Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Wikidata Ontology Course (ID: 22977619)

Endorsement from Alexmar983 (talk)

This proposal is essential for the Wikidata community as it tackles inconsistencies and errors in the ontology, which is a crucial aspect. By providing structured education on this topic via hands-on tutorials, it empowers contributors to enhance Wikidata’s reliability.

It relies on a well-designed curriculum and the team's expertise and background in knowledge representation and past research. The budget is clear and justified, ensuring efficient resource allocation for course development.

The proposal is coherent, with well-defined objectives, strategies, budget, and measurable outcomes. Metrics like participant numbers, content contributions, and new members are relevant and achievable. A structured timeline and activity plan further support its feasibility. --Alexmar983 (talk) 10:45, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Endorsement from Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk)

The proposed course would be great to have for Wikidata. Ontology problems are repeatedly raised as a major barrier for the Wikimedia projects and application developers to work with Wikidata's data. Supporting the community through better learning material and discussions about how to model data in a more clean and reusable way would be very helpful.

--Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 09:51, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello Peter F. Patel-Schneider and Egezort, and thanks for this proposal supporting the activities of the WikiProject Ontology, as well as for providing an overview of the proposed course content. Please see my comments and questions below:

• Thank you for your good outreach work around this project with relevant communities and organization active on Wikidata. It's great to see interest and enthusiasm for this kind of coursework!
• Thanks also for providing a high level of detail around your expected topics for the coursework.
• One suggestion I had is that, because a lot of outcomes depend on participants' efforts toward the group project, that it may be helpful to dedicate a little class time to supporting groups to co-work on their group project.
• I need clarity on two aspects of the budget:
  • Support for preparing course: $2500 USD: Can you explain how you determined this funding request? Was there an estimate of hours or a rate of compensation determined for this item?
  • Support for participant project activities: What expenses are included in this line item, and how was it determined?
• Once the course is developed, what plans do you have to support the continued usage and usability of the course beyond this immediate grant?

Please let me know if you have any questions or needs for clarity. With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 08:01, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi: Here is our response to your requests for more information and some more information on how we plan to support project work.

For supporting project work:

In week 3 through 5 we have allocated class time for discussion of group projects so that the different groups can see what everyone is doing. We have also mentioned in the proposal that we will be meeting with the groups individually to discuss their projects. We expect that there will be a gap between the last two course sessions and the class time in this gap week would be available for intra- and inter-group discussions. We will ask the groups to arrange their own meeting times, at their own convenience, and expect that most of their project work will be done in these meetings or as individuals.

For continued use of the course goals and materials:

The course has a large component of interaction between the instructors and the participants. Future versions of the course are dependent on the availability of us or other instructors. We did not mention recording any of the class sessions but we do expect to record and make available outside of the course structure some of the sessions, particularly those from outside speakers. We will ask for permission from students and outside speakers for this. We did commit to at least make our course notes available on commons, which would allow, even without our assistance, a competent instructor in the area to use our course as the basis for other courses.

We will be asking for permission from the participants to have their project reports available as well. We do realize that there are potential projects that involve proprietary information but we will push to have information about all projects freely available.

For support of participant projects:

Potential uses of these funds are subscribing to relevant online software (such as tools to make slides), poster designs, expenses in preparing surveys, communications, computer time,

and supporting events that are part of the projects. As we don't know what the projects will be we can't know what they will need support for, or even whether they will need any support. One reason to have the possibility of funds for projects is to encourage the participants to have events related to their projects---creating events is a useful skill for those involved with wikis to have. We will require that this is only for actual expenses directly related to the projects.

Participants will apply to us with their budget proposals. These will be public unless there is a specific reason to keep some things private in which case details will be shared separately with the Community Resources Team.

For support of our efforts:

We did some estimation of the work involved and realized that remuneration of Peter's work at his usual rate would blow up the budget so we decided to split the available funds equally, hence two people at $1250US each.

Here is a more-detailed low estimate on the amount of work we think will be involved in running the course. We have 2 class hours per week for six weeks minus up to 2 hours of class time from external presenters for a total of about 10 class hours for us. A normal estimate is that it takes an experienced instructor about 4 hours to prepare new material for each class hour, so that is 40 hours of preparation time required. Then there is actual class time, which amounts to 24 hours as both of us will be involved. There will be at least two hours per week for contact time other than the regular class time and for answering questions in the first five weeks then at least two hours to assist each project plus another hour evaluating each project. That's another 22 hours. Administration and similar activities are likely to be around 8 hours. That's a total of 94 hours and works out to a rate about $27US per hour. That seems reasonable for work involved in running an advanced course for someone living outside of high-salary areas.

We actually would prefer that the projects continue after the end of the course, and will be interacting with any continuing projects. This time is not counted in the budget, as we expect that this interaction would be more on a peer basis and so we consider it as part of our general research activities related to Wikidata.

Let us know if there is any other information we can provide. Peter F. Patel-Schneider (talk) 23:02, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

@Peter F. Patel-Schneider and Egezort: Thanks for your responses here. I am partially funding the proposal for 3750 USD for the following reasons:

• Overall, the rationale for the course is good, and has some community support. However, some expenses haven't been adequately explained, and in general, a new project like this should aim to be smaller scale to start given the size of your team, the uncertainty around what kinds of projects students will actually do, and relatedly, that the impact of these projects is uncertain. In terms of specific expenses:

• The rationale and information related to the need for guest lecturers for initial implementation of the course is not sufficiently established, and needs greater planning, coordination with potential lecturers, and justification to be supported in the future.
• While I understand that students could benefit from additional software or other services to support their project ideas, there is uncertainty over whether this support is needed at all. It is difficult for me to approve movement funds for needs that aren't especially clear. Furthermore, the funding needs associated with unique software requests for individual students seems fairly resource-intensive and doesn't match how we are normally funding workshops and course-related programs in Rapid Funds. Finally, there are free tools available for some of the needs you named (making slides, designing posters, survey preparation).

• We've unexpectedly received a very large increase in Rapid Fund proposals for the region in the current round, which means that not all proposals could be funded, and many have received partial funding.
• We can support you to obtain Wikimedia-related merchandise through this program offered by our merchandise team for free. Please review this information there about available merchandise and how to make a request, and I will be happy to approve a request for your course.

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 16:41, 27 March 2025 (UTC)