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Grants:PEG/Pgallert/Indigenous knowledge for Wikipedia workshop

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Funded
This submission to the Project and Event Grants Program was funded in the fiscal year 2013-14. This is a grant to an individual.

IMPORTANT: Please do not make changes to this page without the explicit approval of Project and Event Grants Program staff. They will be reverted.


Basic information

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Grant request details

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Are you an organization, a group, or an individual?
Individual
Please provide your name, or the name of the group or organization requesting this grant.
Peter Gallert
Please provide the name (or username) of the main contact for this grant request. You do not need to disclose your legal name publicly.
Pgallert
Please link to any relevant documents, including your website if you have one.

Project details

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Official project name
Indigenous knowledge for Wikipedia workshop
Project start date
1 July 2014
Date when I would need to know whether this grant application is successful or not
15 July 2014 (the due date for the Call for Participation)
Date when I would need the funds
15 September 2014 (when invitations are sent out)
Workshop start date
between 7 and 10 October, TBC 1 October 10 October shifted for better participation, Pgallert (talk) 09:15, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
Workshop end date
between 9 and 12 October, TBC 3 October 12 October shifted for better participation, Pgallert (talk) 09:15, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
Project completion date
14 October 2014
Please describe the project in a few sentences
Participatory design is the direct and active involvement of users in the design of products. It has the aim of improving technologies, institutions, tools, software, and the like, through co-design, so that the user is not merely an afterthought but at the center of the design process. The Participatory Design Conference (PDC) is a biannual conference on co-creation of technology and art. It has been conducted since 1990, the 2014 PDC will be the first PDC on the African continent. My employer, the Polytechnic of Namibia is the host. PDC is a quite prestigious conference. Its proceedings are Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) rated, and it is possibly the international event on Participatory Design.
As part of this conference I will conduct a workshop with scientists and experienced Wikipedians to include oral citations in English Wikipedia articles, in the domain of indigenous knowledge (IK). Participants will interview knowledge bearers at the conference and in their rural environment, create alternative article versions with oral citations as subpages of w:Wikipedia:Oral citations experiment in the Wikipedia: name space of the English Wikipedia, and reference the content to the knowledge bearer's narrative.
The workshop is an experiment aimed at giving examples of what wealth of indigenous knowledge exists and how this knowledge can be utilised to improve articles on Wikipedia. For a few selected articles, it will allow a comparison between 'only conventional sources used' and 'enriched by oral citations'. I believe this would be filling a few gaps in the occasional discussions on the validity of oral citations: the situation that very few oral citations have ever been included in English Wikipedia articles, and the situation that where oral citations indeed have been included, their inclusion was accompanied by other (perceived or real) deficiencies.
Wikipedia at its core is a result of participatory design; essentially all writers of the encyclopedia are also readers, and many writers are policy makers. Yet through technical (Internet access), practical (hurdles for newbies) and conceptual (exclusion of oral knowledge repositories) restrictions, entire populations are excluded from reading, writing, or both. The 'participatory design' aspect of this workshop lies in combining the knowledge and skill of three distinct groups (Knowledge bearers, Wikipedians, Scientists) working on one set of Wikipedia articles.
This workshop has been inspired by a number of theoretical considerations, referenced in the link section above. The main claim is that there is something like a 'sterling' oral citation: A knower, speaking on their area of expertise, at an official occasion, in front of a general audience. As an analogy, a museum curator, explaining an exhibit in their museum as part of an official tour, would be a reliable, independent, verifiable third-party source: The next curator would essentially give the same information, the core content of the narrative would be the same on every official tour. It is not the type of content I am concentrating on because this type of information is often also available in writing, but I think it is a suitable analogy to convince people that credible oral citations can in principle exist.
The workshop itself is funded through existent research monies, both from the hosting and from the conference attendees' institutions. However, the success of the workshop is dependent on assembling a mix of researchers and scientists that enter because they participate in PDC, and members of Wikipedia's editor community who, particularly if they are Africans, are unlikely to be able to afford travel and subsistence for this event. In order to be able to attract not only PDC2014 participants (few of which might be active Wikipedia editors) but also experienced editors from Southern Africa and beyond, I apply for funds to grant up to ten partial or full scholarships, depending on the travel cost to Windhoek, to editors willing to partake in this experiment.

Financial details

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Please request your grant in your local currency. WMF is able to grant funds in many currencies.

Amount and currency requested
Maximum: ZAR 110,000
Realistically: ZAR 85,000
  • Comment 1: South African Rand (ZAR) is pegged 1:1 to the Namibian Dollar (NAD), and ZAR it is legal tender in Namibia. As the Rand is better known than the NAD, and as certain financial services are not available for NAD internationally, I have used it in this grant request.
  • Comment 2: The amount of ZAR 110,000 is the absolute maximum that this workshop could cost. However, it is unlikely that we will use the full amount, as no editor from Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa would qualify for the full amount, see below. We also do not expect to exhaust the sum provided for contingency purposes.
Please provide an equivalent amount in US dollars using the exchange rate provided by Oanda on the date you open this request
Maximum: US$ 10,393.34
Realistically: US$ 8,031.22

Goals and measures of success

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Project goal

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Please briefly describe what will be accomplished if the project is successful.

Project goal
For a selected set of articles on the English Wikipedia, the workshop will develop content that cannot be referenced to anything but orally transferred knowledge. It will be demonstrated practically what I asserted in a theoretical presentation at Wikimania 2013:
  1. that indigenous knowledge is knowledge, meaning that it is not just a set of beliefs but it is justified
  2. that indigenous knowledge is valuable, that Wikipedia cannot be the sum of all human knowledge without it
  3. that traditional knowledge (what peoples know about their own culture and tradition) is but a tiny part of indigenous knowledge
  4. that indigenous knowledge is verifiable in the very same way that all other knowledge is
  5. that there is a very reasonable oral equivalent of 'publishing' which applies to indigenous knowledge
  6. that indigenous knowledge is peer-reviewed by the group of knowledge bearers
The workshop shall showcase a before--after scenario for a few Wikipedia articles with regards to the question of how useful oral citations are to document and re-codify indigenous knowledge. The created examples can then be used in the various policy discussions on the admissability of oral citations, on the question of which oral citations could be reliable and third-party (and which ones not).


Measures of success

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Please provide a list of measurable criteria that will be used determine how successful the project is. You will need to report on the success of the project according to these measures after the project is completed.

Measures of success
  1. A annotated list of local, notable topics for articles for which no or insufficient written sources exist to develop them
  2. For each participant at least 1 article in the subspace of w:Wikipedia:Oral citations experiment that is updated with oral citations.
  3. A detailed description of the workshop setup, including its scientific background and rationale (unfortunately this will be under the copyright of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM))
  4. A description of the workshop as conducted, on the WMF blog (under CC-BY) and in the conference proceedings (under ACM copyright)

Project scope and activities

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List of activities in the pre-workshop phase
  1. The workshop proposal will be formulated and submitted to PDC2014. Due: 17 March 2014, responsible: User:Pgallert,   Done
  2. In consultation with Namibian academics of OvaHerero / OvaMbanderu descent, a list of 20-30 potential articles (hereinafter: "the list") will be developed. The list will be published at w:Wikipedia:Oral citations experiment. The inclusion criterion for this list is if it is likely that PDC2014 conference participants and/or knowledge bearers at the village of Otjinene have intimate knowledge about this topic. The list will comprise a selection of topics related to local history, culture, medicine, geography, and animal husbandry. List due: 15 June 2014, responsible: User:Pgallert
  3. A Call for Participation will be formulated and published. Due: 15 July 2014, responsible: User:Pgallert
  4. Prospective participants adopt at least one open topic from the list, first come, first served. They use written sources to develop the article in main space as far as possible. In the event that there are no usable written sources at all, prospective participants document briefly on the list itself why the topic has to remain a red link for now (e.g. only passing mentions instead of coverage, only primary sources, only unreliable sources, no Google / Scholar hits, etc). Due: 1 September 2014, responsible: all prospective participants
  5. The workshop facilitators vet the entries that have been produced, as well as the general Wikipedia experience of the applicants. Prospective participants must, as a minimum, have produced content on English Wikipedia that still exists, and that even after thorough scrutiny would not be deleted or be peppered with maintenance templates. The amount of contributions is only a secondary criterion, a proof of concept (even if provided only during step 4) is sufficient to pass this stage. For the adopted entry on the list, a reasonable effort must have been made to develop content, or to document the impossibility thereof. Due: 15 September 2014, responsible: User:Pgallert and co-facilitator, name TBA
  6. The workshop facilitators briefly vet the Wikipedia decorum of prospective participants. Editors in long-term conflict with the Wikipedia community will not be invited. Due: 15 September 2014, responsible: User:Pgallert and co-facilitator, name TBA
  7. If there are more than 12 prospective participants that pass the vetting stage the workshop facilitators will categorise and rank them to determine who will be invited. The categories are a) researcher / scientist, b) Wikipedian. People belonging to the intersection of a) and b) may accumulate their score. Criteria for a high ranking are:
    • How certain is it that they will indeed attend? For researchers: Are they presenting at PDC? Have they paid the registration fee? Have they attended PDC in the past? For Wikipedians: Will the scholarship cover their S&T expenses? Do they have other funding to cover the gap, if any?
    • How much help would they likely need to produce standard (i.e., non-orally referenced) English Wikipedia content? For researchers: Are there indications of advanced computer literacy? How well-published are they? Did they ever contribute to tertiary sources of information, including Wikipedia? For Wikipedians: Are they of the 'content contributor' type? Is there any featured content they developed? Do they hold the 'autopatrolled' permission? For all: Does the adopted article from the list meet Wikipedia requirements?
  8. Scholarships will be awarded as follows: all people in Category b (Wikipedian), highest ranking first, then people in category a (researcher / scientist), highest ranking first.
List of activities during the workshop

The conference date is 10-14 October 2014. The workshop will partially or fully be a pre-conference event: It will start before 10 October and end before 14 October. Exact dates to be confirmed when the conference schedule becomes available.

  1. Day 1, morning, Windhoek, Namibiana section of the library of the Polytechnic of Namibia: The adopted article will, if possible, be expanded using offline written sources. After this session, all existing articles that have been improved are copied into the Wikipedia: name space so that they become a subpage of w:Wikipedia:Oral citations experiment
  2. Day 1, afternoon, on the road: Travel to Otjinene
  3. Day 2, morning, Otjinene: Interviews with knowledge bearers in the rural community, and expansion of articles from the list
  4. Day 2, afternoon, on the road: Travel back to Windhoek
  5. Day 3, morning, Conference venue: Interviews with conference participants that are indigenous knowledge bearers, and expansion of articles from the list
  6. Day 3, morning, on the road: Travel back to Windhoek Inserted: 13:47, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
  7. Day 3, afternoon, Conference venue: Wrap-up and discussion

Budget

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Project budget table

We wish to be able to invite / support up to ten attendees who may ask for refund for travel, accommodation, food, and the workshop fee. The maximum amount per attendee is ZAR 10,000. Expenses need to be proven to be refunded, or directly paid by the organiser.

Project budget table
Number Category Item description Unit Number of units Cost per unit ZAR Total USD Total Notes
1 Workshop fee This is an administrative fee, charged by the conference organisers per person 10 USD 80 800 Standard fee, charged in USD for administering the registration, organisation, and publication of Proposal, Call for Participation, and Proceedings.
2 Accommodation in Windhoek B&B, 2 people of same sex sharing per room and night: 4 nights, 4 double rooms 16 450 7,200 680.29 This assumes the suboptimal case that 5 of the attendees are male, 5 female. The 'odd' person would then have to have a single room. It also assumes that every attendee would have to stay overnight before day 1, and after day 3. Accommodation in Otjinene (from day 1 to day 2) is sponsored by PDC, see below.
3 Accommodation in Windhoek B&B, single room per room and night: 4 nights, 2 single rooms 8 350 2,800 264.56 This assumes the suboptimal case that 5 of the attendees are male, 5 female. The 'odd' person would then have to have a single room. It also assumes that every attendee would have to stay overnight before day 1, and after day 3. Accommodation in Otjinene (from day 1 to day 2) is sponsored by PDC, see below.
4 Food: Lunch Standard restaurant meal and 1 drink per person and day, 4 days 40 120 4,800 453.53 Lunch in Otjinene (day 2) is sponsored by PDC, see below.
5 Food: Dinner Standard restaurant meal and 2 drinks per person and day, 4 days 40 180 7,200 680.29 Dinner in Otjinene (day 2) is sponsored by PDC, see below.
6 Travel Return ticket to Windhoek per person 10 max around 7,100 or 6,600 max 70,000 6,613.94 exact price depending on many factors, TBD individually
Total without contingency per person 10 10,000 100,000 9,448.49
Contingency provision Unexpected or unpredictable expenses 1 10,000 10,000 944.85 bank charges, currency fluctuation, unexpected expenses, price increases after grant approval
Total including contingency 110,000 10,393.34

For the individual in a shared double room, the sums add up:

  • ZAR 800 workshop fee +
  • ZAR 900 (4 x 225 half shared room, 4 nights) accommodation +
  • ZAR 480 (4 x lunch) +
  • ZAR 720 (4 x dinner) +
  • ZAR 7,100 possible transport allowance

= ZAR 10,000

For the individual in a single room, the sums add up:

  • ZAR 800 workshop fee +
  • ZAR 1,400 (4 x 350 single room, 4 nights) accommodation +
  • ZAR 480 (4 x lunch) +
  • ZAR 720 (4 x dinner) +
  • ZAR 6,600 possible transport allowance

= ZAR 10,000

Remarks

  • Per attendee, posts 1 to 5 total 2,900 ZAR (sharing double room) or 3,400 ZAR (single room)
  • This leaves ZAR 7,100 or 6,600 ZAR for travel. With this sum, travel from e.g. the following towns would be fully covered: (all quotes 24 April 2014)
    • bus travel from/to all Namibian destinations (various prices and companies)
    • bus travel from/to Livingstone (Zambia) ZAR 1,260 flexi return ticket, Intercape
    • bus travel from/to Johannesburg (South Africa) via Upington ZAR 2,680 flexi return ticket, Intercape
    • bus travel from/to Cape Town (South Africa) ZAR 1,920 flexi return ticket, Intercape
    • air travel from/to all South African destinations
    • air travel from/to all African destinations with a direct flight to Windhoek, e.g. Maun (Botswana), Luanda (Angola), Harare (Zimbabwe), Accra (Ghana)
  • For further destinations in Africa, ZAR 7,100 or 6,600 ZAR for travel would cover about 3/4 of the ticket price.
  • For destinations overseas, ZAR 7,100 or 6,600 ZAR for travel would cover about 1/2 of the ticket price.
  • We expect people to drive by bus if it is convenient to do so (up to 20hrs drive). Certain destinations, even in neighboring South Africa, require more than 20hrs drive. In this case we would refund the air ticket.
  • The official conference accommodation are the ****Safari Court Hotel and the ***Hotel Safari. Attendees that chose to stay there would get ZAR 225 per night refund, not the full room fee of ZAR 930 / ZAR 759.
  • The PDC 2014 conference fee (300 USD, TBC) is not included in this package. Participants who want to attend PDC after the workshop have to pay this using another source of money.
  • I can make private arrangements for 1 attendee to eat and sleep at my place for free, or for more, if they are willing to bring a sleeping bag. The money saved on accommodation / food could top up the travel cost.
Total cost of project

ZAR 137,550

USD 12,996.40

Total amount requested from the Project and Event Grants program
Maximum: ZAR 110,000
Realistically: ZAR 85,000
Maximum: US$ 10,393.34
Realistically: US$ 8,031.22
Additional sources of revenue that may fund part of this project, and amounts funded

The research project leader agreed to fund the operational cost of the workshop. This is not normally covered in the administrative workshop fee and includes:

  1. Rental of the bus to drive to Otjinene: 1,000 km x 10 ZAR/km = ZAR 10,000
  2. Payment for the driver with public transport permit: 2 days x 500 ZAR/day = ZAR 1,000
  3. Payment for local translators: 5 people x 150 ZAR/person x day x 2 days = ZAR 1,500
  4. Expenses for the local facilitator (meals and workshop fee): ZAR 2,000
  5. Expenses for the external co-facilitator (includes flight from Europe): ZAR 20,000
  6. Accommodation at Otjinene: 13 people (10 attendees + 1 driver + 2 facilitators) x ZAR 250 = ZAR 3,250
  7. Food at Otjinene: 13 people (10 attendees + 1 driver + 2 facilitators) x ZAR 100 = ZAR 1,300
  8. 3G Internet connection (wireless hotspot) in the bus and in Otjinene, 2GB data volume: ZAR 500

Total: ZAR 37,550 USD 3,547.91

Non-financial requirements

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See a description of non financial assistance available. Please inform Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) of any requirements for non-financial assistance now.

Requests for non-financial assistance

None. We still have a box of T-shirts from our outreach program.

Resources and Risks

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Resources

This section is used to highlight your potential for successfully executing this project.

  • List of team members (names or usernames):
    1. Workshop facilitator: Peter Gallert
    2. Workshop co-facilitator: TBD none Corrected: 13:47, 21 August 2014 (UTC)
    3. Consultants for the topic list: Gereon Koch Kapuire and Dott. Collin Stanley, both introduced here
    4. Consultant on facilitation and methodology: Prof Heike Winschiers-Theophilus, introduced here
  • Onwiki evidence of community support (such as a project about this discussion):
    None yet
  • Endorsements from community members or movement groups:
    Please add your endorsement here, sign with ~~~~
  • Special skills or qualifications this potential grantee or project lead brings to this project:
    I have extensive experience introducing people to Wikipedia editing, should this be necessary for some workshop participants.
  • Evidence of past success in executing similar projects:
    This is my first workshop of this kind.
  • Other resources:
    I have received positive commentary from African Wikipedians via email, and I got a few enthusiastic responses to my theoretical talk 2013 in Hong Kong. Most of that was orally, so that I cannot cite it ;) but see for instance Martin Poulter's comment here.
Risks

This section is used to identify key risks or threats that would prevent you from achieving your project goals and how you would mitigate those risks and threats.

Key risks and their mitigation strategies:

  1. Workshop proposal not accepted by PDC. Acceptance rate for this ACM-rated conference is between 25% (papers) and 50% (workshops and installations). ==> The PDC2014 conference chair Prof Winschiers-Theophilus has the final authority over pre-conference events. She has already vetted the proposal and indicated that this workshop will be included even if the editorial board does not accept it into the main conference program, as it not only relates to PDC but also to our work in the Indigenous Knowledge Preservation research cluster.
  2. Grant submission not accepted. ==> The workshop would still take place with ordinary PDC participants and one or two editors whose S&T can be paid from the budgets of the conference or the research cluster. The workshop in this case might have to be preceded by an introduction to Wikipedia editing and principles, and the desired mix of experienced scientists and experienced Wikipedians would not be reached, resulting in less created content and/or lower quality thereof.
  3. No or insufficient applications in response to the Call for Participation. I consider this to be an unlikely case. ==> Mitigating actions could be to personally emailing fellow researchers / Wikipedians with a known interest in the topic, and/or requesting for a watchlist notice on the English Wikipedia. If all else fails, the workshop could probably be successfully run with a minimum of three people.
  4. Deletion of workshop results from the English Wikipedia ==> We believe that the Wikipedia: name space is a legitimate place to store the result of this experiment. If a local administrator nevertheless deletes results as policy violation, and assuming that no 'bright-line rules' of en-wp will be violated (copyvio, harassment, spam, paid editing), we consider it likely that an administrator could be found to undelete and userfy the creations, so that they can be exported to another platform, or indefinitely remain in userspace.
Cost-benefit analysis

I added this section in response to questions on the talk page. Its purpose it to outline what is new in this proposal that hasn't been funded before, and what I believe funders are getting for their money if they grant this request.

  1. Q: What is new in this proposal that wasn't already funded in Achal Prabhala's Research:Oral citations project?
    A: Several things are new, and many of these new ideas I owe to Achal's project and the discussions that were triggered by it:
    • The workshop setup ensures that the oral citations are indeed necessary to backup the article statements, because participants first exhaust all other sources, online and offline. We will not go to knowledge bearers and ask 'What do you know?', but we will identify "white spaces" XYZ in the available written sources and will ask 'What do you know about XYZ?'.
    • The oral narratives will not be uploaded to Commons, an action that gathered severe criticism for its potential impact on intellectual property. I have instead argued theoretically (with nobody refuting it as yet) that oral citations are verifiable as they are.
    • The participants will discuss and capture criteria for the reliability of an oral source---As with written sources, there are of course also unreliable oral sources.
  2. Q: Why can this workshop not be run with Namibians, and have a fraction of its price tag?
    A: Because there is a grand total of two active Namibian editors, one of which is a workshop facilitator.
  3. Q: There are a lot more editors in South Africa / Ghana / Australia / [insert country here], who have extensive indigenous communities and oral knowledge repositories. The same workshop would be a lot cheaper there, why Namibia which has no Wikipedia editors?
    A: Apart from convenience (PDC just happens to be in Windhoek in 2014, and I happen to live here), the crucial thing is access to these communities. This access is produced by earning the trust of the community. Our research cluster has worked for over a decade in rural OvaHerero and OvaMbanderu communities, and we can be reasonably sure that knowledge bearers would actually share their knowledge with us. We couldn't just storm into a village in the Amazon Basin and get the same result.
  4. Q: Why would the WMF sponsor scientists doing their routine work?
    A: The workshop is an event that is not included in the conference fee. Besides, all participants in the category 'Wikipedian' will get sponsorship, before any 'scientist / non-Wikipedian' will be considered. Furthermore, application requirements will require participants to become at least newbie Wikipedians.
  5. Q: Scientists routinely are sponsored by their home institutions. How will you make sure they do not get double money for singular expenses?
    A: I will either directly pay their expenses and get a receipt, or collect the invoice and refund them. There is, however, the standard practice to get an S&T lump sum for foreign travel. I'm not sure right now how to tackle this, I could maybe have them sign a form of sorts.
  6. Q: Indigenous knowledge is everywhere. Why would you tailor the scholarship in a way that only Africans can attend for free?
    A: The first reason is total cost. It is just much cheaper to ferry in some people from neighboring countries than to pay for 10 intercontinental return flights. The second reason is relevance. We absolutely don't want the situation to be "Make a few edits and have a free holiday in Namibia". The assumption is that editors from certain areas are far more likely to have a use case for oral citations, and that Southern Africa certainly is one of those areas. We would have loved to invite editors from South America, Greenland, or Mongolia, but we are confident there are sufficiently many editors from the region to make this experiment work.
  7. Q: In short, what will funders get for their money if they grant this request?
    A: A set of articles where significant content gaps have been filled with items from oral knowledge repositories, to allow for a before---after comparison, and to use as proof-of-concept for further discussion on the value and validity of oral citations.

Impact

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In the sections below, please describe how the project is related to the Wikimedia mission and Wikimedia's strategic priorities.

Fit to strategy

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How will this project support the key organizational objectives of
  • increasing reach (more people will access or contribute to Wikipedia or our other projects),
  • participation (more people actually contributing),
  • quality (more content, more useful content, or higher-quality content),
  • credibility (more trust in our projects),
  • organizational maturity and effectiveness (how it will move you or the Wikimedia community forward),
  • or financial sustainability (how it will help you achieve more in the long run)?
This statement should address at least one of the strategic priorities listed here specifically. See Project and Event Grants program criteria for decision making.
This workshop was not designed to specifically meet strategic goals; it is mostly addressed towards Wikipedia's current vision statement, in particular the part that says "all human knowledge" (emphasis mine). Indigenous knowledge is a significant part of human knowledge, and a considerable fraction of indigenous knowledge is not available in writing.
I implicitly expect to have articles of better quality, not the few that this workshop will produce outside main space, but the potential thousands of them that could be created or expanded if the editor community could be convinced that oral citations can be verifiable, independent, and even 'published' in a way---orally published, that is: narrated in front of an audience. To a certain extent, such outcome would address the "organizational maturity" aspect above by reducing systemic bias and allowing the inclusion of one alternative codification of knowledge.

Benefits

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If the project will benefit a specific online community, please tell us.
The benefit would be first to the English Wikipedia community, as this is the platform where the experiment would be run. Other language editions have comparable constraints, and if their communities are fluent in English they could use the proof-of-concept pool as well. I do expect a trickle-down effect into other language editions should the community on en-wp allow, or even seriously discuss, the possible inclusion of oral citations.
Please provide a brief statement about how the project is related to other work in the Wikimedia movement. For example, does the project fit into a work area such as GLAM, education, organizational development, editor retention, or outreach?
The WMF has previously funded Research:Oral Citations by Achal Prabhala which used the same means (oral citations), and had a similar motivation (that the sum of all knowledge is far greater than the sum of all printed knowledge). I choose a different location (rural Namibia), a different implementation (no uploaded audio material due to unclear license conditions and effect on intellectual property), and a different quality measurement (reliability of a source will be determined by the role of the narrator, and the occasion of the narrative).
This workshop does not fit into any of the categories above; it attempts to change the general way content is developed for Wikipedia. From the type of initiative it is similar to GLAM, as it accesses a particular, otherwise neglected, source of information.
If successful, will the project have the potential to be replicated successfully by other individuals, groups, or organizations? Please explain how in 1–2 sentences.
There have been a few discussions about the reliability of oral citations. One thread that developed in the aftermath of Achal Prabhala's project can be found here. While the idea was primarily rejected due to ethical concerns with the AV upload to Commons, an underlying rejection of the value of non-written knowledge is clearly visible. Another thread was started by me here; I had the feeling that the participating editors did not wish to discuss an issue that large.
I feel that what is needed at this stage is a prototype of the sort that this workshop is expected to produce: A set of articles in their 'final stages' of development, considering only written sources, and the same set of articles enriched by orally available information. This would address the implicit concerns that there is nothing to gain from the inclusion of indigenous knowledge, and that indigenous knowledge bearers actually have no knowledge that would be valuable outside their community.
If---and that is admittedly a big if---the editor community could be convinced of the value of indigenous knowledge, a renewed policy discussion could be held under entirely different circumstances, with a possibly positive outcome. And that outcome could influence thousands of existing and yet-to-be-written articles on Wikipedia.


Please list other benefits to the movement here.
Experienced Wikipedians from the region will have an opportunity to meet and discuss other projects. Scientists with little exposure to Wikipedia content development will join experienced editors that are not scientists, a situation that could develop synergies.
For grantees

If you are the grantee or representative that wrote this grant submission, you may request changes by using these links:

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