Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Wikimedia Commons Multilingual Images Contest (ID: 22820297)

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello Wiki Asmah, thanks for your proposal supporting an international contest supporting descriptions and captions on Wikimedia Commons. I'm Chris Schilling, a program officer supporting funding needs for this region. Unfortunately, we will not be able to fund your proposal at this time for the following reasons:

• Question 11 reads as follows: How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. My reading of your response is that you plan to do community engagement about the proposal after it funded, but you required do this preparatory work before submission. This work is important because even if you have the skills needed to organize the campaign, you need to 1) confirm there are interested participants in the communities you are seeking to engage, and 2) invite people to provide feedback or ideas, or even to join your project planning. I recommend using on-wiki community discussion spaces, and relevant social media channels for those languages communities for this community engagement work about your proposal to gauge local interest.
• Given that this is the first time this kind of international event is going to be organized and run, the scope of the campaign is too large. I am also concerned that the work of organizing this a campaign this large is only going to be split between two people. I recommend focusing the campaign on just a 1-2 language communities to start rather than spreading your time and resources too thinly across Wikimedia communities and organizations that use Arabic, English, Spanish, and French languages.
• Given your membership in both Wikimedia Estonia and Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia, I also ask that you reach out to these organizations to see what support they may be able to provide as a part of your community engagement as well before reapplying for Rapid Funds. You could also consider reaching out to affiliates related to the language communities you want to reach out to. In that proposal, I would like to understand what support, feedback, or responses you received from the affiliates you contact.
• I'm not especially convinced a contest is the best or most sustainable way to support this particular need around captioning. It might be worthwhile to see if one the affiliates you are associated with would be willing to help you host a more casual event that does not rely on large prize incentives to make progress towards these goals for media on Wikimedia Commons. The proposed monetary awards are also too large for this campaign (one person from each community receiving $400 USD). If you wish to pursue a contest for this kind of work, I recommend both lowering the overall prize budget and increasing the number of prizes for each language community.

Please let me know if you have any questions or need clarification on my feedback. With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi, @I JethroBT (WMF)! Thank you so much for your feedback. It is really helpful and we appreciate all the advice and recommendations. Wiki Asmah (talk) 12:59, 11 November 2024 (UTC)