Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Guide for Indigenous North American identity on Wikipedia (ID: 22893143)

Bluerasberry as advisor

Hello, my name is Lane and I am a long-time Wikipedia editor. I also do Wikipedia research at the University of Virginia.

Although I am named as the applicant for this research, my actual role is advisor. The reason my name is here is because the actual applicant team would like to withhold their identity until the project is more developed.

A typical application of "indigenous identity" is noting that the subject of a Wikipedia biography has Native American ancestry or that they have an affiliation with a Native organization. While this may seem like a simple biographical detail to include in a biography, this actually can be very contentious for many reasons. One reason why this can be controversial is that there are government benefits for indigenous groups. Sometimes different indigenous groups compete for access to the same benefits, and Wikipedia can be a platform which provides evidence for claims of indigenous identity.

I have no particular expertise on the topic of indigenous identity, however, I do have understanding of Wikipedia community culture, and I can attest that the arguments over this topic in Wikipedia are high-conflict and frequently violate our code of conduct. It would be easy for anyone to find foul-tempered debates on this topic which are far outside the norm of Wikipedia civility.

I have talked with the organizers of this proposal and I believe they have real reasons for worrying about their offline safety if they were to reveal their identities before the start of this proposal. If and when this proposal were funded, then this project's organizers and their institutional partners would convene to identify themselves. They have already shown me multiple existing published guidelines on indigenous identity which they would like to bring into Wikipedia to propose as guidelines.

Some support that I bring into the project as advisor include the following:

1. Opinions on safety in Wikimedia projects, and my own assessment of when on-wiki activity is misconduct. I confirm that there is misconduct and harassment in the discussion of this topic and I think this project will cool the conflict.
2. Help identifying longstanding Wikipedia guideline debates. I think this conflict exists in 100+ talk pages.
3. General help scoping projects to make them manageable and achievable. I have administrative experience in designing realistic goals, and I have advised the team on that in this project.

I hope to see this project funded. I am not touching or managing any part of this funding, and just want it for the community group doing the project. Bluerasberry (talk) 20:08, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Hello! Please log into Fluxx for an important message regarding your proposal. AGary-WMF (talk) 14:37, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello Bluerasberry and applicant(s), and thanks for this proposal to develop an essay intending to address on-wiki conflicts about indigenous communities and topics on English Wikipedia. I appreciate the need for privacy for the organizers involved with this proposal, and am glad you are highlighting the need for it given the circumstances around risks specific to indigenous communities. Given this need for privacy, and that you are acting as an advisor in the project, if the applicants would prefer not to communicate on-wiki for any reason at this stage, they can communicate with me privately at cschillingwikimedia.org.

Please see my questions below:

• There are other movement entities in the region that have and continue to substantively engage with indigenous communities, and some have produced resources and guides that may be supportive for this proposal's goals to address on-wiki conflicts about indigenous communities and topics. Some example organizations I am aware of in this region include Whose Knowledge and Wikimedia Canada, as well as affiliates outside the region (such as Wikimedia Sverige). Have you or your team communicated with these or other affiliates about this work, and if so, how have those communications informed this proposal? Have you been able to make use of any movement resources already published (e.g. Our Stories, Out Knowledges) from Whose Knowledge) to inform this proposal?
• While there is a partial team organized for the proposal, multiple subject matter experts and a project coordinator have not yet been identified. I understand the timeline to mean that individuals for these roles are planned to be invited and confirmed in first few weeks of the project. If this process takes significantly longer, or if these persons are not identified these persons are not identified in due course of the project, what consequences does this have for the project's timeline and outcomes? Is it likely to be successful without these additional roles?
• Some changes are needed to the Learning and Metrics plan, and I have sent the proposal back to its applicants for these revisions:
  • Number of organizers is currently set at five persons, while the team section denotes that more roles are needed. This should be changed to reflect the actual number of roles expected to complete expected project tasks.
  • A concern I have about the proposal is that its metrics and timeline are focused on the publication of the guide and that the guide meets the needs of relevant stakeholders. After it is published, there is no plan to evaluate whether that guide is effective at addressing an underlying and important need in this proposal: to resolve on-wiki conflicts about indigenous content. This evaluation (whether it be something quantitative or qualitative) should answer the following: How will you know that the guide was effective? I am requesting that your team consider some approaches to evaluate the actual impact of the guide on this problem, and if needed, to extend the length of this proposal.

Please reach out to me here or over e-mail if you have any needs for clarity around these questions. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 23:58, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Request extension

@MJue (WMF) and I JethroBT (WMF): I am writing to request a no-cost deadline extension on this project. Our current end date is 30 September 2025. Our requested end date is 15 January 2026.

While most of the work of this project is complete, with more time we can get more subject matter expert and community stakeholder review, especially from off-wiki Indigenous community leaders and representatives. While our own project team has been able to progress at a predictable pace, it has taken more time than we scheduled to explain aspects of Wikipedia to our supportive community partners. It would be better to be thorough in community review before sharing results, than to post initial results now to be updated as more review continues to come into the project.

If there were a need for a progress update or a team check-in, then we could give a brief update, but this project will make the most sense and have the most impact when we can publish results and also confirm third-party validation of them. We need more time for a review period right now.

As a matter of administration, I should have made this extension request sooner, as now we are near the deadline. I take the blame for the inappropriate late notice, and should have been more responsive in making this extension request when this project's team communicated to me that they needed more time. Instead, I am only posting this notice now, and I apologize for the error of delaying. Bluerasberry (talk) 15:36, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Hello @Bluerasberry, thank you for the request. I will update the grant end date to 15 January 2026; the final report will be due 15 February 2026. If there are any other changes or another extension is needed, please let us know. Cheers -- Morgan Jue (WMF) (talk) 21:27, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Title confusion

As I have stated in April 2025, the title of this project creates confusion over the geographical scope. I would appreciate that the project title be updated in the final product to reflect on the scope which is limited to the US. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 13:21, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

Pinging Bluerasberry OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 13:22, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: I am reviewing options. I will discuss with the team then put in the request to the WMF. I think they have to executive page moves in this case, so it is not as easy as a wiki community title change. Bluerasberry (talk) 14:41, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. If it's not easily doable on the wiki, I would ask that the project report or other deliverables would at least reflect this change. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 15:09, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

For the record, by saying "United States and Canada" you are sort of elevating borders, when Indigenous identity necessarily spans beyond borders, for instance, the Iroquois. I would strongly consider whether using the terms "United States and Canada" is or isn't aligned with the broader mission of this project based on insight from Indigenous leaders and scholars. Hexatekin (talk) 19:45, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

I talked with the team. This project includes input from United States, Canadian, and Caribbean indigenous communities.

This project is not establishing a persistent user community or ongoing named entity. The team is publishing a guide, and other people may have other guides. We all recognize that there are lots of potential viewpoints here, and somehow for this project's title we need to communicate points including the following:

1. A team of Wikimedians and non-Wikimedian indigenous community experts have tried to make a guide
2. This is the most formal Wikipedia documentation attempted for this purpose in terms of seeking expert review
3. Despite this being more formal than what came before, this is still an amateur and crowdsourced effort, consuming $5000 of a grant, in a context where that is not a lot of money and no organization has ever volunteered or proposed to do so much on this budget
4. There is no particular word to describe (North America - Mexico) +/- (identity spread which is irrespective of current political borders)

We are taking suggestions for the term used in the final report and I assure everyone that the project team here is already conscious of the difficulties of titling, documenting, and discussing this. This $5000 project has gotten more attention and critique than Wikimedia groups typically do for $100,000 projects. I encourage anyone interested to plan next and future steps. While we hope that presenting a guide will develop the conversation, solving this challenge is not so simple that we could - for example - simply bring existing documentation and guidance into Wikipedia from an already published expert source, and expect that to resolve all Wikipedia special cases. Expect an ongoing conversation.

About using the terms United States and Canada - political recognition from those countries is part of the issue, but the team is considering which terms to use in the report. Bluerasberry (talk) 18:16, 24 November 2025 (UTC)