Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Wikifile-transfer tool’s bug fixes and feature development (ID: 22458511)

Follow-up Questions from South Asia Regional Funds Committee, Technical Engagement Team and Programme Officer

Hello @ParasharSarthak,

Thank you for your interest in the rapid fund programme. Your grant application has moved from the grant eligibility phase to grant review phase and it is undergoing the review process. Would you be able to provide responses to the following questions? Thank you and looking forward to hearing from you.

Regards, Jacqueline on behalf of the SA Funds Committee and Technical Engagement team --

1) In your proposal, you mentioned publishing in your report "usage metrics from Linux machine commands which will be run on Wikimedia Toolforge to get the metrics" and "Git commit history which will describe how much code we have improved from last time", could you elaborate on this and what specific metrics you could generate from these two platforms? Would it include for example: error log volume reduction (mysql error problem), or net reduction in open tasks?

2) As the plan is to commit 240 hours to the project, and your reach is currently listed as 15 participants, and based on our understanding there were < 60 uploads across the three communities using this tool, what are your plans to increase outreach for your project and end users? How can we better engage the wider community to increase awareness, provide feedback or use the tool that that you plan to fix?

3) Would you be able to share your thought process behind your proposed budget? For example how did you derive the unit cost (i.e. point of reference based on local context?), how do you estimate the number of work hours?

4) Could you elaborate more on the MySQL error? For example, is it coming from shared infrastructure, Wikimedia Cloud services etc? And how do you plan to address this issues?

5) Are there plans to work with the Indic MediaWiki Developers User Group?

Thank you. JChen (WMF) (talk) 03:55, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi JChen (WMF), thank you for your response. Please find the answer below.

1.

a. "usage metrics from Linux machine commands which will be run on Wikimedia Toolforge to get the metrics" - Currently in Webapp, It doesn’t have any usage data tracking integration to tell how much tool is being used. So to get a matrix about tool usage for the final report, I will use the Linux command because whenever a user uses the tool then Webapp creates a file in the directory. So counting the number of files in a directory on Toolforge can give us the tool usage matrix.

b. "Git commit history which will describe how much code we have improved from last time" - Wikifile-transfer tool’s source code is being hosted on GitHub. See https://github.com/indictechcom/wikifile-transfer. Whenever anyone improves the source code by fixing the bug or adding new features. It creates the commit history. For example, https://github.com/indictechcom/wikifile-transfer/pull/7/files shows what code has been changed from last time. So this matrix can be used as a code improvement benchmark. After all the coding work, I will put the matrix about the addition/deletion of lines created under this grant.

These two specifically show the following:

• Number of files transfer through the tool
• Code improvement under grant

For other matrix, I will add Python’s logger library in the backend to record the runtime error. My current plan is to reduce the runtime error to almost negligible, especially SQL errors.

2. This tool has successfully uploaded around five thousand files since its deployment. In fact, It has uploaded 121 files in the last month on Bangla Wikipedia alone (https://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges?tagfilter=OAuth+CID%3A+2395&limit=500&days=30&urlversion=2&uselang=en). There will be more communities that are using the tool but I just list the only these 3 communities in the grant for point of reference.

As of now, I am planning to conduct 3 sessions. First will be in the middle of the grant project to get initial feedback, and then second to take the outreach and feedback session. And last will be the outreach to showcase the final tool. Currently, I am targeting the Indic communities as part of the grant. But this tool has generic usage to solve the global communities issue and there is a high chance that after outreach awareness, It can be adopted by global communities.

These sessions will be online and will be promoted by posting the sessions on the Indic communities' village pump so that more Wikimedians can attend the sessions. If I find that more sessions will be useful with communities during the grant period. I will add other sessions as well.

3. I have derived the unit cost based on three parameters.

a. Past technical grants by Wikimedia: In technical projects, WMF has given 25 USD/hours for technical for Indian developers. See here. For other countries, unit costs are double. See Grant 1 and Grant 2. Please consider these unit costs are 2 years old.

b. Independent Developers rate: According to Upwork, the minimum pay for developers who work around MediaWiki is $20/hour whereas its average is going to $35+ per hour. See https://www.upwork.com/hire/mediawiki-freelancers/

c. From local context: According to Glassdoor, Software developers in India have a base pay of 9,700 USD to 22,900 USD. See https://www.glassdoor.co.in/Salaries/software-development-engineer-salary-SRCH_KO0,29.htm. Please consider that base pay is mostly 50% of the total salary. Other components in the salary are Tax deduction at source by the company, Employees' Provident Fund (pension), Health insurance, HRA, Bonus, and other benefits as well. Taking average base pay from Glassdoor, the average unit cost in base pay is 7.54 USD/hour so considering this is 50% of total income then the final average cost is 15.08 USD/hour. These unit costs are for full time jobs. Due to the nature of commitment and stability in full-time jobs and contracts, contract work always has a little bit more unit cost than a full-time job.

Considering all these three parameters, I found that $20/hour is very reasonable considering the nature of the work.

For estimating the work hours, I have the following:

• Backend development: 115 hours
• Frontend development: 93 hours
• Community Engagement & Reporting: 32 hours

4. Since the tool is being hosted on shared infrastructure (Toolforge) so the issue can be on the infrastructure side as well. Until, I won’t work on the issue to debug. I can’t say anything for sure. The current error is “Connection reset by peer” which indicates the infrastructure issue but this can be source code side as well. I plan to add Python’s logger library to record the runtime error. By doing this, the web app can capture the error information, and I can work according to that.

5. Currently, there is no plan to work with UG on the implementation level but as the Wikimedia community, I will try to work with most of the communities, as much as I can, to get feedback and outreach as collaboration is base of Wikimedia Movement.

Thank you so much. -ParasharSarthak (talk)

Your grant has been approved

Hello @ParasharSarthak

Congratulations! Your grant application has been approved in the amount of INR 405,641.78 from 1 April 2024 to 15 August 2024.

Let’s continue having regular conversations over the course of your grant implementation. Please let me know if you require support in any way or would like to share your experiences with a wider community through the Let's Connect Programme or on South Asia Open Community Calls.

Additional resources which may be useful

• The reporting requirements and templates for the grant can be found here. All reports are to be completed and submitted via Fluxx.
• Timelines for reporting can be found in your grant agreement or on Fluxx.
• Instructions for post award: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Processing/Grantee_Portal/Post_award/Individuals
• Documenting project expenses: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Documenting_project_expenses

Plug

We are actively recruiting community members to join the South Asia Regional Funds Committee and hope you can help spread the word and recommend people to apply. For more information, refer to Grants:Regions/South Asia/Committee Call 2024.

We thank you for your participation in the grant application process and we hope to continue to journey with you as you embark on this project.

Regards,

Jacqueline on behalf of the South Asia Regional Funds Committee JChen (WMF) (talk) 21:12, 14 March 2024 (UTC)