Grants talk:Project/Astronomy Outreach and Translation with Wikipedia

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2018

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2018 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community comments period, through January 2, 2019.

The Project Grant committee's formal review for round 2 2018 will occur January 3-January 28, 2019. Grantees will be announced March 1, 2018. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

--I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 02:59, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Comments/questions

Thank you for this proposal. As astronomy is the subject that I hold quite closely to my heart I have a number of questions/comments:

1. One of your project goals is "to translate and scientifically review between 3000 to 5000 Wikipedia pages and articles". On the other hand in the project impact section you wrote "we have set the target of between 5000 to 10,000 translated and reviewed documents on Wikipedia". Which number is correct?
2. In the project impact section your claimed that to achieve your goal of 5000 to 10,000 translated pages you will need 500 volunteers who will translate 5-10 articles on average. These numbers obviously do not agree with each other. So, please, correct them.
3. You claim that "we predict that at least 50% of them will still edit Wikipedia content 6 months after the project." How was this prediction made?
4. I noticed that you are going to develop the project timeline only during the project execution. However I think that it would be better if you had a timeline or a plan in your proposal right now. I am much interested in how numerous activities and events fit into maximum possible 12 month project duration.
5. The budget is quite rudimentary. You should at least provide some justification of the proposed salaries of junior managers. By the way why only junior managers? Are not you going to have a senior manager?
6. One of the tasks is "Manage Wikipedia editing requests". What do you mean by "editing requests".
7. What tools are you planning to use for translations? Are you aware of Content Translation Tool?
8. The last. Do you realize that creating thousands articles in different language projects is not an easy task, especially for inexperienced volunteers. Substandard articles may be deleted, which may lead to disappointments among volunteers.

Ruslik (talk) 18:29, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Dear Ruslik0,

Thank you very much for your questions, and I am sorry about the delay in answering them.

1.2. I have corrected the numbers and set our final target of translated pages at 3000-5000, a more realistic number indeed.

3. We predicted that at least 50% of volunteers will continue editing pages after the project, based on one hand on our volunteer's activity on the ATN platform. The needs of translation in the astronomy communities worldwide mean that volunteers are very active and willing to give their time and effort to participate in astronomy translation projects. Moreover, our community gathers many young astronomers and astronomy students who know how wikipedia can be useful in their daily lives. On the other hand, digging into previous online translation project results (including ones with Wikipedia here file:///C:/Users/euras/Downloads/translating_wikipedia_articles_a_preliminary_report_on_authentic_translation_projects_in_formal_translator_training.pdf), it appears that the overall rate of satisfation of volunteers is high, and that they appreciate the useful aspect of translating and sharing knowledge with users online. In light of such positive feedback from other projects, we are confident that our volunteers will stay motivated and interested in editing Wikipedia articles after the end of our project.

4. I am taking your comment into account about the project timeline, we will be working on producing one as soon as possible.

5. Budget: We both are junior managers, and although the project is endorsed by the IAU OAO, whose office members will provide advice and supervision, the project will be completely run by us two.

6. "Managing Wikipedia editing requests" refers to the requests that volunteers or our community could make for translating pages that we didn't suggest in the initial phase of the project.

7. I was not aware of the Content Translation tool before, but it is definitely a great idea for our projet! Thank you!

8. We do realize that translating articles on Wikipedia requires skills that our volunteers may not have been trained at, which is why the first phase of our project is a training session on translation and proof-reading. Most of our volunteers will also be ATN volunteers who have been translating for about a year, and whose translations are endorsed by the IAU. Finally, our translation workflow includes two phases of prood-reading, one focused on linguistics and one focused on scientific accuracy. We are confident that our volunteers will be able to produce high-quality translations.

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Astronomy Outreach and Translation with Wikipedia

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	6.4
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	5.0
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	3.4
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	3.0
Additional comments from the Committee: The project fits with Wikimedia's strategic priorities and has a significant potential for online impact if, of course, all those 10,000 planned translations are really done. Astronomy is a very interesting subject for processing. The proposal is interesting, but unfortunately there are many unclear parts and lack of information. The impact potential is high. Reaching multiple language communities, recruiting more translations, translating more scientific articles are all likely to succeed. Sustainability goals of 50% retention seem overly ambitious without clear retention strategy but overall impact potential is good. This project has great potential to increase the quality of many articles, and as such will help promote knowledge as a service as knowledge will be more accurately portrayed across the movement. I should admit that the project is innovative in its nature especially in using Astronomy Translation Network. However risks appear high as compared to the purported benefits as I doubt that the goals are realistic. Although the success can be measured. Community support is unclear. there are ambiguities in the cohesion of goals and measures of success A mix of iteration and innovation. A very similar but unrelated initiative was done on medical translation and was successful. There is a similarity in terms of a similar translators network that can help this project. On the other side, the plan for implementation of this solution is not fully clear, particularly it is not clear how work with target communities will be done. This is an innovative solution to involve members of professional bodies outside Wikipedia, one that we should learn more about as a movement as the more levels of expertise we can involve, the better will be our ultimate product. I have serious doubts in ability of project participants to execute the project. They both have accounts with a very limited number of contributions and their experience in building the online Wikipedia is quite limited - I have not noticed any contributions to the astronomy articles, for instance - but they plan to add 5,000-10,000 articles to many Wikimedia projects in multiple languages! Their projections appear to be overly optimistic as well - 50% editor retention rate, 500 volunteers translating 5-10 articles each, really? the budget is non-transparent. it is not explained how the costs came to be. there is no clear guarantee that the project will be successfully implemented in the estimated time. I have significant concerns about relevant experience of participants. Looks like none of them have realistically participated in Wikipedia projects in any language other than English and thus may not be familiar with the diversity of local rules, particularly around translation. The budget consists only of salaries: many people might disagree with this but I would favour open recruitment for such positions instead of paying people identified in advance, as recruiting an experienced Wikipedian with some astronomy background would really change this project completely (in a positive way) and make it more cost-efficient than it is now. The numbers projected seem almost unreachable due to the scope of work that is identified for what would need to be an army of new editors. I wish this were possible, though have not seen this much done by such a large group of volunteer novices. I have not seen any evidence of community engagement efforts. Community support is unclear Sadly there is no involvement with Wikimedia community, although there are active astronomy projects in multiple language versions of Wikipedias. While this project does support linguistic diversity, specific target languages and their communities are not identified, while they could have been of great help here. There are many levels of expertise within the professional members, though there seem few if any Wikipedia experts who have offered support or expressed interest in this work that I am not convinced it is possible on such a large scale. The project makes the assumption that the communication on social media will help to recruit volunteers to translate. I consider this solution too optimistic. I would reject this project. The goals appear to be unrealistic and the participants lack necessary experience. In the future they should find good advisers or participants with significant and relevant on-wiki experience in translations and writing the astronomy content. Unfortunately, this is one of the proposals that left out a number of details important for making a positive recommendation. the budget is non-transparent, the metrics are not in cohesion with the goals; the proposer does not respond promptly to the questions asked and does not correct the indicated omissions. I like the idea a lot: medical translations were a great success, there is no reason to think why astronomy translations would not be a success. There is a good expert network behind the project, thus this is a good opportunity for our movement. However, there is a significant problem with community involvement, and I would support *only if one of the managers would be an experienced Wikipedian with experience in astronomy topics*, or alternatively there is a significant collaboration with Astronomy WikiProjects on multiple wikis. I understand this is rather unlikely, thus this is a weak support. If such change does not happen, my vote becomes a "No" as this project will not be able to succeed without involvement of target communities, but I hope they will be able to do better next time. I like the idea, but do not think it is possible at this point given its scope and few resources internally to help support it.

Opportunity to respond to committee comments in the next 7 days

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal. Based on their initial review, a majority of committee reviewers have not recommended your proposal for funding. However, before the committee makes an official decision, they would like to provide you with an opportunity to respond to their comments.

Next steps:

1. Aggregated committee comments from the committee are posted above. Note that these comments may vary, or even contradict each other, since they reflect the conclusions of multiple individual committee members who independently reviewed this proposal. We recommend that you review all the feedback carefully and post any responses or clarifications or questions on this talk page. If you make any revisions to your proposal based on committee feedback, we recommend that you also summarize the changes on your talkpage.
2. The committee will review any additional feedback you post on your talkpage before making a final funding decision. A decision will be announced no later than March 1st, 2019.

Questions? Contact us.

@Bhimmelf and Brinacor: please see note above about the opportunity to respond to committee comments before they finalize a decision on your proposal. Please let me know if you have any questions. With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 03:32, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Round 2 2018 decision

This project has not been selected for a Project Grant at this time.

We love that you took the chance to creatively improve the Wikimedia movement. The committee has reviewed this proposal and not recommended it for funding. This was a very competitive round with many good ideas, not all of which could be funded in spite of many merits. We appreciate your participation, and we hope you'll continue to stay engaged in the Wikimedia context.

Next steps: Applicants whose proposals are declined are welcome to consider resubmitting your application again in the future. You are welcome to request a consultation with staff to review any concerns with your proposal that contributed to a decline decision, and help you determine whether resubmission makes sense for your proposal.

Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation has been undergoing a community consultation process to launch a new grants strategy. Our proposed programs are posted on Meta here: Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021. If you have suggestions about how we can improve our programs in the future, you can find information about how to give feedback here: Get involved. We are also currently seeking candidates to serve on regional grants committees and we'd appreciate it if you could help us spread the word to strong candidates--you can find out more here. We will launch our new programs in July 2021. If you are interested in submitting future proposals for funding, stay tuned to learn more about our future programs.

On behalf of the Project Grants Committee, KCVelaga (talk) 05:18, 1 March 2019 (UTC)