Grants talk:Project/Rapid/The Africa De-stubathon

Book Fund idea

What I propose then is to establish a Book Fund for Africa. If some editors win more than they really need or want they can donate their winnings to a book fund, and editors from Africa or elsewhere interested in African topics can list books they want to use to write wikipedia, and then that fund can be used to buy people the books that the need. So the larger funding on this would have a long term beneficial cause in terms of content production and attracting writers, and could be used in a way to benefit people within Africa who need resource materials to contribute.Dr. Blofeld (talk) 10:43, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Whilst the idea is good in principle, I think it is a poor move to propose it here where it brings confusion as to what you are asking funds for. Winning prices is one. Book Fund is another. Book Fund is a different goal. Also... Book Fund or not, expenses need to be documented for proper accounting. Which means that any amount "released" by a winner will need to be quickly attributed to someone else (based on which attribution principles ?) as if it is not re-attributed quickly... you will have to send it back to WMF. In short... Let's KISS (not to be taken literally please ;)). Anthere (talk)

Well, my thinking Anthere was that if one contestant earned a lot they could choose to give away part of it to help others buy books. I just thought it might be a more productive thing long term even beyond the contest. but you're probably right, first things first, a Book Grant idea is something that could probably we proposed later in its own right.Dr. Blofeld (talk) 12:49, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

• Proposing "Book Fund" here is quiet confusing. BTW... I don't see where anything of sort was mentioned in the grant request. I think the best place to propose something like this would be here where you can discuss about the nature of gift items for participant. All the best. Wikicology (talk) 07:13, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Request funded

Dear Dr. Blofeld,

Thank you for submitting this request. We appreciate your efforts to coordinate with other volunteers who are active in coordinating in and/or contributing to content on Africa. We are approving this report for $1850, with the following comments:

• We appreciate that you've designed the contest so that many people can win prizes and so that there is a prize for every country.
• You may find that with low cost prizes, people won't accept them. It is common for contests to attract regular editors who are self-motivated and who refuse the money. It will be interesting for us to see how small prizes work. We hope you will share your observations about this in your report.
• Having the bigger pries for quality articles is a good idea.
• Do you have a bot or a tool you will use to evaluate contributions? Getting one is a good idea. You can learn more about this here: [[1]]
• Have you thought about how you will get prizes to people? We've seen many models for this and it's important that you think this through in advance, since it could be really challenging. Wiki Loves Africa has sent prizes to different user groups who distribute them. In Egypt, there is a volunteer who has delivered prizes by hand. In Nigeria, vouchers have been distributed for extra time online. In central Eastern Europe, they had people log into Amazon and add items to a cart, then the person managing the contest went through and purchased those things. There is no guarantee where the people who participate in your contest will be located, so you may want to leave it up to them what they want to do. Take into account that: transferring money to people can be really hard, there may be fees to cover for both wire transfers or prize delivery, finding an online provider who can deliver to people in every country your participants live in may be challenging, simple collecting the winner's personal information can be challenging. We foresee this may be a difficult aspect of your project and we encourage you to think it through carefully.

We really appreciate your willingness to contribute your considerable experience running contests. We are looking forward to seeing the outcomes of this Destubathon!

Our grants administrator will be in touch with you shortly with more information about your grant.

Kind regards,

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 16:29, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Thankyou Mjohnson (WMF)! Though it's only $20 per country, whoever wins the most countries will be crowned the winner, so presumably the most prolific editors are going to be winning at least 10, so that's $200. My idea was that if people don't want the prizes they can donate into a book fund for African editors who need books but for some reason that idea didn't gel. Amazon vouchers will be bought and send via email as with the British contests! There hasn't been any problems with that to date but if some African wikipedians win and don't have accounts that will have to be looked into but I think we should generally be OK on that. I know some editors though would really like a subscription renewed to the British Library which is about £80, so I think if anybody wins at least that we should reward them with a new subscription if they'd prefer that rather than Amazon vouchers. It's all good and going into new research ;-) Entries will be checked quickly manually, though having a bot would certainly help, but not be able to judge quality which is important to this!Dr. Blofeld (talk) 16:46, 13 October 2016 (UTC)