Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Research Fund/Field Study on the Use of Bengali (বাংলা) Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Tools for School and Higher Education in India

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In what ways do you think this research can support you or other members of the Wikimedia communities in the work that you do on the Wikimedia projects?
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Sorry but i oppose this, won't be useful project[edit]

I am volunteering Bengali wikipedia more than 9 years. I don't think this big budget research will be useful for Bengali wikipedia. From my experience, i can tell this, most of people or students (in school and in higher education) in India don't use Bengali wikipedia at all/uses is very low. Even in general, use of Bengali wikipedia from West Bengal is very low.

The main reason we Bengali wikipedia don't have enough articles, we have some articles but they are very much stub. Bengali wikipedia's coverage in science, medicinal, chemistry, math, physics is very poor and we have very little articles about those topic. So, even if some student wants to use Bengali Wikipedia, they usually don't find it useful.

I Oppose the project, I urge WMF not fund this big budget project, just find out use of bnwiki is low.

To improve the situation, we need more Volunteers who will edit Bengali wikipedia. My experience says, usually new volunteers won't come regularly. I often find new Bengali speaking volunteer in English wikipedia, i beg them to contribute to Bengali Wikipedia but most of them wont come to Bengali wikipedia. Fund outreach program, workshop, training which will bring new wikipedian to Bengali wikipedia. Which will improve sorry state of articles in Bengali wikipedia. If we don't get regular wikipedians, no matter how many study you do, situation and use of Bengali wikipedia will be same. Also, mind the budget. This type of big budgets won't needed. Fund, where actually matters. আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 17:32, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also, this is very bad that there is a project about Bengali Wikipedia but there is no communication!! fortunately i found this while browsing meta. I am going to notify community to attract more people, to get more opinion. আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 17:46, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

First of all we need volunteers to improve wiki content, readers and other users will automatically come when content improves. I am very surprised to see the amount of budget, i am sure the proposal or its plan for this grant has not been communicated to the Bengali Wikipedia community or any affiliate organisation concerned. I am Oppose to the proposal for this grant. -- MdsShakil (talk) 18:28, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm genuinely surprised that such a large scale proposal has been proposed without consulting the project community in question. As Titu and আফতাবুজ্জামান have mentioned here, this proposal lacks far behind what is expected in such grant requests. The purpose seems at best vague and the benefit of conducting such large scale research is very very low in terms of the community's perspective. This is a strong oppose. ~ Nahid ^Talk 13:12, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The person applying for this grant may not see our messages but our words should reach them. He/she can read this grant proposal before applying for any further grant; specially, going through the detailed plan on the google doc will help I think (Though the category is different, it can provide some overview of how a grant proposal should look like). He/she can also check this short tutorial before planning any budget. This proposal is "horrifyingly" incomplete. I would like to ask the grantee to refine this proposal and resubmit. There's no point for this grant to be funded. The study before jumping in to the research is insufficient; in fact the grantee don't/doesn't have the least knowledge of Wikipedia and the related project which is evident in his/her words. I Oppose --Mrb Rafi (talk) 13:23, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly oppose it. It's really incredible that someone inexperienced proposed such a large budget without consulting the community! Thanks Titu and Aftab for mentioning each topic nicely. I think there is more personal interest here than wiki. Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 14:21, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi all. My name is Leila and I'm one of the Research Fund chairs. I read your comments so far and I have a few thoughts to share with you.

We ask you to please consider using the "Add your feedback" button to provide your feedback. That structure allows us to consider your feedback to the fullest when making a decision on stage I applications. (The third question there gives you space to share general observations, too.)
I want to encourage you to think about how you can help these researchers improve their work (Question 2 in the feedback form asks specifically for this). People receive and respond to feedback better when it's shared with kindness, particularly newcomers. I encourage you to think about this application in this way: a few researchers in a language that is of interest to you have indicated interest to do research. How can you help them improve their proposal? How do you think others can help them improve their proposal? How can you invite them in to your communities and help them be productive? Some of you may be too busy for engaging with newcomer researchers at this level; some of you may have the time and interest. No matter which group you're in, let's be extra kind to newcomers and those who may not know all the complexity of the Wikimedia projects. :)
With regards to the point about not having consulted with the local community: This is okay for being eligible to apply for stage I (note that there is a stage II that a smaller subset of applicants will be invited to submit to). Think about their proposal as indication of interest to do research in this space. If you think the general idea is worth exploring for your community and the researchers need support to work more closely with your community, say so in your feedback and also let us know if you are interested to work with them. We will pass this feedback as part of the final decision to the applicants.

Thank you for your time and care. --LZia (WMF) (talk) 17:26, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Observations[edit]

Namaskara,
Here are a few observation points—

It is good to see interest in the Bangla Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia movement in general.

However in my opinion:

Background work: it seems background work has not been done properly. This includes discussion with the relevant community, learning from their experience, involvement in the project (preferably by direct participation), and planning the project accordingly.
Lack of Wiki-experience: The lack of Wiki-experience seems to be a hindrance and may affect both project planning and execution. The project mentions "Wikipedia" and "Wikimedia tools" ^{Which tools?} The proposal mentions It is expected that this research will press on the need for encouraging use of Bengali Wikimedia tools at a mass-scale — this starts with an assumption that Bangla Wikipedia or Bengali Wikimedia tools ^{Which tools?} are in a condition to be used in the academic institutions etc. However there are different parts, portals, projects and those are in different stage of improvement and development. While different parts are suitable/partially suitable to be used as free alternative resource, possibly there are several areas which need a lot of work. Bangla Wikimedia volunteers who are working to create and improve the articles and the projects are already aware of this.
Priority: Following what User:আফতাবুজ্জামান has mentioned, I also doubt whether this initiative fits with the project's and the community's priorities, requirements, and interests.
Budget: The Budget section's help text mentions "specific budgets and details are not necessary at this time". But why? I do not understand why budget breakup details are not necessary for a large-scale project? Hence the budget line items are unclear such as honorarium-number of people to get honorarium, monthly breakup, Equipment-what type of equipment? etc. Other than being unclear, I see there is a possibility that it is over-budgeted also.

Best, টিটো দত্ত (কথা) 08:56, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Titodutta: My name is Leila and I'm one of the two Research Fund chairs. I acknowledge that I read your feedback and I have two points to share. First, thank you for your constructive feedback. We will consider it as we make a decision about this proposal in a few weeks. Second, you asked why the applicants are not asked to provide detailed budget needs. The reason is that we have a two-stage application process and we want to be mindful of the applicants' time for preparing for this stage I. If the applicants' proposal gets accepted in stage I, they will be invited to submit a full proposal for stage II review. (high level explanation of the stages). We primarily did this for equity reasons: we are particularly mindful that we wanted to reach to people and places that have not benefited from many research privileges (including funding) and in these circumstances we're extra careful that we should not ask the applicants to spend extensive time on the application with a lot of uncertainty as whether their application will be accepted or not. I hope this helps. --LZia (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback from Lifeberg (talk)[edit]

1. In what ways do you think this research can support you or other members of the Wikimedia communities in the work that you do on the Wikimedia projects?

This research can help the community in various ways if proceeded with informed decisions from the contributing community. Further information about how the users are trying to use this BNWiki platform and how they are responding to current presentation of the platform can be beneficial.
Proposed research may focus on some valuable information about what are the present barriers of the interface of BNWiki. But, at the same time, I think, this proposal is focused only on one country, which can have misleading results compared to the BNWiki community that spreads at least into two Bangla speaking countries, missing at least 61.3% of the Bangla speaking communities.
The selected target group may not have enough knowhow to contribute towards articles those will meet community standards. Rather, inclusion of graduate schools can have more impact with the same approach. If the respondents are from high schools and graduate schools, then BNWiki should have enough information about possible future contributors. This graduate school group is missing from the proposal.
Contributors from school will need to be considered through a separate research, as this group will need some extra care to make the study results effective for the community.

2. What advice do you have for the authors to improve their research or the impact of their research? (We encourage you to share with the authors projects or initiatives that you think can benefit from the result of their research. This can help the authors connect their work with ongoing projects in the early stages of their research.)

The proposed research is targeted for a 'mass-scale' respondents, which I think would be best if some pilot studies were done before approaching with a research at this magnitude.
An approach with a secondary research then moving to a primary research can be more effective to gather information about the targeted respondents.
I did not see any reference to any prior research with the proposal, so, I can not tell how effective this will be, to start with a primary research at this proposed scale to begin information collection about BNWiki usage throughout the root level (e.g. school or high school contributors). If this research proposal could outline some key aspects of this research backed by introductory literature reviews and any prior secondary research related to this topic, that would make the proposal better.
As a newcomer to the community, I was looking to improve existing interface barriers for other newcomers so that, BNWiki gets more regular and effective contributions. I did not see any reflection of data collection about BNWiki interface in the proposal at all. But, if we can have more data about possible future contributions by the proposed target groups, then it could be an asset to move this BNWiki project further. Also, as there were no prior research references, I believe, this research should not follow any geographical boundaries and can be extended to Bangladesh as well. In that way, we will know more about the general users and how they want to interact with the BNWiki platform. In this way, we will have a very strong base for further research in future focused into countries or communities.
Current pandemic has shifted focus on digitalization and use of technologies. At the same time, this South Asian population is facing various challenges. In contrary at least 34% of population in South Asia now have mobile Internet which has reduced the rural-urban Internet access gap. So, it would be very much possible to conduct field studies using converging technologies to have high impact results with minimal grant. Even, focused group discussion is also possible with the help the latest tools.
I personally welcome the research team to open a conversation on my Talk page about this. I can share more information about my thoughts with the team on my talk page. Also, the research team can be introduced to the BNWiki community to discuss further about this research topic. I believe, in this way, the research team will have more insightful information about this.

3. Please share any other feedback about this proposal that you think the Research Fund Committee should consider below.

I believe, the proposed research could deliver effective results those are sustainable for the BNWiki project, if this was scrutinized by community experts to provide the researchers primary data about current usage of the BNWiki platform. Also, I have mentioned earlier how this proposal could be better in my opinion. But, absolutely those could get into better shape if this idea was presented to the BNWiki community and discussed further about it.
I did not see any reference with the proposal that could provide enough information about the effectiveness of this proposed research.
Indeed, this topic is very important for the BNWiki project, but the approach of this research is not absolutely necessary for the BNWiki project. There are more important issues in Bangla Wikipedia those need more attention. If some researches are to be done for this project, we need to prioritize the topics based on community needs. Which, this topic does not cover, and will not be viable for the BNWiki project. So, I Oppose the research proposal with its current approach. Thank you for your time! --Lifeberg (talk) 20:38, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]