Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Wiki Loves Namibian Women (ID: 21965432)

Feedback from the Middle East and Africa regional funds review team

Hi Martin Hipangwa, thank you for submitting your grant application. After reviewing your grant proposal, we have some requests regarding the grant proposal:

• You are required to reach out to the international organizers of the Wiki Loves Women campaign (Wiki In Africa) and coordinate this local contest with them. We will not be able to move forward with the project if it's not coordinated with the international campaign organizers. (question 11)
• It should be clear from your application, who will be leading the training sessions. The trainers should have relevant experience on the target Wikimedia project. We cannot see any experienced community member who will be supporting the training process for any newcomers. (question 5)
• The proposed budget should be aligned with the local prices in Namibia. (budget file, questions 19-20)
• Please provide a list of articles that you plan to work on. If this will be a contest, it should be clear how it will be implemented, who will be jury members, and how the winners will be determined. If it's an on-wiki contest, we request that jury members are experienced Wikimedians. (question 3)
• There should be a clear plan on how you will follow up with the project, so that at least some of the participants make active contributions outside of events. (question 9)

Please make requested updates on Fluxx. Log in to the Grantee Portal and you will see your application in the 'Proposals need attention' section. Edit and re-submit your application by November 6, 2022. If you do not address all highlighted issues, we will not be able to move forward with the grant request.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon. Thanks for your time, DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 16:11, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Dear Davit

I am attending WikiIndaba in Rwanda and I will attend to all this request next week. Will that be okay with the Grant team? I ma happy to attend to all this by next week when I get back to Namibia.

Kind Regards

Martin Martin Hipangwa (talk) 19:19, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi Martin Hipangwa, thanks for the update. Yes, it will be OK, please take your time to respond to our questions. Happy WikiIndaba! Best, DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 09:32, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi Davit.

I have attended to all the request of the Grants committee. The only question that I couldn't answer is to align the budget with local prices. The budget is crafted according to the local prices currently in Namibia. Thus I don't thing there is a need to change in that regards.

We had several meeting with people who spearhead the contest in Africa to assist us in the project User:Anthere, User:Shoodho and User:Islahaddow. Martin Hipangwa (talk) 11:35, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

Hello

So I fear there might be a lot of confusion here. Davit, I confirmed I met Martin at WikiIndaba and we discussed this proposal (quickly I must say). He did not contact us before our discussion at Indaba. Martin showed me the questions you had on his proposition and I gave him some feedback on how to answer you. When we discussed, my understanding was that he was talking of a SheSaid related activity.
Now that I am home, I have read the proposition more in depth. My main issue here is that what is being described is unrelated to SheSaid. The proposition is about writing Wikipedia articles, when SheSaid is primarily about adding quotes from women or about women on Wikiquote. It is true indeed that most of the African groups need to do BOTH at the same time, because the English Wikiquote requires that an entry about a woman in Wikiquote already MUST have an entry about that woman on Wikipedia (this allow the wikiquote editors to be certain the woman is notable). So most of the time... African groups have to do both Wikipedia and Wikiquote entries. And I am fairly certain that this would be unfortunately the case for Namibia...
However, my problem here is that 1) there is zero mention of SheSaid on this proposition (only Wikipedia and metrics are only about Wikipedia and Commons). Following up my discussion with Martin and others, I added today a new training session on Nov 27th (Saturday morning), which he could join (his team) for initial training, or which he could join during his first edit-a-thon with the 15 editors. But Martin is not yet listed on SheSaid list of participants, have never interacted with us prior to Indaba, has not left an comment on SheSaid talk page to indicate interest. I think he is confusing Wikipedia, Commons and Wikiquote. I think he wanted in good faith to organize an edit-a-thon to close the gender gap and this is great. But I do not think he had SheSaid in mind, and this is what I thought he had.
My second problem is that I agreed to explain his team Wikiquote. I did not agree to train his team Wikipedia... It may be that Candy did or that Isla did. But not I. And let’s be honest here... I don’t want to do online training about editing the English Wikipedia.
Pretty obviously, my third problem is that... IF he meant SheSaid... it will close end of December. So any involvement in it will have to start at the earliest convenience, which seems to be a little bit not compatible with the small grant process...
This being said... I am perfectly happy if they want to use the Wiki Loves Women brand stuff to facilitate their communication. We can help them with some designs if they want to. I am also happy to do an online session of team « motivation » (or Isla could) as we several times did that for other groups (usually, in the introductory part of an edit-a-thon, we talk about the gender gap etc.). But if this is a wikipedia edit-a-thon, we will probably not go much beyond this :(
Last point... If it boils down to organizing 3 edit-a-thons with an expected 40 articles from 15 participants... I think the budget is simply too high. If you guys want to pay editors to edit Wikipedia... just better approach it directly and say « we want to pay our 15 participants with a stipend ». But giving to participants... transport (ok), food (ok), internet (ok), a certificate of participation (ok), 20 dollars worth of stationary to each participant, a tee-shirt, AND prizes up to 350 dollars for the best articles produced... AND 50 dollars vouchers to select the best 5 articles produced within 40, is too high in my opinion. And mostly... all of it will be consumable. I like it better myself when I see that some expenses are long-term investment (such as a roll-up banner that can be reused in following campaigns). And as Davit pointed out, there is a problem in the Prize line (prizes do not add up to the current total)
Please let me know how I can help further. I am not saying the proposal is wrong. Only saying that I thought it would be SheSaid when we discussed it last week and discover now that I was mistaken. Oops :) Anthere (talk) 16:14, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

Hello [User:Anthere] and the team

Apologies if my communication have caused further confusion.

1. The project is not about Wikiquotes or #SheSaid campaign. The project has to do with closing the gender gap on Wikipedia which has to do Women in Red. Thus is a gap we have identified in our previous project and we want to execute it to that effect. I have left a message on your talk page to that effect, that's why I didn't leave it on #SheSaid Campaign, hence the miscommunication. I hope this cleared misunderstanding.

2. Due to that confusion, we can find another trainer on Wikipedia, or you can suggest another person that will be able to help us in this case.

2. We are good to join the training exercise that you are organizing on the 27th of November.

3. Actually, the whole exercise is for 20 participants that would actually do this like on a fully participating basis, as the budget depicts. This is because we can not afford to have a large number of editors as that will be too much voluminous to a starting group as us. It is one thing to have a high number of people with poor quality work and one thing to have a smaller number with quality output. But we have looked into the issue and the will be 30 participants.

4. Thank you for pointing out that on the budget plan, we have revisited and adjusted accordingly. The 350 is justified in the budget table, this are prices for the participants who have high edits or contributed significantly according to the Jury decisions.

5. Once participant had foundational skills on editing on English Wikipedia, then we can consider going though with #SheSaid campaign. The current project is looking foward to improve skills and closing the gender gap on Women representation in Namibia.

6. Let me know if there is anything worth further explaining anymore. I really appreciate the feedback.

Best Regards

[User:Martin Hipangwa] Martin Hipangwa (talk) 19:37, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes. As discussed on telegram... I’ll do some Wikimedia Commons training (and give you links to some videos) in January, as well as IP rights and licences. That can be useful to you. And I’ll be happy to give you insights end of Nov. Feel free to grab me on Telegram for suggestions of useful resources. Our own Gender Gap program at the moment is SheSaid. Next hot moment with regards to Gender Gap will be in March (probably an c:ISA Tool campaign on scientific women, and perhaps new podcasts. Anthere (talk) 20:41, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks [User:Anthere]

Much Appreciated. We have reached out to Peter Gallert for assistance in that regard, with more in-depth editing trainings.

Martin Martin Hipangwa (talk) 05:24, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Peter should be a great help ! Anthere (talk)

Hello Martin Hipangwa and DSaroyan (WMF)

Sorry to be late to the discussion - As promised at Wiki Indaba, I pulled the Namibian gender coverage stats using the Wikidata query service. I just wanted to point out the state of coverage of Namibian women across Wikipedia and Wikiquote. You can find the current situation here:

The following information has been gathered from Wikidata, Wikiquote and Wikipedia in the English, Afrikaans and German languages.

There are 194 women listed as Namibian on WikiData - query here: https://w.wiki/5wLu

Of those women on Wikidata, 2 women are featured on English Wikiquote – query here: https://w.wiki/5xuM

Here you can see that none have been missed by not being linked to their WikiData item, prior to these statistics being pulled.

Of those women on Wikidata, 146 women are featured in an article on Wikipedia (en:wp + af:wp + de:wp) – query here: https://w.wiki/5xuW

– 146 articles on English Wikipedia

– 11 articles in Afrikaans Wikipedia

– 82 articles in German Wikipedia

Here are the remaining 40 women or who are on WikiData but are not featured on either English, Afrikaans or German Wikipedias: https://w.wiki/5xue

Hope this helps. Glad you have been funded! Looking forward to seeing great things! Islahaddow (talk) 11:52, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi Islahaddow

Apologies for replying this late. Thank you for this wonderful statistics and pulling data for us. We are glad we are funded and we are commissioning the project Mid December to February next year.

Kind Regards Martin Hipangwa (talk) 16:19, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Funded

Dear Martin Hipangwa, thanks for your responses and engagement during the review process. We have decided to fund this grant request in the amount of 2,700 USD (47,566 NAD). We recommend a reduced budget for Social Media Outreach (Marketing and Promotion), Food, T-shirts (only for top editors), Training stationeries, and Awards which is the decision of partial funding.

For any future proposals:

• We request that you reach out to community members and find Wikimedia trainers in advance and submit the grant request when you have a clear plan of activities and implementation.
• We are glad to support expenses that incur during participation in the event(s). We are also happy to support prizes or other encouragements. However, this should be done in a way that encourages volunteer contributions among participants. You need to develop strategies of engaging participants outside of the events.
• Please submit targets that are relevant. Organizing 3 events with 30 participants and improving 40 articles seems like a low target. It's also unclear for example, how you would have 20 participants, while having 30 editors and 5 organizers? What are these 10 photos if the content is about improving articles on Wikipedia?

We'll consider these requests when reviewing future grant requests. Good luck with the project!

Dear Anthere, thanks so much for your support and useful feedback.

Best regards, DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 15:51, 11 November 2022 (UTC)