Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Wikimeetup 50,000 articles in Asturian language

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hi Vsuarerzp, thanks for your proposal for this meetup and collaborative event with several Wikimedia communities. Here are my comments / questions on this request:

• The choice to hold the event in a rural area is interesting, and it's good to hear there is interest from Bimenes residents in attending the event. It sounds like many of these individuals are new to Wikipedia. Will there be some kind of orientation or training held for these and other newer editors?
• In terms of the Ruta los Molinos are there articles on Asturian Wikipedia or other Wikipedia projects where images can be integrated into article content?
• It seems like some of the content from this grant proposal was copied from a grant report template (e.g. Grant funds spent and Remaining funds sections. Could you clean up these sections?

Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:05, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your interest I JethroBT (WMF), I answer you:

• The editing activity is open to participants of the village and, yes, of course the veteran participants will teach any new users to be present in Editathon.
• Ruta los Molinos not have an article in any project, but it is a category PR-AS route so that later these photos will be able to be used both in Wikipedia articles and Wikivoyage.
• I needed a reference as a template, sorry if some data is wrong. I'm going to clean it right away.

--Vsuarezp (talk) 17:04, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Hola Vsuarezp! Thank you proposing this project. Some additional questions from me.

• You talk about gas/fuel to go from one place to the other, can you be more sepcific as to how many kilometers you want to "reimburse"? As a matter of fact, sometimes it is easier to calculate the reimbursement on a local km rate (for example it is 0,30 €/km in Germany and varies in France depending on the car, I'm sure Spain has such an official mileage reimbursement table somewhere).
• There are flight costs from Barcelona. Who would that be and why do they have to fly in? Since this is the highest budget piece, it would be good to have a good rationale as to why that/these person(s) need to be flown in.
• It is also not clear for how many people you need accommodation and how much this costs per night. Can you make that clear in the budget?
• Finally, there seems to be 5 people coming from "outside", and you expect ten people for the event, which makes 5 local poeple. I know it says "at least", but this seems to be a really small number. I'd find it interesting, since you seem to say that this is important to hold such an event in a rurla area, to se if you could really work with the municipality to make sure as many people as possible were tehre. Can you please clarify what your "communication plan" for the event exactly is towards the local community?

Thanks! Delphine (WMF) (talk) 15:38, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi Delphine (WMF)! As in the second point you ask Vsuarezp about the flight from Barcelona, I would like to give my point of view and my intervention in this issue. As Asturian is a non-official language of the Iberian Peninsula with some similarities with Catalan, and wikipedians from both sides have a great relationship (in some aspects Asturian community is implementing the Amical way by volunteering), Amical was invited to this event to build bridges with them and promote the diversity of languages in Spain. As the treasurer of Amical, I was notified by Vsuarezp about the meeting so, as following our austerity plan, we decided to send only one person: Pau Colominas, the available member of Amical who lives the nearest from the airport of Barcelona (so we save extra money). I supervised with Victor all transport options to get Asturias and the most rational (which avoid a 10 hour bus route or some train line changes) was a flight from Barcelona. I am aware that during the peak season the flight is more expensive, but we care the comfort of our volunteers and consider this event so relevant to engage with near linguistic communities. Thank you, --Xavi Dengra (MESSAGES) 18:43, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Answering Delphine

Hi Delphine (WMF), I proceed to answer you:

• Gas/fuel: The budget requested for this event does not even cover all expenses. Only on the event's weekend I'm going to have to cover 400 km and I did not include the different trips I had to do to organize everything. Basque country people will travel 800 km by car (One of them returns by bus). The Galician user pays his expenses and the rest of users who are going to participate as well. The official price to pay the mileage in Spain is 0,19 € /km. We only requested 150€ and a part of them are 228€.
• Flight:As Xavier Dengra correctly answered, we consider that it is very important to relate to Amical Wikimedia as an organization of reference in the State and written in a sister language. We want to learn from his work and study the possibility of applying it in Asturias. On the other hand, there is a lot of distance and we believe that it is fundamental to guarantee the comfort of Pau Colominas.
• Accommodation: The people that we go to sleep are seven, in a shared accommodation and whose cost is 244 € in total per night.
• Local people: It is very possible that we are more participants and I am aware that five people seem few but there are several factors to consider: the really active local users are very few* and not all can personally participate in the event, the Asturian is a small language and with little support, however, for this event I get the support of the mayor of Bimenes, the President of the Academy of Asturian language and the director of the office responsible for Asturian affairs in the Government of Asturias. I believe that I have made a great effort to give importance to this event: In June I gave an interview for Asturian public radio, in July an interview for television and an interview in a digital media. We are also spreading it through social networks.

*In that list of active users you can verify that the majority are not Asturian users

• Note: I think it should also be appreciated that in 13 years we have never asked for financial aid of any kind and that for us to reach 50,000 articles is a very important event.

--Vsuarezp (talk) 19:23, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Héhé, thanks for all this additional information. Don't worry, I hear a bit of defensiveness in your answers, as if I was asking to "justify" all of the expenses. I am, but not in the way you might think. This is not so much about the total amount as it is about making sure we understand what goes where exactly. It's good practice to make sure that the budget is understandable for everyone, because then it's easier to reproduce such events. It needs to be understandable for you, for us at all levels (grants administration and program officers) and for all your fellow grantees who are going to look at this grant and use it as a model. So thank you for providing this information and maybe it would be great to add the budget information to the grant request. Cheers, Delphine (WMF) (talk) 09:11, 25 July 2017 (UTC)