Grants talk:TPS/Cryptic C62/Legislative Data Workshop

Thank you for the submission

Hi, Cryptic:

Thank you for the new submission. Note that you are applying very close to the date of this event: we may not be able to deliver a decision before the event. Expect more comments or a decision soon, and please let us know if you have any questions.

Regards, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 00:09, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Cheers mate, thanks for your time. --Cryptic C62 (talk) 01:22, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Question about outcomes

Thanks for the request. We appreciate you budgeting frugally.

You mention that you plan to document procedures: can you provide us with some more information about where the documentation will be located and who is the intended audience. We'd like to better understand exactly how your participation would benefit the movement.

Regards, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 00:24, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Regarding location, I think the most logical short-term answer would be a subpage of w:Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/Legislative Data Workshop. If the ideas become more widely used, it can be moved to its own project page, say w:Wikipedia:Legislative Data or some such. Considering the availability of pagemoves and redirects, I suppose the important answer to this question is "English Wikipedia."

Regarding intended audience, there are two groups of editors who (I imagine) would be interested in this: editors who are familiar with XML and want to put their skills to use, and less tech-savvy editors with a keen interest in improving coverage on legislation-related articles. If the proceedings of this workshop can be articulated in a way that is both intelligible and useful to these two groups, I think we'll have ourselves a big win.

Regarding my participation, I would imagine that all of the following questions and more would be relevant to the discussions at the Cato Institute:

• How does one edit Wikipedia? Who does it? How are those people "chosen"?
• How can we find and inform groups of editors who would be interested in this endeavor?
• How do bots work, and what are their limitations?
• Is there any precedent for the automated use of data sets to create new articles?
• What safeguards exist to prevent legislative data from being accidentally or maliciously misrepresented on Wikipedia?

I would like to believe that the non-Wikipedian guests would ask these questions, but with the exception of the first, I think it is quite likely that the participants will not be familiar enough with Wikipedia that they would even consider these questions in the first place. If a reader has no idea that bots even exist, why would they think to ask about their limitations?

This is something that I consider myself to be quite good at: when asked a question, I try to identify and fill the gap in understanding that lead the person to ask the question in the first place, rather than simply answering the question as asked. I understand Wikipedia from years of varied and diligent editing, I understand how readers (mis)perceive the project from experiences as an ambassador, and I understand how to convey complex ideas from the hundreds of (mostly off-wiki) tutorial videos I have recorded over the years. --Cryptic C62 (talk) 14:01, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the detailed explanation! We hope to deliver a decision soon. Best, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 16:57, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Request approved

Hello, Cryptic C62! Thanks for your request and for your engagement on the discussion page. This request is approved. We will be in touch shortly regarding next steps. Regards, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 18:21, 8 March 2013 (UTC)