in your secondary goal of building relationships with heritage-focused and GLAM institutions in South Africa.

This year’s project is significantly more expensive because of the US$3,896.10 requested to install QR plaques. (E.g. In 2013, only US$500 was spent on plaques for this project and that amount was provided by WMCH, and in 2014 no money was spent on plaques.) When funding QR-related projects, we expect your partners to fund the plaques and the installation, as installation of the plaques often benefits the missions of the partner organizations more than the Wikimedia movement.

As you’re entering the third year of the project, we’re also interested in learning more about how you are refining your strategy and your metrics for success according to what you’ve learned in previous years to understand how this project is evolving. We’re hoping you can answer a few questions about that here.

  1. The aim of this project is to increase Wikipedia coverage of iconic buildings around Johannesburg with historic and heritage importance, and this was also the aim of the previous events in 2013 and 2014. Would you be able to provide some additional context about the progress that has been made so far in documenting iconic buildings and historic sites in Johannesburg and what content gaps continue to exist? It would be good to get a better picture of the progress being made over several iterations of this project, and what remains to be done.
    1. The project is divided into 4 phases which we envisaged to run from 2013 to 2016. The initial phase in 2013 was targeted at Johannesburg to Soweto. We had a selection of ten buildings in and around Johannesburg to be used as pilot, we also included the upload of basic metadata and low resolution images, Installation of 10 Joburgpedia QR coded plaques next to the Johannesburg's Blue Plaques, We also had 4 editathons 2 in Johannesburg and 2 in Soweto where we did translations and created new articles to the English Wikipedia. The second phase in 2014 targeted the Johannesburg Inner City. On this project we increased the number of GLAM instutions who were willing to work with us from 2 to 5 (Including the Satyagraha House a museum where Mahatma Ghandi lived). We placed a Wikipedian in Residence at the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation, We had a writing competition. We increased content and participation on local languages and we had 19 new users of which 50% were women. On the third and the fourth phase of the project our focus will be more into covering the Johannesburg Skyline and the other Johannesburg sorounding townships. We also realized that there's a lot of work that needed completion on the 2014 phase of the project hence we are looking at having 2 WiR based at our GLAM institution. As we are phasing out content from 2014 we will be simelteniously working on the working on 2015 going forward.Bobbyshabangu (talk) 21:54, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Would you be able to discuss more specifically your goal of involving more female editors? What strategies are you using to target female editors through this project? We say that you had a good ratio of participation in 2014 at 53%. Are you planning on increasing this ratio in 2015, and can you share your targets or expectations in this area?
    1. We already have contacts of the female participants from 2014. Most of them are University students, the ones that kept on coming back to our editathons, brought a friend along. They were 9 in all but we are looking at increasing that number to atleast 18 this year. Our focus was mainly Wikipedia but we are looking at increasing more focus on other Wiki projects as well, Perhaps Wiki Commons or Wiki Varsity.Bobbyshabangu (talk) 21:54, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3. We are glad to see you tracking the class ratings of articles created on Wikipedia. Are you also planning to track the quality of the images uploaded through this work, or to track if and how they are used on any of the projects? This might give a better sense of how your project is actually addressing the content gap you’re targeting.
    1. We certainly are going to be tracking the quality of images and how they are used on other project as well. Thanks for pointing this out.Bobbyshabangu (talk) 21:54, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Would you please explain how “Writing Competition - Increase participation in the competition. Recruit volunteers to introduce the competition to individual schools during assembly.” is considered a risk? Does this belong in the risks section?
    1. For more clarity I have rephrased the sentence to “ The writting competition can have non-experienced users who can create low-quality articles that may harm the overall quality of the Joburgpedia project.”. We will be mitigating this risk by having competition run early from March to June and this will in turn give us ample time to link it to our planned outreach events and thus be able to offer help to participants.Bobbyshabangu (talk) 21:54, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  5. You mentioned on the discussion page that you achieved 609 uploads through last year’s project. Would you explain why your target set is significantly lower this year? Is this because you are targeting different types of content? We also noticed that your target for articles on smaller language Wikipedias is just 50, compared with your very ambitious target of 1,000 in 2014 and your achievement of 199 pages created in 2014. Is this because you have changed your approach to building content on the smaller language Wikipedias? Would you offer some more context around how you set these goals?
    1. Although we are expecting a number higher than the 50 articles. Last year we have created a lot of stubs. This year our focus is on quality articles. Learning from the work we have done at our GLAM institution we noticed that this was because there is a low count of reliable references on the internet that could support our work. Much of the citations and the references are found on the archives of the same GLAM institution which needs more time for research to do the proper citations. Hence having 2 Wikipedian in Residence will help in digitizing the photographs, making the proper archival research and creating quality and complete articles.Bobbyshabangu (talk) 21:54, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  6. In your 2014 request, you mentioned that more project management time was needed than was needed in 2013 as a result of travel for an increased number of events. We see you decreased the number of events in 2015, but haven’t altered the cost for project management. Would you be able to provide more context for why costs have stayed at the same level?
    1. We are expecting the project to double it's output from last years project. Hence we are having 2 project management personel who will be doing the running up and down at half the compensation.Bobbyshabangu (talk) 21:54, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Would you please offer some additional context about how your activity in schools relates to the overall goals of this project? We would like to better understand that part of your work.
    1. Seeing the work done at Sinenjongo high school in Cape Town, we thought we could adopt and introduce the same concept in Johannesburg where we would give support to in particular a teacher who would encorporate Wikipedia as part of the curriculum and train students on editing Wikipedia content to the importance of referencing, grammar and improving their writing skills especially on small language wikipedia's, this would also link Commons and increase participation in WLM.Bobbyshabangu (talk) 21:54, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  8. We notice you are offering the same training for the contest judges. Are any judges you trained last year participating again this year, or are you planning on training an entirely new set of judges each year?
    1. Based on factors such as availability or if we have decided to replace a judge. The Judges who were earmarked to judge on last year's contest will be the same judges used this year. They will be receiving training on the Five Pillars of Wikipedia, COI, NPOV etc regardless. Bobbyshabangu (talk) 21:54, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We look forward to learning more about your strategies for this next iteration of Joburgpedia. Thank you! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 00:44, 14 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Changes to Budget[edit]

As per discussions with the WMF, the budget has been amended as indicated on the grant application. The total request for the grant is now ZAR 38 965.88 or USD 3 373.67.

@Bobbyshabangu please add background on work to date with JHF, indicating the depth of the archival material still available. Also the preparation before July for the WIR. Thanks --Humetheresa (talk) 08:43, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the updates to this grant request. We understand that the partnership with JHF is key to the success of this project. They have a rich archive of historical content about Johannesburg, only a small portion of which has been digitized. We understand WMZA will continue with a Wikipedian-in-Residence at JHF the second half of 2015. We would highly encourage WMZA to take this opportunity to do an expert review of current content on South Africa (and specifically Johannesburg) on English Wikipedia, to look at the current quality and content gaps. Those types of lists can be useful for current and future projects, and Wikipedians. With these lists, the WiR, JHF staff, and volunteers will have a better understanding of the current content gap and what content to focus on in terms of the JHF archive. We are not clear how far along Joburgpedia is in reaching its content goals, and this review will give the community a better understanding and provide a measure for progress in the future. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 20:52, 5 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Request to amend completion date of project[edit]

We would herewith like to request that the completion date of the project be moved to the end of August 2015. The reason for this request is that the project was originally shortened due to our pending FDC application which has since been withdrawn. We have, to date, had two edit-a-thons with the ConHillEdu Project but feel that we need to allow the students more time to work on their entries. On Friday, 19 June the school also closes for the mid-year break and students only return on the 20th of July. We believe that this additional extension will allow them to work on their entries during the holidays and we plan to host a third edit-a-thon once the schools have returned. Many thanks --Humetheresa (talk) 09:14, 22 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Humetheresa. This request is approved. The new end date is August 31. The final report will be due October 30, 2015. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 04:18, 23 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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