Grants talk:PEG/Wikimedia New York City/2016 meetups

This grant is currently under review. Comments are welcome on this page. Remember the Friendly space expectations!

GAC members who support this request

1. --DerekvG (talk) 20:01, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
2. --Violetova (talk) 23:05, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

GAC comments

Feedback from Lankiveil

I was a little concerned at the high cost for "just meetups", but after reading through the grant it seems like it's a bit more than that. You may want to consider adjusting the title of the grant request.

I do think that some of the costs are a little steep. $5k for a meeting space is concerning. What actual activities do you expect to occur that need a paid meeting space of this sort? Craig Franklin (talk) 02:20, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Community comments

Mentorship?

How do others feel about mentioning informal mentorship that already takes place? I was considering including the following under "Fit with strategy":

"A mentorship program will be formed from regular WM NYC volunteers who will follow up with new editors after events and assist with questions. Examples of informal mentorship have already been underway in WM NYC as new editors have been encouraged and guided following edit-a-thons. Examples include assistance with new pages following the Women of Jazz edit-a-thon held in May 2015 as well as guidance on responding to feedback and changes made by other Wikipedians following the Soviet Jewry edit-a-thon held in November 2015."

I know there are far more examples of mentorship out there; these are just a couple that come to my head.

On a related note, I would also be interested in offering a more official kind of mentoring option to new editors, if this is something people might be interested in doing. I imagine that this would happen largely via email (as is already the case for me). Perhaps it would be worth making this kind of informal assistance into something that we can call a mentorship program?--Lange.lea (talk) 20:34, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes. This is a strength of the chapter.--Theredproject (talk) 16:41, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

It would be nice to formalize this a little, even if that means only giving a name to this. This already happens, but perhaps if we called it "mentorship", it could be more thoughtful and intentional and we could be more conscious to be sure that individuals and groups that need it actually get connected with someone.

Practically all new editors appreciate being contacted after meetings and almost all of them have questions. Also, inviting people back to meetings sometime after meetings are over goes a long way to make them seek mentorship for themselves, which probably should be expected considering mentors are volunteers and they need the people they are mentoring to take a little initiative and engage themselves by asking questions and seeking feedback. Perhaps we should bring this to the group and see if people want to list themselves as local mentors, or who can commit to doing something like posting messages on new attendees' userpages (BrillLyle has been doing this already). Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:08, 17 December 2015 (UTC)