Grants talk:Project/WriteHers: An Academic Edit-a-thon on Women Writers and Philosophers of the Early Modern Period (c. 1600-1800)

First thoughts/feedback

Hi @The june frost, MLG1221, and Mxbrod: and team! Thanks for describing the project! I am a strategist at the Wikimedia Foundation. I also have a background in Digital Humanities so am very excited to see Digital Humanities communities here. I have a couple of general high level thoughts on the project:

1. What precendents are you focused on in designing this project? It seems to be replicating some of the tactics used by Art+Feminism and the Canadian Music editathons, however, there is no reference to those. Is the editathon singular, or in series?
2. Editathons have a very low retention rate (typically less than 10% with experienced event runners). Moreover, they are not very good at producing quality content. Editathons instead are good at producing wide swaths of content that fill in obvious gaps. The current proposal focuses on a tactic that doesn't match the proposed goals -- moreover a major outcome of the project seems to be more focused on data analysis and digital humanities applications (which sounds more like a Wikidata focused set of problems). I am a bit confused on the mismatch here.
3. I am mildly concerned about the level of experience/expertise that this team has with Wikimedia projects. For example, the project makes the claim of only 7 of a list of several dozen women being claimed in a list of "Women Philosophers" as if those articles -- but I could find an article for each of the biographies on the list -- many of which are already of very high quality on English Wikipedia. Moreover there are multiple moments where the proposal refers to Wikipedia as an "other" -- suggesting a lack of familiarity with the community. With these thoughts in mind, it would be useful for this project to have two things to make it a more successful project:
   • A strong group of advisors with knowledge about the Wikimedia space. Here are some recommendations: @Rosiestep and AmandaRR123: who have been coordinating work with the Women's Writer Project at North Eastern, that has produced work like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rosiestep/WVS_Northeastern_University . Also pinging @Pru.mitchell: who is also based in Melbourne and might be able to help with scoping the project.
   • A better scoped framework/strategy for how they plan to create quality: there have been a number of successful tactics in the past including Wikipedia Visiting Scholars, Education Program Assignments, and Wikipedia Fellows -- all coming from the Wikipedia in Education space. Would it make sense to focus on extended editing groups among researchers? Or try to spin out the project beyond one-off editing events?

Since there isn't a budget yet, I am not sure what the scope of the work could look like, based on what you are suggesting. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 18:41, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping Alex. It is great to know of this interest from Monash Uni folk. We can get in touch directly, and also connect with other Monash and Melbourne Wikipedians for support. Pru.mitchell (talk) 22:55, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

• Comment - Let me know if there's something I can do to assist from afar. --Rosiestep (talk) 01:32, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Many thanks for your feedback Astinson (Alex)--this is extremely helpful. We are currently revising the application to take on board your suggestions and address your concerns. We have been in touch with Pru Mitchell and we are developing a WikiProject page with her, to include further specific details about our proposal; we are just waiting on Monash finance colleagues to provide the final figures for our budget. We'll report back with details. Thanks again. (The WriteHers project team).

We have revised the application in light of Astinson (WMF)’s feedback—thanks so much again for those extremely helpful comments/suggestions. In our revisions, we have: explicitly acknowledged our indebtedness to the Art+Feminism project; highlighted that this particular project is singular rather than plural; addressed concerns about retention rates and quality; changed the wording of our project goals to be more precise; made additions to the Participants section, to emphasise expertise and especially the Project Manager’s previous and existing connections with the Wikimedia community; we have been in touch directly with Pru Mitchell, and she has been extremely helpful and generous with her time. We have also been more specific about the problems with the Wikipedia articles we seek to address; and we are in the process of including further details on our WikiProject page (under construction). We have uploaded our budget, compiled with the help of colleagues at the Monash Arts Research and Business Development Office, according to Monash standard rates for casual appointments, catering, venue hire, etc. Any further comments, suggestions, are most welcome. (The WriteHers Project team)

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) 23:20, 27 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) 03:11, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Some areas of clarification

Really interesting proposal, and I am wondering if you can clarify a couple of these items?

• Can you provide some evidence to support your claim "Projects aimed at increasing the representation of women on Wikipedia have often focused on the quantity rather than quality of articles."
• When you mentioned the importance of "We need to improve knowledge equity" were you referencing the Movement Strategy?
• When you mentioned "The academic community is a vast resource that can help immensely in supporting the mission of Wikipedia; by making use of this, we can take efforts to fix the Wikipedia gender gap to the next level" did you mean narrow the gap? I am not sure fix is really the right word in this area as it seems to imply something broken (which is not otherwise mentioned or supported in your proposal).
• The core problem you identified "The core problem we will address is this: there is a lack of high-quality Wikipedia articles about notable early modern women writers/philosophers, a gap that can only be filled by drawing on the knowledge and experience of academic experts in the area" may be addressed with this proposal, though to suggest it can only be filled in this way may need some evidence as that claim is a bit strong.
• When you mentioned, "Since good content is only one side of the equation and not sufficient on its own to support an accessible knowledge infrastructure, we also propose to ensure that articles (whether generated or edited through the project) are consistently tagged and listed, creating and improving lists of these figures where required. We will ensure that it becomes easier for the user to find reliable information on different categories of early modern women writers/philosophers and their works" did you also imagine having this contribution involving contributions to Commons and Wikidata?
• It appears this editathon will primarily occur offline and individually, though there will be a central in-person hub in Melbourne on a single day. Do you envision helping to organize related single-day events on the same day elsewhere, perhaps through liaising with local Wikimedia chapters, user groups, or the like? Is that what you mean by International Node Events? Will you also encourage or facilitate individual, remote participation (i.e., maybe I would want to participate by myself, remotely -- will there be resources or guidance / tracking of this sort of participation)?
• Are there other materials that have been used to guide and promote remote editathons that can be utilized as best practices and starting points? The proposal seems to suggest everything in this area will be created from scratch.
• I am unclear as to why you are planning a focus group and what you envision that doing related to this proposal. Is it part of the evaluation plan?
• Are there any costs related to creating training resources, the training workshops (in-person or online), and the survey / survey analysis?
• Are there any plans to write up an article, conference presentation, or other after-project dissemination ideas? This can be useful for others to learn about what worked and what can be built upon.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and ideas on these. --- FULBERT (talk) 19:00, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

I want to make sure you saw this Mxbrod in case you are not following this page. --- FULBERT (talk) 22:28, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments FULBERT--these are very helpful--we will back in touch with a proper response shortly. --Mxbrod (talk) 01:23, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Mxbrod. —- FULBERT (talk) 02:41, 31 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks again for these comments FULBERT. Please see our detailed response to your individual queries below.

• To mention just a few projects that focus explicitly on quantity: Women in Red have an explicit objective to “improve the figures” in terms of the representation of women in biographies on English Wikipedia. Also, WikiD aims to “increase the representation of women in … Wikipedia”. The 2014 Women of Science Wikibomb explicitly aimed to "Increase the presence on Wikipedia" of Australian women in STEM. Several organisers of previous edit-a-thons also mentioned that their main focus was on the number of pages created and that they used the word count of existing pages to gauge whether work needed to be done (e.g. a threshold of 100 words - if a page had more info than this already, it would be left alone or only basic fact checks would be made). We greatly admire these projects and they have often resulted in high-quality articles with substantial content. But we think that there is still room for improvement, especially when it comes to articles on women philosophers/writers of the early modern period (see our draft project page for a list of recommendations).
• Yes. We have added a link, to indicate that Knowledge Equity was a reference to the Wikimedia Movement Strategy goals. Thank-you for noticing this.
• We have changed the wording from “fix” to “bridge”. Thank-you for this suggestion.
• We have omitted the word “only”—we agree that this word is too strong.
• We did not explicitly imagine that our editors would contribute to Commons and Wikidata beyond adding images to the former where necessary/possible, but this is a good suggestion. Thank-you.
• Yes, we did envision helping to organize related single-day events on the same day elsewhere—we have received interest from international contacts (see the groups and individuals mentioned under Community Engagement, thejunefrost's section of the Participants table, and the Volunteers). It will be part of the Project Manager’s role to coordinate these joint events (see “7. International Nodes” under Project Timeline).
• Yes, we intend to draw on other widely accessible materials that have been used to guide and promote remote editathons. We will not be starting from scratch, but it will be part of the Project Manager’s role to review these materials and provide guidelines that are specific to our project.
• We are planning a focus group in order to help evaluate the success of the project from the perspective of new and existing Wikimedians; to explore and articulate the insights/connections it generated in preparation for further dissemination (e.g. presentations, papers); to discuss how best to share and use project data; and to work out strategies for future projects. (See application section on Project Impact - Outcomes).
• Yes, there will be Personnel costs related to creating training resources, the training workshops (in-person or online), and the survey / survey analysis. It will be part of the Project Manager’s role to create the training resources (together with the Advisors), to hold any training workshops, and to generate the survey (see under Project Manager’s Activities). We have requested funds for the Project Manager’s salary from the Wikimedia Foundation. Monash University has also offered an in-kind contribution toward these expenses (see under Budget Table). There will be no additional costs for e.g. printing materials, hosting a project website or using survey/data analysis software, as Monash fortunately provides us with access to all of these.
• We have detailed our plans to write up and disseminate ideas from the project in the section on Project Impact - see the last paragraph. We anticipate that there will be (open access) journal articles and conference presentations, and we will work with local Wikimedians and Monash's data sharing experts to make sure that project data and outputs are disseminated in ways that will maximise the benefit to the Wikimedia community beyond the lifespan of the project.

--Mxbrod (talk) 19:29, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

These changes all make this clearer. Thank you, Mxbrod. --- FULBERT (talk) 19:53, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Availability of content in languages other than English

Hi @Mxbrod:! I really enjoyed reading through your proposal and I'm just wondering if you're including (for this project or for future iterations) international communities that speak languages other than English whether to translate the articles that will be created in English Wikipedia or to share in the process of creating the content in their own languages at the same time as the ones you're creating in English Wikipedia. I was just curious because I saw that in the international nodes section you were considering groups in Canada, the US, the UK, and Germany, so this made me wonder if you're considering creating content in German and other languages. It might not be the scope of your project, but I'd like to know if it's something that's on your radar. Thank you! --MGuadalupe (WMF) (talk) 21:53, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Many thanks for your comment MGuadalupe (WMF). Translating the same articles into languages other than English is a great idea. It’s beyond the scope of our project for the time being, mainly because we don't want to over-commit ourselves or our volunteers; but it’s certainly a natural extension of our project, and we should be able to use our existing resources to do what we can in future, including appealing to our German and French-Canadian colleagues as well as volunteers from other countries (our proposed Project Manager is also fluent in German). Thanks for highlighting this—we’ll definitely keep it on our radar! --Mxbrod (talk) 07:35, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your quick reply, @Mxbrod:! I appreciate that this is something you'll keep in mind for the future and I'd particularly suggest that you connect with communities whose languages are still underrepresented in the platform. Thanks again and wish you all the best! --MGuadalupe (WMF) (talk) 20:11, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, connecting with underrepresented language communities is also a good idea. We'll make a note of this for future reference too, thanks for the further suggestion!--Mxbrod (talk) 19:42, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for WriteHers: An Academic Edit-a-thon on Women Writers and Philosophers of the Early Modern Period (c. 1600-1800)

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?	6.5
(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?	6.2
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	5.3
Additional comments from the Committee: The project seems to be limited only in English WIkipedia The proposal is very interesting, although it seems to be a mix of already existing ideas and projects. This fits well with knowledge equity, as my first thought was that there is little that this project would actually target, yet that notion justifies the need for this project, in that history has skipped past the people whose influence this project seeks to identify and share across the movement. The project fits with the strategic direction of Wikimedia. It aims to bring knowledge equity by focused editing. It does have a potential online impact and majorly focused on improving the online coverage of Women. However, I feel that the target of “30-50 articles” is not reasonable for the budget. The project is sustainable, and the content produced stays there. However, scalability is a question, especially because of the budget. Though training “40 academic specialists” is a valuable contribution, we can’t be sure that they will contribute to the content around women after this project. Often, people tend to move on to the topics they’re interested in after an edit-a-thon or project gets over. This part is not considered in the project plan. Goals and expected results are very poorly written. It is about the most important parts of the proposal that deserve more than one sentence. The potential of this project is much higher than the planned 30-40 new articles. The potential for this project is greater than the risks, in that this project will help to bring balance to areas that have otherwise suffered from no balance at all. In this way, this is an innovative solution in that it will involve many who have not previously found a home in our movement nor seen themselves represented here. It is a new approach. We have seen many proposals trying to address the gender gap in various ways, often at-large. This approach of having a focused specialist group can be effective, but only if it has a significant online impact, which doesn’t seem to be the case here. The risks are too much. Firstly we can’t be sure if those trained specialists will contribute to content around women. If not, the purpose would fail. The focus topic is very limited; “WriteHers: An Academic Edit-a-thon on Women Writers and Philosophers of the Early Modern Period (c. 1600-1800)” It would have been good if they targeted a much larger domain. Also, I am not confident about the access to sources, and the project participants’ understanding of the policies on Wikipedia. Generally, these sources are very tough to find, and it was mentioned in the proposal that “recent references” will be populated. However, their period of focus is 1600-1800, which means that the sources are generally historical books and records. This is quite confusing to me. A project of this size can be completed in less than a year. I'm glad to see that it can be expanded on several levels, such as translation, writing to other languages, etc. The budget is very large for the project of this size. The expected personal costs are quite high. This is an ambitious scope, though doable given the resources identified. The training doesn’t include any Wikipedians, which poses a potential risk. Having worked with academicians, we need an experienced Wikipedian to train them. Even though they have significant knowledge of their domain, and have research skills, writing a Wikipedia article is a whole different game. From my previous experience, these people tend to introduce original research into articles, which has to be checked for carefully. Also, the budget is not reasonable. It pays too much in terms of compensation, and also I don’t see any need of having keynote speakers for an edit-a-thon. There is some support for this proposal. Unfortunately, most are anonymous signatures or people outside the Wikimedia community There appears to be a great deal of community engagement and support for this, including in-kind support from the sponsoring institution. The proposer mentioned they’ll be involving Rosiestep (but only remotely and level of involvement is unclear) and Pru.mitchell. The latter has less than 400 edits to the main space of the English Wikipedia. This also makes me doubt the capability to execute. The project has many endorsements, but none of them are by active Wikimedians. Quite a strange list of endorsements. The recruitment seems to be consistent but the content produced is less consistent. I would have seen more involvement in other languages than only English (may be Germany is included) but the project will only support a Wikipedia project having already more than 5 million articles. As much as I support edit-a-thons, $53,346 USD for single edit-a-thon with a goal of 30-50 articles seems too much. The scope of the project is narrow compared to the budget. While I appreciate the involvement of the Monash University in supporting half the cost, the product manager salary seems disproportionate in relation to the work they will actually do. The budget is very large and unrealistic, especially part of the personal costs based on the standards / averages of a particular institution. The sentence and the proposer's claim that "the Project Manager's role could not be carried out by a volunteer", shows that the proposer may not be aware of what all the volunteers in our community are doing and how many great and important ideas they have realized without or with minimal fees. I suggest a more reasonable budget. This seems a valuable project that should fill a real gap in our work to right gender balance and also knowledge equity. The project is over-budgeted. The focus and targets are too limited for the proposed budget. Potential risks outweigh potential outcomes — no endorsements from active Wikimedians, and lack of involvement of the Wikimedia community in the plan.

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 Thursday, May 27, 2021.

Questions? Contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

@Mxbrod: Please accept my apologies, as I posted your aggregated feedback from the Project Grants Committee a few days later than I had intended. I am happy to grant you some additional time to review and respond to this feedback if you need to. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 20:49, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Response to aggregated feedback

We thank the committee for their feedback and we are pleased that a majority of committee reviewers favorably assessed our proposal. Many thanks also to I JethroBT (WMF) for the extra time. Here is our response to general areas of feedback:

1. The budget is too large given the size of the project

• “The target of 30-50 articles is not reasonable for the budget”
• “$53,346 USD for a single edit-a-thon with a goal of 30-50 articles seems too much”
• “The scope of the project is narrow compared to the budget”
• “It would have been good if they had targeted a much larger domain”
• “I don’t see any need of having keynote speakers for an edit-a-thon”

Response: We agree that our budget appears quite large compared to some edit-a-thons, but we think it is justified given our project’s goal of generating quality rather than quantity.

We have calculated the Project Manager (PM) budget according to the time commitment needed to achieve our outputs. One of the main tasks of our PM is to engage in a targeted academic recruitment campaign, which will be more time-consuming and labour-intensive than a regular edit-a-thon. Academics tend to be busy people with little time to devote to extracurricular activities (see this article here on the challenges of getting academics to contribute to Wikipedia). The PM will be required not only to identify, invite, and inform these academic editors about wiki-editing, but also to motivate them and to act as a fixed point of contact. We believe it is unrealistic to expect one volunteer to engage in the intensive communication and coordination efforts required for this project: this is why we have requested funds for a Project Manager for 76 days over a 12-month period. Because our Project Manager (PM) will be employed at Monash, we are also bound to observe Monash salary scales as determined by the most recent Enterprise Agreement.

Our targets are modest because our project is focused on improving the content and not just the quantity of articles on Wikipedia. While we might conceivably have expanded the project’s domain — to include, say, as many women philosophers as possible (both past and present) — this would have been incompatible with our key goal to develop Wikipedia into an even more authoritative and reliable source of information, by bringing high-quality research to bear on Wikipedia articles. That is to say, it would not have been feasible to run a targeted academic recruitment campaign for a more general, wide-ranging edit-a-thon like this; this is why the scope of our project is restricted to 30-50 articles.

Having said that, we do think that our project could have impact and reach beyond this single edit-a-thon, by providing a model for future specialist academic wiki-bombs devoted to enhancing the quality of content. It is also likely that the edit-a-thon will enhance a much larger number of articles than our numeric target; we chose 30-50 articles because it was realistic and achievable. But the final figure may be more like 100-150, since we propose to include early modern women writers as well as women philosophers. For further details on Wiki articles on these writers, see the recent additions to our draft page.

We would be able to reduce the budget by inviting a local rather than international keynote speaker, for the purpose of generating publicity for the edit-a-thon.

2. There is little involvement of the Wikimedian community

• “The training doesn’t include any Wikipedians which poses a potential risk”
• “[Most endorsements] are anonymous signatures or people outside the Wikimedia community”
• “The project has many endorsements, but none of them are by active Wikimedians”

Response: All key phases of the project – including not only the training (see ‘Project Timeline’ stages 1, 6 and 8) but also the edit-a-thon event (9), focus group (11) and data dissemination/wrap-up period (13) – will be carried out in consultation with experienced Wikimedians. We have already made contacts and gathered support from Australia’s thriving Wikimedia community. We have been in contact with several groups who have run successful edit-a-thons (including Wiki D – see thejunefrost’s Participants section for more details) and with Wikimedia Australia (whose President, Pru Mitchell, has kindly signed on as a volunteer and stated in the ‘Volunteers’ section that she will help us connect with more local Wikimedians). Moreover, as noted in the ‘Community Engagement’ section, we will reach out to relevant WikiProjects.

We believe that our endorsements demonstrate the project’s high chances of success at recruiting academics to the Wikimedia community and at increasing the reputation of Wikipedia as a high-quality source of information. That many academics and teachers endorse the project shows that there is a willingness within that community to support this kind of endeavour, and that this really could encourage more people to recommend Wikipedia as a source to their students.

3. Doubts about academic contribution/retention

• “We can’t be sure [the academics] will contribute to the content around women after this project”.
• “We can’t be sure those trained specialists will contribute to content around women”
• “these people tend to introduce original research into their articles, which has to be checked for carefully”

Response: We agree that the retention of editors is a challenge for any Wikipedia edit-a-thon. But, as noted in our proposal, we aim to recruit academics who are recognised specialists in the field of women philosophers/writers of the early modern period. These are known academics who have spent many years engaged in research on these women, and who have made careers out of publishing books, articles, and dictionary/encyclopedia entries on them. Because they are deeply invested in this research, and because our edit-a-thon will give them the required training to continue wiki-editing, it is likely that they will remain committed to improving articles once the edit-a-thon is over. It is also likely that these academics will want to recommend specific articles to their students, so they will be motivated to ensure that quality levels remain high. It will be one of our Project Manager’s final tasks to follow-up on editors and encourage further edits. It will also be one of our Project Manager’s explicit tasks to ensure that our academic volunteers do not breach Wiki-guidelines concerning restrictions on copyright material, self-citations, notability, unorthodox interpretations, and original or unpublished findings.

4. Exclusive focus on English Wikipedia

• “The project seems to be limited only in English Wikipedia”
• “I would have liked to see more involvement in other languages than only English”

Response: We agree that it is extremely desirable to make Wikipedia articles available in languages other than English. Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope and resources of our project to facilitate the translation of articles into underrepresented languages. However, we do plan to urge our German and French colleagues to provide translations where possible, and our survey will aim to identify the language expertise of our other participants, in order to facilitate translation exercises in future.

5. “Goals and expected results are very poorly written”

Response: We concede that we might have gone into more detail in this particular section. However, our entire application is written as a justification for these particular goals: why they need to be achieved (the problem we’re trying to solve), how these goals could be achieved (our solution to the problem/the project plan), the benefits of achieving these goals (project impact), and the budget and personnel needed to achieve these goals. While this part of the proposal (project goals) is only a few short sentences, it is bolstered by the application as a whole.

6. Availability of sources

• “Generally, these sources are very tough to find, and it was mentioned in the proposal that ‘recent references’ will be populated. However, their period of focus is 1600-1800, which means that the sources are generally historical books and records”

Response: Just to clarify, we meant that we would be adding references to recent, authoritative and high-quality secondary sources about women writers/philosophers from 1600-1800 – e.g. journal articles and books about these women and their ideas – as well as, where appropriate, to recent translations/editions of primary sources.
--Mxbrod (talk) 19:37, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Round 2 2018 decision

This project has not been selected for a Project Grant at this time.

We love that you took the chance to creatively improve the Wikimedia movement. The committee has reviewed this proposal and not recommended it for funding. This was a very competitive round with many good ideas, not all of which could be funded in spite of many merits. We appreciate your participation, and we hope you'll continue to stay engaged in the Wikimedia context.

Comments regarding this decision:
We will not be funding your project this round. The committee appreciates several aspects of this proposal, notably 1) successful outreach with the target audience for participation: educators, academics, and other experts in the field, and 2) the degree of preparation in terms of article analysis and on-wiki page development to coordinate planned work.

However, the committee expressed concerns that 1) the overall cost of the project is high based on the structure and heavy project management needs of the project plan, 2) local Wikimedians relevant to the proposal activities or other Wikimedia communities did not appear to be invited to review the proposal, and 3) there is lack of clarity around how articles would be evaluated for quality.

The committee recommends revising and resubmitting for consideration in a future round of Project Grants based on guidance from other event organizers. One possible alternative in the project plan involved producing a series of virtual webinars each led by a different expert relevant to the desired topic areas, which could be made available to academic participants for training.

Next steps: Applicants whose proposals are declined are welcome to consider resubmitting your application again in the future. You are welcome to request a consultation with staff to review any concerns with your proposal that contributed to a decline decision, and help you determine whether resubmission makes sense for your proposal.

Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation has been undergoing a community consultation process to launch a new grants strategy. Our proposed programs are posted on Meta here: Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021. If you have suggestions about how we can improve our programs in the future, you can find information about how to give feedback here: Get involved. We are also currently seeking candidates to serve on regional grants committees and we'd appreciate it if you could help us spread the word to strong candidates--you can find out more here. We will launch our new programs in July 2021. If you are interested in submitting future proposals for funding, stay tuned to learn more about our future programs.

I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 15:26, 1 March 2019 (UTC)