Grants talk:Project/Kaspo/Editathons in Pistoia district

Project Grant proposal submissions due 30 November!

Thanks for drafting your Project Grant proposal. As a reminder, proposals are due on November 30th by the end of the day in your local time. In order for this submission to be reviewed for eligibility, it must be formally proposed. When you have completed filling out the infobox and have fully responded to the questions on your draft, please change status=draft to status=proposed to formally submit your grant proposal. This can be found in the Probox template found on your grant proposal page. Importantly, proposals that are submitted after the deadline will not be eligible for review during this round. If you're having any difficulty or encounter any unexpected issues when changing the proposal status, please feel free to e-mail me at cschillingwikimedia.org or contact me on my talk page. Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

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) 16:22, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Feedback/thoughts

Hi @Kaspo:. This looks like you want to create a really engaging series of activities that would definitely help develop interest and investment from existing members of the community. I have a few questions about the project:

• On multiple occasions you mention the importance of developing deeper/greater GLAM partnerships as part of the project, and you also mention on multiple occasions the importance of engaging experts and retaining them in the community. However, I am not sure if I understand the how you plan to engage these experts and collaborating institutions: what kinds of education and outreach do you need to do to engage this audience? Do you have a community of experts that you are drawing from?
• 4 days for editing and contributing to a Wikimedia project is a quite in-depth and extensive ask -- even of enthusiastic volunteers. Do you have evidence that this depth of engagement is something that your community wants to do?
• Also, because multi-day events are so expensive: elsewhere in the movement extended events typically include some more extensive goals around developing skills/capacity in the community. I see that you have OpenStreetmap skills and an introduction to Wikimedia projects there: is that calibrated for the right audience (of mostly experienced Wikimedia contributors)? How might you do other skill transfer in the workshop (i.e. Wikidata skills, querying, sharing some of the skills on doing outreach for "freeing" monuments")?

Cheers, Astinson (WMF) (talk) 20:47, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

@Astinson (WMF): You can find the answers in my grant, but if you asked me maybe I think I wrote that unclearly. So I'm going to write better. Anyway the answer:

• We have contacts in many Municipal councils and GLAM istitutions, they can give us experts. Until we'll have confirm this grant i can't ask them to join.
• We organize a 4 days editathon last year and each participant told me who will join again the next year.
• Sorry but i don't understand the question.--Kaspo (talk) 23:47, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Editathons in Pistoia district

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?	5.2
(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?	6.2
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	7.0
Additional comments from the Committee: Potential impact in the local area and communities is considerable and the project itself plans for further developing into other areas. The project fits with the strategic direction of Wikimedia, as it focuses on underrepresented knowledge and heritage. However, the proposed online impact is not relative to the budget. The project is more focused on bringing experts together for a series of events that are adopting retention focused methods. Having done, several edit-a-thons for various audiences, I can say that this model is not sustainable. Especially experts, they tend to be enthusiastic while learning but they don't find time after the workshop, and retention is poor. Instead of organizing a series of events, it would be better if they held one recruitment drive and then follow up on the same participants. The multi-day event raises some concerns regarding the outcome for the participants related to the cost. However I would agree with the grantee that this kind of format allows for much more in-depth work and the ability for further engaging with the local community. Measure success are insufficiently defined. a project of this level and this value requires clearer and more concrete goals. Also, it is unclear what the proposer expects from potential cooperation with GLAM institutions, whether there are concrete proposals and projects that can offer them, as well as who is all in the organizational team other than the proposer himself I agree that the proposal doesn't seem to much innovative. And I think you might need to think about what is the role of the expert and how to let them do the work well. The plan doesn't seem to much innovative. Though it tries to includes experts, I am skeptical about their contributions after the workshop is over. It would have been much better if this point was explicitly addressed in the proposal. Yes, we can measure success, and there is no much risk involved. This is project focused on the local community and I don't really see the positive outcome of on-line targeting and advertising. Also budget is quite high related to the possible outcome. the budget is transparent, but similar projects were implemented with a smaller budget. Undoubtedly, providing accommodation for participants will require a lot of budgets. So, I'd like to know more information about why that lasts 4 days is so important. The plan can realistically be completed in mentioned duration (6 months). However, I am not convinced with the budget. The budget seems too high for the potential impact. I would recommend 60–75% of the proposed amount to be funded to this proposal. Yes, the project has required people with experience and expertise to execute the plan. I feel that the project is focusing on a large set, where it should relatively be a smaller one. I suggest this because, to make it a sustainable model, followup is most the decisive factor. Costs may be saved by using online means of follow-up. Local community in the form of institutions, GLAM partners and private supporters is apparently engaged with the project. Grantees should look for outside funding considering the number of partners listed. the proposal has the support of the community and the proposer claims that a certain part of the participants is actually people who have previously participated in similar events I really excited to see the proposal has strong support from the Community. I like the project being specifically focused on a region (a district in this case), which is relatively much easier to make things happen, than a whole country. The project has community support and supports diversity. although there are some concerns about the success of this project in terms of set goals and expected results, as well there is a several open questions, I think that the budget is a little bit big and needs to be rationalized or the proposer should look for additional sources of funding (eg. from a local community or institution) I support this proposal, but I also think it is necessary to reduce the budget. I would recommend funding 75% of the proposed amount, urging the participants to be more engaged online than onsite participation. This makes the project more sustainable, scalable in the future and making the budget more relevant to the potential online impact.

This proposal has been recommended for due diligence review.

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal and recommended it for due diligence review. This means that a majority of the committee reviewers favorably assessed this proposal and have requested further investigation by Wikimedia Foundation staff.

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 and post any responses, clarifications or questions on this talk page.
2. Following due diligence review, a final funding decision will be announced on March 1st, 2019.

Questions? Contact us.

I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 16:24, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Round 2 2018 decision

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for a Project Grant.

The committee has recommended this proposal and WMF has approved funding for the full amount of your request, 10,085.10 EUR / $11,472.40 USD

Comments regarding this decision:
The committee supports the proposal to conduct a multiday edit-a-thon focused on the Pistoia district, and appreciates the degree of community support and the commitment to use this project to develop a model for event planning for other localities. The committee did express concerns over the overall cost and sustainability of the project in terms of retaining experts, and encourages the applicants to consider approaches that are more sustainable when planning future events, such as recruiting contributors who are more local.

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
2. Review the information for grantees.
3. Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
4. Start work on your project!

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I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 15:06, 1 March 2019 (UTC)