Grants talk:Project/Whose Knowledge/VisibleWikiWomen2019

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Project Grant proposal submissions due 30 November![edit]

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 cschilling(_AT_)wikimedia.org or contact me on my talk page. Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 23:20, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2018[edit]

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) 02:27, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Some questions to clarify your proposal[edit]

This is an interesting proposal and may be helpful in addressing the gap you have identified. A couple questions about it Seeeko, Aadele, and Anasuyas -

  • One of your goals, "Add more diverse and quality images" will involved "Add 1600 images of women to Wikimedia Commons, with at least ⅓ used on Wikipedia, in at least 3 different languages, within 6 months." Do you mean specifically images of women whose articles do not have photos of them now?
  • Can you explain what you envision the Output "At least 5 edit-a-thons organizers incorporate VisibleWikiWomen into their existing International Women’s Month plans. Images and/or editing about images already updated in the 2018 and 2019 campaigns, should happen in at least 5 events in 4 different countries" may mean or look like in practice or application?
  • When you state that one of the output is to "At least 1600 images of women are added to Wikimedia Commons during the campaign" how will you go about identifying the gaps? Also, do you mean only images of the women themselves, or anything that may be related to the contributions of these women as well?
  • I am not sure what you mean by the goal around participation or content, "Number of content pages created or improved: 2133. Can you explain what this means.
  • The Activities you have identified involves a clear set of process flows. Do you envision making these available for anybody who wants to continue following / contributing using them in the future after the 6-month period concludes?
  • Your Budget does not account for technology, fringe, or office space. How will those be covered?
  • Is your Travel Budget enough for 2 events, and do those two events happen within the 6 months of the project or after it?

Thank you, and I look forward to reading your replies to this. --- FULBERT (talk) 17:55, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]


Hi FULBERT. Thank you for reviewing our proposal in detail and sharing your questions with us. We're currently working on a reply and should be posting it here on or before Jan 21st. More soon. Aadele (talk) 19:57, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hi FULBERT. We gladly answer your questions below (in the same order you asked):
  • Yes, our main goal is to illustrate biographies of women who still do not have a photo, but we don’t plan to restrict participants to only this. We also welcome higher quality images to improve women’s biographies that already have a picture, as well as photos of women who do not have an article on Wikipedia yet (and last year’s campaign received all 3 kinds of images).
  • The #VisibleWikiWomen challenge is a collective effort. Last year, there were several people organizing March edit-a-thons about women that expressed interest in having participants add VisibleWikiWomen images as part of their event, and this happened to varying degrees. We’d like to do more with these organizers, and do it more systematically this year. Especially since there is so much good work already happening each March around the gender gap across the Wikimedia movement, we plan to collaborate with Wikimedia organizations (e.g, chapters, user groups) around the world a bit more systematically in order to include the #VisibleWikiWomen challenge in their existing local events. In practice, this will mean coordinating more closely with at least 5 event organizers to make sure they’ve got the support they need to add a focus on images into their programming for each event. For example, we can provide background information about VisibleWikiWomen to share with event participants, help organizers with request of image donations, guide them with the procedure of sending OTRS emails, or provide smalls funds to make a photographic coverage of events.
  • To help users identify what images are missing from Wikipedia, we create worklists based on Wikidata querys. We also hope that people and organizations share other materials, such artwork and different kind of images related to women's lives and contributions. In our experience, those adding this content often already have the best sense of what gaps are most important to fill for their contexts (and the gaps remain huge, so they’re not super hard to find unfortunately!). So although we can offer worklists, we also support each local partner (whether it’s a Wikimedia group in Ghana or Italy, or a Women’s Human Rights organization in Uruguay) to figure out what gaps they see that they can best fill in their own context.
  • Number of content pages created or improved is one of the global metrics relevant to this project. During the campaign, our goal is to add at least 1600 images to Commons (considered new pieces of content). But our goal is also to have ⅓ of the images used on Wikipedia or another Wikimedia project, so that they are visible outside of just Commons - and this would mean 533 articles or other pieces of content are improved. 1600+533=2133, so that’s where this target estimate came from. To measure the content pages created, we will use the tools recommended by WMF, especially GLAMourous 2.
  • Yes, all materials we create are remixable, reusable and meant to be openly available to anyone who wants to continue this work. Our how-to guides, postcards, and overall resources are available on Commons and we hope to see them used in similar campaigns across the movement and beyond. As new workflows are created for this year’s campaign, we’ll share those under open license as well. At the end of this campaign, we would like to see that the community remains committed to making women more visible on Wikipedia, and someday we’d love to feel like we’re no longer even needed to organize this annual campaign! We have already seen some signs from last year’s campaign that we’re headed in the right direction. For example, the VisibleWikiWomen category created for last year’s challenge is still being used in Commons today. The resources from last year are also still being used to organize events related to VWW. In November 2018, for example, an editathon was carried out in Oxford, using worklists and images uploaded in our first campaign. We hope that making new resources and workflows from this year’s campaign freely accessible afterwards again will continue to build momentum for anyone else who wants to get involved and build upon our materials.
  • Thanks for thinking of this! The Whose Knowledge? team works mainly in a distributed and remote way - we’re scattered around the world and meet online, so we don’t need a physical office space for this project. Significant new funds for technology is not needed this year, though that could be something to consider for future years. And we hope that the 15% project management line-item will help Whose Knowledge? cover some of the smaller fringe/space/tech costs that do arise in any project, though we really appreciate your recognizing here that Whose Knowledge? is bearing some hidden costs in this project that we’re not asking the grant to cover for this year’s campaign.
  • Travel costs are an estimate that we believe is appropriate for two events (though we agree with you that it’s more likely an underestimate than an overestimate, for international travel). We expect to participate in at least two events within the 6 months of the project, but our priority is that those events will be relevant for our objectives, so if the best event takes place shortly after the 6-month period ends instead, we’d ask for an extension to report on the use of those funds. One event that we’re already considering is Creative Commons Summit in May, where we’ve been asked to speak about the project.
Let us know if you have any other question or comment. Thank you! --Señoritaleona (talk) 01:30, 19 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your replies, which are helpful to better understand your plans. --- FULBERT (talk) 17:50, 26 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Whose Knowledge/VisibleWikiWomen 2019[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?
8.2
(B) Community engagement
  • Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often?
  • Does it have community support?
7.2
(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?
8.2
(D) Measures of success
  • Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success?
  • Are they realistic?
  • Can they be measured?
8.2
Additional comments from the Committee:
  • Fits with strategic direction of knowledge equity by focusing on the gender gap as well as content related to women of color and women from the Global South and Indigenous communities. Lots of potential for online impact; I especially like that there is a goal around the use of images in Wikipedia articles (not just donation/acquisition of images for Commons). Project is also being approached in a way to set up the campaign so it can be sustainable for future years.
  • Excellent fit with strategic priorities and potential for online impact. The project is targeting two major gaps: content gap (images of women) and geographic gap (Latin American countries). There is a reasonable plan to sustain this work, although the project will probably not be fully self-sustainable once the grant ends.
  • This project aims to elevate the neglected task of collecting pictures of notable women. This is something that needs immediate attention and organization. It cannot be left to the community to exclusively solve.
  • This has a high impact, as not only are women underrepresented, but even more so the images to Commons that should accompany them.
  • Very little risk. Clear goals and measures provided related to content as well as network building among partners.
  • Replication and extension of a previous successful project, quite likely to be successful as well. Lessons from the previous editions are well documented, risks are small.
  • This outcome can be measured, but I think it is important to also consider the parts of the project that are not quantifiable. People will see the women who are notable, there will be true representation and people in the community may be inspired to write and document more about notable women!
  • This is an iterative project that takes what we know works and applies it to a different scope. The problem may not only be positively impacted, but the learning that occurs with it can also be useful in other projects.
  • Scope seems reasonable. Project is led by experienced team.
  • Very confident in participants given their experience, backgrounds and significant knowledge of both Wikimedia projects and problems around women content. There is a good plan and the budget is reasonable.
  • The timeline and the activities are achievable. My only concern is the 7.5% fee for the fiscal sponsor. Does your fiscal sponsor charge fees on all grants received?
  • This team seems willing and able to execute what they have committed to do. They is extensive community support, so even if they run into unexpected issues, it appears they are well-situated to move this forward.
  • Lots of evidence of engagement and collaboration with different communities. Clear focus on supporting Latin American and Spanish-speaking communities with intentions to bring on a Spanish-speaking coordinator and communications lead
  • Good community engagement, the project supports diversity and has a reasonable engagement plan.
  • While I like the community engagement, I think this can go further too. I'd love to see something about photographing notable women at events as well.
  • The community within Whose Knowledge and also across the wider movement finds this proposal worth doing, and it is expected that it will both help fill gaps along with involve others along the process that may ultimately increase involvement in the movement itself.
  • The project is interesting, but why so much human resources (coordinator, leader and PM)?
  • This is a potentially very impactful project with good and experienced organisers, clear plan and goals. I see no significant issues or changes needed.
  • A strong yes to this project proposal.

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) 17:09, 6 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to the committee for this thoughtful feedback and support! Adding a couple of quick notes in response to some of your questions:
  • The way that standard fiscal sponsorship works in the United States (where Whose Knowledge? is registered) is the sponsor takes a percentage fee in return for administering funds (filing required taxes, etc). Most fiscal sponsors charge 10%, so ours is actually quite reasonable :)
  • Humans make projects happen! Lots of different kinds of human labor goes into a successful global campaign to make, organize, setup, answer questions, etc. So that's why we're resourcing humans with specific skillsets for this project, including communications and coordination.
  • Photographing notable women at events is definitely part of the plan again this year, though we may not have focused on that in the proposal. Good to hear you think that's worthwhile! It all depends on which aspects partners decide to focus on, but it's something we're suggesting to many partners.
Thanks again for your review! Siko (talk) 17:42, 7 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Round 2 2018 decision[edit]

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, $32,390 USD

Comments regarding this decision:
The committee is pleased to support the 2019 #VisibleWikiWomen campaign led by Whose Knowledge? in collaboration with other organizations aligned with its values. The committee appreciates that the campaign maps well onto a need in our movement to address important disparities and inequities in Wikimedia projects, with particular emphasis on the representation of women of color, from indigenous communities, and from the global south in Wikimedia projects.

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!

Upcoming changes to Wikimedia Foundation Grants

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I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 15:00, 1 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]