Grants talk:Project/Krishna Chaitanya Velaga/Edit-a-thon series 2018 (India)

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Comment on destinations[edit]

I recommend two additional destinations instead of so many in the mainland Indian states - one in the far Northeast, say Aizawl or Agartala, and another in the hill sates, I suggest Shimla or Dharmsala or Nainital (or any place where there is a local college). AshLin (talk) 03:15, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@AshLin: G'morning Ashwin, thanks for the inputs. I'll take Shimla as a primary choice, replacing Jaipur, as there is some Hindi Community activity planned for this November. So we'll have some community there. But I'll take Aizawl to secondary choices as I've already included Guwahati from the north-eastern region. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk — mail) 00:29, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Krishna Chaitanya Velaga:, thanks for considering the suggestion and acting upon it. However, let me caution you against the "clubbing" of seven states into one, a form of mainland chauvinism all of us are prone to practice. You would feel aggrieved if the Southern five states and Odissa were represented by a single wiki editathon on the argument that the South had been covered. So do the people of the seven states in the Northeast so feel. So I would like to make a suggestion, for later. A similar tour be planned for the Northeast by CIS/WMIN to each of the seven states in the near future, @Titodutta:. AshLin (talk) 16:56, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@AshLin: Greetings Ashwin, yes, what you said is right. It is not right to represent all the Northeastern states by a single edit-a-thon. But for this project, in view of budgetary constraints, I'll limit to that. But if budget permits, we'll surely do another in the northeastern states. Actually I feel one or two events will not work too well for the northeastern states, as you've said, we must plan a whole new project for the northeastern states. We'll definitely plan for that. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk — mail) 01:49, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification[edit]

I will be involved in the advisory and advocacy roles only. Planning, expenditure and handling of finances remains that of the project proposer. AshLin (talk) 04:23, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Questions[edit]

Hi, I have few concerns regarding the grant proposal.

  1. How are you selecting the cities in which you are going to conduct edit-a-thons?
  2. Is there any local community in those cities? If yes, have you asked them if they require these events from external resource persons? Have they agreed to your proposal or is there any community discussion or consensus about your proposal? Link please.
  3. Have you considered local resource persons to reduce the cost of travel?
  4. If there is no local community in those cities, who are your local contacts then? Have they ensured the number of participants in the event?
  5. If you do not have local contacts there, how can you build the community from outside?
  6. As you said, most of the participants will be new to the project, then will there be any workshop before the event?
  7. What is the indirect cost of INR ₹96,000?
  8. Have you considered local institutional partnerships and requested them for free venues?
  9. On which language Wikipedia project(s) are you considering to conduct editathons?
  10. How are you going to follow-up the events and ensure the participants keep editing in Wikimedia projects afterwards?

Thanks. -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 04:22, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Bodhisattwa: Greetings Bodhisattwa, many thanks for the comments. I'll try answer them to my best.
  1. These cities were selected on basis where we have a poor community.
  2. No, the the cities that have been selected such that there is hardly any community there.
  3. Actually these costs have been formulated on generalized basis. I have already listed several resource persons in the proposal, of these, the nearest one to the location of the event shall preside over.
  4. We're in touch with the local contact persons through various channels. As these workshops are intended for the entire city, we can always get a quite a good number of participants to meet the target. I already have a list of local contacts or institutions which can help us, but I haven't started any full scale communication with them, as we are confirmed on this project. If it gets approved, these contacts will definitely help us out in our execution.
  5. We'll follow up with the participants to have meet-ups regularly through social media channels, like WhatsApp groups etc.
  6. These workshops will be for days, before the event they'll sent some reading material to get a generalized idea.
  7. Indirect cost, is the charge that may be charged by our fiscal sponsor (10% of the total budget). However, we're in talks that our fiscal sponsor might refund the money in collaboration Wikipedia, but we're not sure on this.
  8. We'll make sure that we venue for free of cost by partnering with various institutions and libraries as well. But in case we don't get any, we might resort to chargeable venues.
  9. 5 Workshops are intended for en Wikipedia, 2 for Wikidata, 1 for Wiksource, and in every workshop they;ll introduced to Wikimedia Commons, and as well as the organizational structure of Wikimedia Foundation.
  10. Refer point 5, if possible we'll follow-up again personally.
The project may look over budgeted, because the costs have been generalized, but not specific to one event. Because we're not sure on the travel costs, they might decrease or increase, and same with the venue and infrastructural facilities. We'll definitely try to cut down the expenditure while execution, we'll consider options in doing more workshops, doing a follow-up etc. Once again thanks for the comments, looking for your reply. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk — mail) 13:00, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Krishna Chaitanya Velaga:, thanks for your reply. However...
1 & 2. I have to disagree. You have selected Guwahati, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Hyderabad as primary choices where there are active Assamese, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu community respectively. Not to forget, the Tamil community is strong and self-sufficient. Have they approached you to conduct these events or have they agreed to your proposal through community consensus? Link please...
3. Please split the cost into more details to clear the confusion. Expense of INR 35,000 for resource persons from near the community is also lot more, especially if you are planning a year ahead. Also, have the active communities asked for external resource persons?
4. Have you conducted a pilot project with collaboration with your local contacts. If yes, link of the documentation please.
7. More details about your fiscal sponsor please.
8. Even if you do not get venue for free, INR 24,000 for logistics (venue, projector, internet etc.) per event is lot more than enough.
9. Let me clarify. Are you going to conduct workshop and edit-a-thon for local languages, like for Assamese community, are you going to conduct workshop for Assamese Wikipedia, or are you planning for English Wikipedia workshop?
Thanks -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 16:21, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Bodhisattwa: Greetings,
1 & 2; To make it clear, as I've already mentioned in the table, Hyderabad is intended for Wikisource workshop, and Chennai & Bhopal for Wikidata (these two locations have been chosen, as they were covered during Asaf's tour). Yes, there exists Assamese Wikipedia, but the community in the state is scrambled, is not in interaction with the main stream, to my knowledge), if there is good community over there, we'll definitely change the city, no issues in that.
3; Expense include travel, food, accommodation, and incidental as well. ₹35,000 was calculated on a generalized basis
4; No such pilot project has been done.
7; We're considering CIS-A2K, else any other FCRA compliant organization who are willing to work with us.
8; That depends
9; For English Wikipedia
--Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk — mail) 03:41, 30 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]


I think a number of concerns from Bodhisattwa's perspective have to do with how this Grant is overbudgeted. However, in my past experience, I think it is always safer to budget considering less than ideal circumstances, and then finalise exact cost estimates once those are ironed out. Since there are 8 different events here, I think it is better to take a generalised case and then later on (as the grant proceeds), submit the bills for all compensations accordingly. That is a slightly better approach, according to me, than being prone to individual variances in each city. Soni (talk) 04:48, 30 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Soni:, apart from the concern on over-budget concern, I am also worried that the communities concerned have not requested for such events in their cities to be conducted by external resource persons. I do not see any community discussion in respective village pumps. -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 04:59, 30 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Bodhisattwa:, I think that having both a primary and a secondary list of cities fixes that issue. If there's any city (or two) in specific that does not need the resources, we can discuss them and include a city from the second list. But since the priority of most cities is to create an existing community where little/none exists, it is somewhat counter to having a community-led approach. That being said, I do recommend some outreach to each community village pump for city suggestions (or in case there's already one or two community members who can help organise the local logistics). Soni (talk) 05:12, 30 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Adding to the ongoing conversation, I would like voice my opinion as well. Since, Krishna has mentioned that he has not done any pilot project for this project, I strongly suggest him to start small and to start with Rapid Grants perhaps. He can then use the experience from the pilot project and develop a bigger project. I would also suggest reaching out to local communities for needs assessment. Also, the cost for resource persons can be decreased by involving experienced local community members. --Satdeep Gill (talk) 06:55, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Satdeep Gill: Many thanks for the inputs, will consider the feasibility. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk — mail) 10:31, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Soni: Thanks for the support. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk — mail) 10:31, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to Shyamal[edit]

@Shyamal: Greetings Shyamal, I'm glad to hear from you after a long time after TTT. As English Wikipedian, I understand your concerns regarding the core content policies. As these workshops are not specific not specific to a particular college or so, we'll try to professors, students, librarians, and people from diversified groups. During the events, we'll make sincere efforts to form partnership with the institutions where the even is to be conducted—educational institutions and libraries. With your inputs on establishing a long-term relation with these institutions, we'll definitely make some partnerships. Looking forward for more inputs from you regarding how can partnerships may be made with mutual benefits, what are the options to explore etc. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk — mail) 13:08, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2017[edit]

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2017 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community comments period, through 17 October 2017.

The committee's formal review for round 2 2017 begins on 18 October 2017, and grants will be announced 1 December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 02:52, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Congrats Krishna and team ! -Abhinav619 (talk) 05:00, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Mjohnson (WMF) and Abhinav619: Thank you both. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk — mail) 15:09, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to Sudhanwa[edit]

@Sudhanwa: Greetings Sudhanwa ji, its good to hear from you. Your comment is really a great way to do more workshops by reducing the costs. Really thanks for suggestion. I'll definitely reach out to them, and consider the possibilities of what the best can be done. I also modified the proposal a bit with respect to your comment. Please have a look at it. Regarding the statement, I tweaked a bit. But even before I've already mentioned that there are contributors, but they are isolated from the mainstream community. In case of any comments, please reply on the talk page. Looking forward to hear from you. Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk — mail) 10:37, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawal[edit]

@Mjohnson (WMF): Hi Marti, due to personal commitments, I fear that I'll not be able to execute this now. I wish to withdraw this proposal, please do the needful. I've also sent a mail regarding the same to projectgrants(_AT_)wikimedia.org. Sorry for inconvenience. --Regards, Krishna Chaitanya Velaga (talk — mail) 10:02, 30 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

English Wikipedia[edit]

I'm always puzzled when I see more projects proposing to invest money in English Wikipedia editing, which is so hard and has comparatively low returns on investment, when so many opportunities exist e.g. in Indic-language Wikipedias, Wiktionary, Wikisource. --Nemo 11:52, 31 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]


Aggregated feedback from the committee for Edit-a-thon series 2018 (India)[edit]

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?
 6.8
(B) Community engagement
  • Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often?
  • Does it have community support?
 6.0
(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?
 5.2
(D) Measures of success
  • Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success?
  • Are they realistic?
  • Can they be measured?
 6.4
Additional comments from the Committee:
  • Moderate impact, considering that Wikimedians in India identify strongly with their regions. It may be hard for an outsider to conduct events in a community they do not know well about. Unsure about the sustainability, unless actively funded by CIS-A2K after the WMF funding is stopped.
  • workshops are a good way to achieve many goals (increasing quality and quantity for example) . I notice that your primary work will be on en.wiki. Have you considered developing projects in local languages?
  • It is unsure how the measures of success are estimated/projected. I think it is a little too ambitious to assume that 40 out of 160 editors will be active even after a month, unless the project leader is planning to recruit groups with high retention rate such as bloggers.
  • I appreciate the great will for the realization of this project. What is missing is a detailed plan with time frames, a clearer explanation of what will be done (and what has already been done) and the better presented budget.
  • The budget is a little high, given the potential outcomes. CIS-A2K, the local affiliate may be able to execute the project with lesser expenses by recruiting local volunteers to conduct Wikimedia workshops. A project of this kind that needs community support from several regional partners is best executed by the affiliate, and not individuals.
  • You plan to organize eight events in eight different cities. It's a very brave venture. My concern relates to unclear satatus of negotiations with local target group and venue owners. Do you have set dates, venues and programs for the first events?
  • The target community is well-defined. Good community support is not evident, although the project leader claims to contact TTT participants while conducting the regional events. It appears as if diversity is not well supported.
  • Community support is very important. you mentioned that you inform the community through mailing lists. Good communication and dissemination of information is very important in the project planning phase. Using the mailing list and pages at this stage is very welcome and useful for strong community support.
  • A project of this kind is best executed by an affiliate rather than a group of individuals. The highest impact can be made only when local volunteers undertake the training.It is easier for an affiliate to take care of the logistics, program structure and post-event evaluation rather than individuals.
  • I'm glad to see that there are external financiers. This is important not only for the budget but also for connecting to other partners. I strongly support this practice and I hope that in the future you will have partners who will give you venue for free or or at a cheap price. There are items in the budget proposal called Unforeseen / incidental (5) and Contingency fund (6) - what is their difference? what do you mean by Indirect cost (7). As a standard practice, the contingency amount is usually max 10% of the total budget. Your total unforeseen costs are higher than this. Why is it so? What makes the expenses so unforeseen and uncertain. You didn not provide all costs in USD. Please make your budget detaild next time.

I am posting the aggregated committee comments, though the proposal has been withdrawn, in case they are of use for future development of this proposal. 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.


--Marti (WMF) (talk) 06:02, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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