Grants talk:PEG/Wikimedia Community Brazilian Group of Education and Research/Wiki Loves Monuments Brasil 2015

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

GAC members who support this request

1. Based on Romaine judgement --DerekvG (talk) 19:18, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
2. --Violetova (talk) 16:12, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

GAC members who oppose this request

1. Grant started after the competiton started and there are no evidence that is not a "one-man-operation" Béria L. de Rodríguez ^msg 15:35, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

GAC comments

Frist of all: Who - again - is the team? Because there was no team for WME 2014 or 2015 (in both ocassions you asked ME to judge photos 2 days before the deadline), and for the looks of the page, there are no team or jury this year either. Second, why do the grant when the competiton has already started - incluiding in Brazil - and you are sending to all Social media as if the prizes where a sure thing. So why not ask the grant 2 or 3 months ago - like everyone else, and what do you plan to do if this grant is refused to honor the people who already published pictures in hope of wining the prizes? Béria L. de Rodríguez ^msg 15:35, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello Beria, IMHO is very important to discuss and read all the pages before give a vote, mainly if the vote is to oppose the current proposal. Did you read the planning page and team page listed on the grant request? I guess no! Some of the people listed and other people that didnt signed there yet are really helping us to improve the contest's pages, fixing info, adding lat/long and etc as you can see reading the history of the pages under the monuments pages. As you can see here the international organization submitted a grant request just some time before us. During the last two years we gave up to organize the contest based on the lack of contributions, as you know we don't have a lot of support from the Brazilian community to organize this kind of project, normally people only participate opposing/criticizing to proposals instead of really engaging to help. This year I was contacting some Brazilian gov departments to get information about the registered monuments and finally, only during the last week of August I received the full list of monuments and counting with a lot of support from Romaine we got all contest's page done in time. The second issue was the fundraising campaign that was scheduled to run until the second week of September, so that is why we applied too late for the grant. You are right that I announced the value of the prizes before get that budget approved. If I did it is because I have other ways to pay the prizes if necessary, including the possibility to use my own money, so don't worry about that. Regarding the jury, we sent many invitations and we are waiting by the final answers (two judges are already confirmed as you can see here, we have until the end of this month to confirm it. Last years we had problems with judges that cancelled the participation during the final week of evaluation, that is why I invited you to help us, thanks a lot by helping us during the first edition of the WLE in 2014, but in 2015 we finished it without you help, thanks anyway. But don't worry I promise that I will never bother you again. Thanks by your comments and participation in that grant request and discussion. Rodrigo Padula (talk) 17:40, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

I did look the page in commons Rodrigo, but since my husband is listed as volunteer and he NEVER received any info regarding the organization of the contest, prior to 2 days ago when you requested him to upload pictures (not to help organize, but to participate), there was not a single mail in the WMBR list about the contest until your announcement of the opening of it and in all pages regarding the contest only YOU is in the page history I assumed - for the looks of it correctly - that this is a one-man-operation. Until I see real evidence of the contrary (like someone else doing anything) I will continue to assume this is a one man operation. The page with the jury was also empty in 2014 and 2015 when you needed to get people in the last minute (in 2015 you did alone because I refuse to be part of another last-minute-operation-to-save-your-reputation), so please tell me why and how this is different. Please see the start date of the international team grant and compare with yours. They only get in place in late Oct and Nov, and submitted a grant 2 months before that. To use then as reference, you (and your "team") should had started this grant in July. And most important than all: If you can fund this yourself, why use donors money? Béria L. de Rodríguez ^msg 15:46, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

That contest is under organization by the Wikimedia User Group of Education and Research, we discussed about it on our mail list and in a personal meeting in Niteroi - RJ as you can see on our page here. As I explained, without the list of monuments provided by the gov would be impossible to organize that contest, that's why we only applied for a grant too late. We added Brazil to the participating countries months ago as you can see on the international organization pages.Since your husband is following the page he is informed about the changes and updates, and normally interested people ask about the initiatives, they don't wait by someone to inform what they have to do or what is going on. Only to complement, you and your husband helped us evaluating WLE 2014 pictures, THANK YOU, but we had more 4 judges evaluating it, so you did not saved any reputation here, and in 2015 I invited you both to help us filtering the pictures using the single account created for the contest to evaluate the pictures, at the end you both generated a lot of noise talking to the international team by a misunderstanding of the tool and process, and finally didn't helped evaluating any single picture. I read the logs of the messages sent by you and by your husband on IRC,that's why I did not send any message regarding WLM to you or your husband again. For sure both editions of WLE in 2014 and 2015, and this edition of WLM depends a lot of my direct contributions, efforts, time and contacts, but IMHO is better to have a project running and generating results for Commons and Wikimedia than not having that only because some people consider it a one-man-operation. I guess that "one-man-operation" is better than "no-operation", that is why I'm here. Based on your point and arguments, for sure you didn't read the planning pages and history pages as well the entire grant request. Regarding the donors money, I'm requesting it because that is the right way to use it, in projects that bring people and content to the movement. That is not "my project", that project belongs to the movement and that is why all chapters and communities around the world request money here to execute this kind of activity. During the last years I invited people to participate and to help, but great part of the people are not interested in this kind of project. So, I'm moving forward, I'm doing it with transparency, using our lists and discussion pages, but since my time is too short to dedicate here on wiki, I'm always prioritizing to spend my time doing. Thanks again by your comments and vote. Rodrigo Padula (talk) 18:50, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Community comments

Tony1

Same as Béria, I was about to ask the same question: who is the team? I still can't find the link on the application page (searched for "team", no luck). Here, your link goes to a fluid page with some crossings out. I'd be much more comfortable naming a team on the application—of people who are willing to commit in print.

And I'm a little nervous about Béria's other queries, and the rather winding answers to them.

Generally, I support small WLM applications. Pity it doesn't inspire confidence. Can the application (not this page) be updated, please, in response to concerns here? That is important, since reviewers should be able to come to the application and make sense of it as a singular whole without reading through long texts here. Tony (talk) 09:37, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello Tony1, the team is listed inside the planning/contest pages on commons(the pages are in portuguese and some parts in english), I added a direct link to it on the proposal page to make it more clear.I will add more details on the proposal page to improve it. Do you have any special question or suggestions of areas that we need to improve or provide more detailed info on our PEG proposal? Best regards Rodrigo Padula (talk)

The Photographer

I withdrew my participation in the project because of a series of irregularities that, for private reasons, I prefer not to disclose here. I worked with Rodrigo in other events, such as WLE, however, widespread lack of confidence made me rethink my participation as a volunteer. Additionally, I see an effort to build a nonexistent community support by including a volunteer who did not put his own name on the page and giving him and another user several "titles" for the sake of this grant. Especially when it is observed that the only supporters of WLM Brasil, seem to be present only in activities made by Rodrigo like this user and this one (who only edited in a user page of Rodrigo prior to the WLM [1]). I had thought to not comment on this matter, however, because of my last conversation with Rodrigo, I've changed my mind. I wish you all the luck in your non profit endeavors but I don't believe this project should receive WMF money. --The Photographer (talk) 01:21, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

People like you and comments like yours really give me reasons to cancel WLM and to stop to help the movement here in Brasil, every time that a person comes to the movement trying to help, people like you try to stop doing a lot of negative comments, talking is always the best way to "help", but I really don't care about personal arguments/attacks like yours, it's very common here and I really don't care, as you told me directly "that thi is your last year on wikimedia projects" , so I really appreciate your comments but I strongly disagree with all your comments here! You are not posting anything constructive regarding the proposal as well. Based on your comments people that are not involved on Wikimedia Movement for a long time and don't have a lot of contributions/edits cant participate and help? Where is that rule and what is your point here? Can you be more clear? Only for your information Tiago santoscosta is a new contributor that participated in 3 workshops organized here in Rio this semester, he is a Campus Ambassador that is under training to help teachers from his school during the semester and next year and you are talking here that it's bad? Engage a new contributor to help in on of the most important projects for Wikimedia Commons? Bring new people and try to involve than to projects like WLM is bad? The second one, GoncalvesMarcio is a Phd in Communication/Journalism that wrote his thesis about Wikipedia, validating and spreading the relevance of Wikipedia on the Brazilian Academy, he is a teacher and supporter of the Wikimedia Community Group of Education and Research, and you think that he is only a "guy that I added several titles on a list of names"? He is leading the communication efforts for WLM with ~10 students, writing press releases and contacting media partners to talk and publish about WLM as you can see here and here. Anyway you forgot to comment that we have some very good and active contributors on the team like Crang115 that is helping with data analysis and WLM statistics tool and that one Zoldyick that is an admin ot pt.wiki and have more edits that all of us together,Domusaurea that is one of the first teachers from Brazil to participate on the international Education Program and holds an Phd in History, is a teacher course coodinator in a federal university in Brasil and is helping us with the monuments lists, validating info and etc. Romaine that is a member of the international team and helped us generating all monuments pages based on the list that I received from the Brazilian Gov, he didnt signed as part of the team, but he is here helping us, including, supporting that grant request. You are trying to use the argument of my "effort to build a nonexistent community support" but what you are proving here is the "nonexistence of good arguments" from you. That is very sad that any proposal and project started here in Brasil always go to that direction, people discussing/attacking people and people not discussing improvements, ideas for that proposals. We always receive positive comments and support from other countries, but some of the local Wikimedians are always fighting against it others. That's why we don't have a chapter and why WLE and WLM was only possible based on a lot of my personal efforts and fights against oppositions like yours. You can fight against that proposal, create false arguments, and create barriers to GAC and WMF to evaluate that grant request, but you will not stop Wiki Loves Monuments in Brasil !! We will move forard, this year and the next one!! I guarantee. If I have only 10 minutes per day to do something constructive here, I will do it! For sure I will not spend any minute of my life fighting against important projects and initiatives for the movement! Rodrigo Padula (talk) 04:04, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

WMF comments

Thank you for submitting a request for WLM in Brazil, Rodrigo.Congratulations on getting a list of monuments from the government, I understand that can be challenging for some organizers, and that making lists of monuments public is a very important part of WLM. We are glad that Romaine was able to help you with this. Please see our comments below and let us know if you have any questions.

1. What is the status on the jury? Do you have a backup plan if you do not get enough jurors or if you have cancellations again?
2. It is wonderful that you have involved volunteers and ambassadors who are newer to the movement! We see that there is some concern about having enough volunteer support to manage WLM this year, and it looks like you have pointed out several volunteers and different roles they are filling. For the sake of clarity, could you make the list of volunteers and their roles clear on the application or on the project page, i.e. who is working on media and outreach, who are your judges, who will be helping to sort and categorize images and so on.
3. Using the tool we see that almost 5% of images WLE in 2014 have been used on Wikimedia projects. Do you have a plan how you will reach the goal of 10% images in use for WLM? Have a look at the learning pattern on how to Increase images in use for ideas. The Erfgoedbot might be helpful for this task.
4. Other groups running WLM have asked for efficient ways to count new users in the contest, what tool does your team use to measure this?
5. Do you expect that participants from WLE will also participate in WLM? If so, do you think this will have an effect on the number of new users? Because your community would like to increase the number of active volunteers and participants, it might be good to look at how many new WLE participants from this year also participate in this contest. Amanda from the L&E team at WMF can talk to you about how to measure this if you need guidance.
6. Can you be more specific about what the organizing team and the community will do (stated in the strategy section of the request) to encourage contest participants to continue to contribute after the contest is over?

We look forward to your response to these comments and are happy to answer any questions if needed. Cheers!--KHarold (WMF) (talk) 00:43, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello KHarold (WMF), during the last week I was working to confirm our judges and resend some invitations. The link to the confirmed judges was added to the proposal page as well the list of contributors and team(including roles). We already have the confirmation of 5 judges and we are waiting for others to confirm, with the current list we are able to evaluate and publish the results. We tried some efforts to improve the use of pictures collected during WLE 2014 and 2015, but in that case we need more support from our community and they are not really engaged in that kind of projects, that is why we never had any initiative in that direction here during the last years. My idea is to promote edit-a-thons during the second semester if 2015 and first semester of 2016, but for sure the community will need to participate a little bit more. It's almost impossible to have a great contest, with high quality pictures loaded and new articles and high use of that pictures on the same time, we will have to split it in different efforts, with a different time frame based on the limited number of people that we have contributing with this kind of initiative in Brasil right now. To measure the number of new users, we are using our tool, developed and improved during the last semesters. Our stats tool calculate it based on new accounts created on commons after the beginning of the contest, so if an user upload a picture and he created/logged by the first time on commons during this month, we are counting it as a new user engaged by the contest. Regarding the users that participated on WLE in 2014 and 2015, we sent an invitation to 2.836 users though their talk pages inviting them to participate again in that contest. We noted that some users that participated on WLE 2014 participated on WLE 2015 and again on WLM 2015 but for sure we need to do a bigger study of the general impact and new users retention. We have many ideas to do that, but since we don't have so many people helping us, we was not able to do it yet. I will update the proposal with some more information that are only in our planning pages. Best regards Rodrigo Padula (talk) 23:19, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi Rodrigo Padula, Thank you for responding to our comments and for making the requested updates to the organization and request pages. It sounds like getting 10% of contest images used in articles may be too high of a goal for your community at this point. Some program leaders have found that setting achievable goals motivates people to contribute more. Perhaps it is best to focus on getting between 5% and 7% of images used on projects. Your budget includes $1,233 for office supplies, mailing, certificates, offline events and other items. It is great if you are planning offline events, but you need to list those events in the request, and provide a little bit more detail about what the costs for the other items are. We appreciate all of the hard work and thought you have put into this project and request and look forward to seeing images from the first WLM in Brazil.--KHarold (WMF) (talk) 05:46, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello KHarold (WMF), I updated the measures of success and budget table with more details. Since it's our first time organizing WLM, we decreased our goals/numbers based on your recommendations and comments from community on the request page. Until now we received more than 1.050 pictures with participation of 150 contributors and 120 new users registered on commons during the contest(79% of new users engagement), 15% of the participants registered their accounts during may of 2014 and 2015 (dates of our Wiki Loves Earth editions), so we estimate that they are users that participated on WLE and are returning now to participate on WLM 2015 Rodrigo Padula (talk) 14:23, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi Rodrigo Padula, Thank you for making updates to your request to include all of the activities and events planned around the contest. It would be good to add dates for when those events will or have occurred, and in your report include how many people participated in these events. As we discussed, outreach in other regions should be done by local volunteers when possible, or using online advertising or social media. For that reason grant funds should not be used to pay for regional travel to recruit participants or promote the contest, so airfare, accommodation and meals for travel need to be taken out of the grant request. You can include the cost of taxis and buses for local travel in the request. I understand that finalizing this grant request has been challenging to do while also running the contest, and we appreciate your dedication to creating a strong proposal. We look forward to seeing the incredible photos of Brazilian monuments. Best regards, --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Following your comments I just removed that part of the budget that you requested, but it's very important to update that PEG Guidelines about travel because there is no information/reference or guidance regarding what you informed here to me, so that's completely new information for me and I believe, for many others. Rodrigo Padula (talk) 17:58, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for remaining engaged with this process, Rodrigo Padula. We have approved the grant to pay for prizes, online promotion and events to engage contest participants. It is wonderful to see newer volunteers helping to organize this contest, we hope that you community is able to continue to grow following the contest.--KHarold (WMF) (talk) 22:17, 22 September 2015 (UTC)