Grants talk:Project/Fjjulien/Modelling and Populating Performing Arts Data in Wikidata/Timeline

Thanks for the updates[edit]

I just caught up with your updates and wanted to say thank you for posting such detailed summaries of what you have been up to. It's really exciting to read them and hear about the great response rate you've had for your work so far. Congratulations! I'm looking forward to reading the next one.

Let me know if there is anything you want to touch base about. If you would like to set up a check-in and touch base about how things are going, I'm happy to do that, to help connect you to any further support or resources you might need for the project itself, or to the grants process. I'm happy to go over the reporting process in advance of your submission of your Midpoint Report. If that sounds helpful, let me know.

I just went back and took a look at the Project Grants Committee comments posted on your proposal talkpage, and remembered that the committee had requested that you make extra efforts to reduce systemic bias through the inclusion of working group members and advisors from underrepresented backgrounds. I'm curious if you perceive this to have led to any difference in the design of the workshops (for example, in terms of more diverse cultural competency in creating a welcoming context for a diverse audience, etc), in who is attending, in the breadth of content focus, etc. It would be great if you could capture anything you learn in this respect and share it in your report.

I wanted to respond here on your talkpage to acknowledge your updates, but if you want to schedule a check-in, you can email me at mjohnson wikimedia · org.

Thanks for your awesome work!

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 01:59, 20 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Mjohnson (WMF):

Hi Marti (and Vero Marino),

Thanks for your positive feedback.

We included two advisors from underrepresented background on our committee: Denise Bolduc and Anju Christopherson. So far, this has not influenced the design of the workshops. We did choose a Japanese-Canadian stage director as a model item for our English workshop series, but this is the kind of intentional choice we would have made regardless.

This being said, the participation of Denise and Anju will have a significant influence over our modelling decisions and over our recommendations/notes on properties and values. We will be meeting in coming weeks to discuss if we can realistically hope that "ethnic group (P172)" will be used by Indigenous artists to denote their Indigenous identity. The label for P172 is causing uneasiness among Indigenous peoples and we may have to consider a introducing a sub-property. If you are aware of any existing discussions on self-identifications of people from underrepresented "ethnic groups", please let us know.

We may ask for a check-in meeting once we've had time to complete our monthly reports for August and September.

Regards,

Fjjulien (talk) 19:36, 23 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Fjjulien, thanks for bringing forward this question about P172. This is not something I've been aware of until you raised it, but I can easily see why it is a concern. I've reached out to a few staff to see if anyone can offer suggestions about discussions that might already be happening. I will get back to if I find any leads. --Marti (WMF) (talk) 05:02, 24 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]