WikiCite/Video tutorials

Project brief & Call for proposals:

Tutorial videos

Application deadline: October 15, 2020. Update: extended to October 30.
Budget Update (30 Sept.): Expected range of proposals, up to $15,000.

WikiCite is a Wikimedia initiative, supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, to develop open citations and linked bibliographic data to serve free knowledge. Wikicite is now a community of people and an ecosystem of projects that  focus on source metadata leveraging the Wikidata platform.

From 2016 to 2020 a series of central and ‘satellite’ Wikicite events have been hosted around the world. At these events participants were able to receive training in how to use the rapidly maturing ecosystem of tools and topics which to WikiCite’s focus area. However, the audience for these events to provide training is limited to those who can physically attend and due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ability to host future in-person events is uncertain. Meanwhile, much of the online documentation for these topics and tools is a combination of incomplete, inconsistently detailed, out of date, and unillustrated. The majority of video tutorials published in this topic area are one-take narrated screen recordings with no scripting or post-production to improve the educational experience for the viewer.

As a consequence of this gap in training materials, WikiCite is commissioning a series of video tutorials relating to WikiCite’s goals that will provide training on some of the most popular, and most powerful, software tools used in Wikidata. This document contains a call for proposals for these video tutorials, the specific criteria to be met and the project brief for how to submit a proposal.

The application deadline to submit a proposal is 30 October 2020. Bids will be reviewed by the WikiCite steering committee, based on alignment to objectives and budget fit. If you have any questions about this call, please contact Liam Wyatt - WikiCite program manager – lwyatt-ctrwikimedia.org

Project Brief

Video tutorial objectives

1. Increase the total number of people who regularly use advanced editing tools in Wikidata.
2. Increase the diversity of people using these advanced tools. Including professionally (especially to those working in the library sector) and linguistically (especially those who do not read English)

Video tutorial target audience

1. Visual learners, from many different language backgrounds, who already understand the role of structured data and are reasonably confident with ‘manual’ editing in Wikidata.
2. Existing Wikidata contributors who are aware of tools which can support their contributions, but who are not confident in their use and/or unaware of their features.
3. Existing Wikipedia/Wikisource/Commons contributors who are confident with using power editing tools but unaware of their existence or features within Wikidata specifically.
4. Professionals who work with citations and bibliographic metadata (e.g. librarians and others in related sectors) who would already like to contribute to Wikidata but are unaware of, or not confident in, how to do so.

The target audience of the tutorial videos is not the ‘general’ public looking for an introduction to Wikidata, editing Wikis, or structured data in general.

Project deliverables

Produce a carefully scripted and edited series of reusable videos aiming at informing and teaching the WikiCite audience some of its core tools and workflows.

Each topic/tool would be researched to understand its key features, workflow, and common user-errors. Some research assistance can be provided if needed, such as helping the producer to contact the developer of each chosen tool. Each video would be scripted, edited and post-produced to be of a professional standard. How many separate topics/tools will be covered is at the discretion of the applicant (see ‘call for proposals’ criterion 1.1).

Each topic/tool may be covered by a single video, or several separate videos in a sequence - different topics might be appropriate for different formats. The videos should cover the primary uses, features and common errors used in standard workflows in Wikidata by new users of that tool. It should not cover every single feature in exhaustive detail. Advanced features are more likely to change/break, and should be covered by any written documentation [which is not in the scope of this project brief].

The features and best-practices of all the topics/tools can be expected to change slowly over time, and therefore the advice within each video can be naturally expected to slowly become out of date. Research and planning for the videos aimed at minimising that risk is important in order to extend the duration of their usefulness.

For comparison, some good examples of existing quality tutorial videos include:

• Europeana publishing framework: Introduction
• GoogleRefine 2.0 - Introduction
• How to edit a Wikipedia article

Video subjects

There are a variety of potential topics/tools. Which, and how many, video subjects applicants propose to produce is open for applicants to decide. Applications should provide the associated total cost and delivery time for their different proposals. A priority order for the suggested video subjects is provided as a guide:

Highest priority

• Quickstatements (documentation)
• Introduction to the citations ecosystem
  • Including tools for specific tasks, common workflows.

High priority

• OpenRefine
  • Including reconciliation, import from MarcEdit (documentation). Note: existing video tutorials.
• Help:Sources - Best practices for referencing [some] different types of works
• Bibliographic properties - Best practices in modelling [some] different types of works
• Mix’n’Match (documentation)
  • Including import, scrape
• Property proposal
• Scholia

Medium priority

• Author-disambiguator
• Cradle (documentation)
• Internet archive bot (documentation)
• Zotero
  • Including export via Quickstatements, translator
• Wikidata [R] and Python packages
• Wikidata Schemas (aka Shape Expressions)

Other

• InteGraality
• PAWS (documentation)
• PyWikiBot

Applicants may add other, additional, video tutorial suggestions in a proposal.

Technical requirements

The following is a list of delivery requirements, including mandatory and optional criteria. Applications which are able to support several of the optional criteria are preferred.

1. Freely licensed. The final output is licensed either under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0); Attribution 4.0; or the Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 license. All assets used as elements within the final product (voice track, music, screenshots, illustrations, video clips etc) must either be made for the purposes of the project or be available under equally free-licenses (to be separately listed in the credits of each video).
   1. Optional: the separate raw assets used in the creation of the videos and/or the finished work ‘master file’ (in an industry-standard format) also made available as part of the delivery.
2. Language. All final videos should include an English-language voice track. No specific accent or gender of the speaker is preferred. However, the script must be written and spoken to ensure clarity to a non-native speaker audience.
   1. Mandatory: a version of each of the final videos should also be provided without a voice-track.
   2. Optional: Re-exported versions(s) of each of the final videos with a voice track in other language(s). The more the better.
3. Transcription and subtitles. The English-language script of all final videos should be provided and also with a matching .srt timed-text file, in order to provide subtitles.
   1. Optional: If any other language versions of the voice track are provided (technical requirement 2.2) a transcription and timed text file for each language must also be provided.
   2. Optional: a translation of the transcription of any of the final videos into any other languages, and ideally a matching timed text file.
4. Format. All final videos (with and without the voice track - see technical requirement 2.1) should be provided in their highest resolution - HD equivalent or higher - in a format supported by Wikimedia Commons (.webm or .ogv). The final version which includes the voice track should also be provided in a format that is supported by YouTube.
5. Version. Specify in the metadata of each video which software version(s)/dates it applies to.

Schedule

• Proposal submitted: 30 October 2020.
• Successful bid selected and informed: Mid-November.
• Final video delivery deadline: Before February 2021.

Call for proposals

If you would like to bid to receive the contract to produce these tutorial videos, please submit the following to Liam Wyatt - WikiCite program manager – lwyatt-ctrwikimedia.org:

Mandatory criteria

1. A description of your proposal for how you would approach the creative brief.
   1. Specify which topics and tools listed above you would produce tutorial videos, taking account the suggested prioritisation of video subjects. Proposals which cover fewer than three topics and tools will not be accepted.
   2. Including their planned duration, and their teaching and visual style. For example, each tool could be described in a single video, or a set of videos focusing on different sub-tasks.
   3. You are encouraged to provide a range of options of scope for how many separate topics/tools you would cover - with matching project price for each. For example: A proposal that includes videos for three tools, and an option (at a different total price and delivery date) that includes an extra two more tools.
   4. A description of which optional technical requirements your proposal would also cover.
2. A description of your experience in producing video content, including a portfolio of relevant prior work.
3. The price (and currency) you would charge for completing the entire project, including any subcontracting you may wish to make. The expected range is 10-15,000 (USD equivalent).
   1. As per criteria 1.c, a separate total price for each option of scope you wish to propose.
4. The delivery schedule that you would use to produce the videos.
   1. Incorporating at least two rounds of review: one for the script, one prior to final editing. The schedule may be for simultaneous or sequential delivery.
   2. As per criteria 1.c, a separate delivery schedule for each variation of scope you wish to propose.

Desirable criteria

• Demonstration of your existing knowledge of Wikidata or Wikimedia projects.
• Demonstration of your understanding of free-licenses in (preferably with examples of your prior use of free licenses for your own work; or others’ free-licensed works that you have reused as part of your own work)