Grants:PEG/WM CL/Start-up/Discussion

Fewer objectives?

I am happy to read this proposal but I would recommend, at least during the first year, to focus the interest in two or three main objectives. For instance the development of projects in local indigenous languages may be a different project that can be developed with another grant. People-raising and a first evaluation of potential partners (in addition to the normal activities connected with the website), in my opinion can be sufficient for this grant. --Ilario 21:54, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the submission. I must agree with Ilario that it's always better to separate the projects in more grant requests, so we could evaluate them with more ease. This request therefore should entirely focus on the costs before and quickly after the chapter was established. In this request these are the costs grouped as infrastructure and equipment, website, legal requirements, and administration with amount roughly about $1,500. Costs for minor projects, and travel should be requested in other grant applications. In any case, the financial plan looks pretty good to me, especially omitting the item "other costs". Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski 00:13, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Just for context, I should point out that new chapters are encouraged by the WMF to include some program work in their start-up grants, and to not confine them just to the administrative and set-up costs. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 00:48, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Some questions of my own:

Could you make some explicit statements about the purpose of the travel budget items? I realize the realities of Chile's geography, but we need a statement about what this travel is expected to achieve.
Could you provide more information about the "GLAM Santiago 2012" event? Is there a page for it (even in Spanish) somewhere?
Can you reconsider the proposed significant expenditure (~$1600) for printed material in the indigenous languages? I have remarked elsewhere that the Wikimedia Mission is about creating and sharing free knowledge, not about language preservation (a worthy and noble endeavor per se), and, since a) there seem to be no speakers of these indigenous languages to whom free knowledge is not accessible just as easily (if not more easily) in Spanish, and b) these language communities are far too small to have a viable Wikipedia community -- it does not make sense to use our donor funds to promote those preservation efforts. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 00:48, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

@Asaf: I agree that the grant must include a program work in addition to that of the simple establishment of the chapter, but it would be sufficient to consider the project of indigenous language as a "feasibility study". Your questions, in my opinion, may be answered by a study of feasibility submitted to the GAC and to the WMF to evaluate in a neutral point of view if it makes sense to operate in this direction. For instance the language may have a small community which can be insufficient for a Wikipedia project, but WM CL may have sufficient material to open and support a Wikisource or a Wiktionary in those languages. --Ilario 09:33, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Good point, Ilario! A Wiktionary or Wikisource in those languages is a very different matter indeed, and a much better fit with our mission, making me quite comfortable supporting such work. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 17:59, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

+1 to what Asaf said re:travel. Also, you might want to consider budgeting for travel costs (for x members) to attend the Chapters Conference. Abbasjnr 15:11, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I will try to reply most of your comments. If something is left, please just remind me about it again.

Per Asaf request, we included different projects of the Corporation for 2012 and not just administrative stuff. If you prefer, we can split some of the items in a different grant request.
About the travel items: we have chosen those six cities because we have tried to engage with different academic and cultural institutions along the country. Concepción, as the second largest metropolitan area in Chile, is also home of the second largest community of Wikimedians (in fact, they organized the first Wikimeeting in Chile few years ago, before Santiago) but they are currently outside our organization because of the distance; we expect to organize some events with members of the community to introduce them in our organization. In Valdivia and Antofagasta there are important universities and also can be used as "hubs" for other cities (like Puerto Montt and Calama). In the case of Antofagasta University and the Northern Catholic University, they have large collections of Atacameño archaeology that can be included on the Wikimedia projects, while the Austral University has a lot of scientific and ethnographic investigation. Punta Arenas has a small but active community of editors that we will like to reach and also other institutions like the University of Magallanes and the Maggiorino Borgatello Museum, with a lot of documents about the Patagonian history. La Serena, finally, is mainly for Daniel, one of the members of our board that lives there and has been working on the legal incorporation of WM-CL; he has paid by himself the travels to Santiago in 2011 (at least 4) and we expect that next year at least we can pay the travel when he comes to Santiago for the free work he has been doing for us. It's certainly much cheaper than paying a lawyer in Santiago.
About the event: we expect to release more details about the event in the following week when we have secured the venue for the conference. We expect to host a event for cultural and university institutions in Santiago on March 15th. We have already confirmed the participation of Melanie Dulong de Rosnay (FR) and Beatriz Busaniche (AR) and also we expect the participation of Sarah Stierch (US). I expect to release info about the event before Sunday.
About the language issue: As far as I remember, the motto of our organization is Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. In the Chilean case, not all single human can freely share their knowledge since there are no Wikipedia edition in their language and there are no incentives to pursue their creation. There are a lot of Mapudungun speakers, even in Santiago, that I have reached in the previous months and I have been surprised by their organization. Rapa Nui people even have an official language academy while Aymara is an official language in Bolivia and there are a lot of speakers in Chile and Argentina. We even took part in the II Congress of Indigenous Language with the support of the Ministry of Education and UNESCO and the idea of Wikipedias on their own languages was received with enthusiasm.
Of course, there won't be any collaboration if we don't promote the Wikimedia projects and that's what we are trying to do. Can they use the Spanish Wikipedia? Yes, it's possible. Just like all of us can use the English Wikipedia but it wouldn't make sense to delete the Spanish, the Hebrew, the Italian or the Macedonian projects. Why it should be different for other communities just because they are not "as big" as other? The development of Wikimedia projects in indigenous languages has been defined by our organization as one of the main goals for the following year, not because of preservation but because there are a lot of people that needs them, in fact the people with more problems to access any kind of education. In any case, I think a Grant request shouldn't be the place to discuss what is worth and what is not in the Wikimedia Movement and if a language deserves to have a Wikipedia edition, especially after the Language Committee said both projects are eligible ([1] [2]) and we just need to develop an active test project.
About the Chapters Conference: I heard that WM-DE was funding the travel for smaller chapters (correct me if I'm wrong), but if it is possible, I don't have any problem to include it although I'm not sure if the grant will be ready before we should buy the tickets. --B1mbo 04:58, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I forgot to mencione why Temuco. That's the largest city in the Araucania Region and home of the largest number of mapudungun languages. We have some contacts there, especially in the Catholic University of Temuco and the University of La Frontera related to the Deparments of Linguistic that want to help us in the development of the Mapudungun projects. In fact, they were thinking in a project Mapudungun on-line encyclopedia/dictionary and they thought it would be great if we can join efforts. -B1mbo 13:21, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I've uploaded the page about GLAM Santiago 2012. It's only in Spanish for now, but I expect to translate it soon. --B1mbo 17:41, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Now in English --B1mbo 03:45, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Indigenous Languages

Thank you for the responses above. I am afraid I must insist on further clarification of your plans regarding indigenous languages; while I agree that there is a general question here that merits wider discussion in a different forum, the question is also concretely relevant to this request for funds, to the non-negligible tune of $1600.

Let me reiterate that I am not against there being a Mapudungun Wikipedia (as you say, LangCom authorized its creation, and I do recognize its value for language preservation). That is not the same as agreeing we should spend funds and effort actively promoting it, in light of its dubious contribution to our mission. Please note that you have set up a Straw man when you implied I propose that everyone use Wikipedia in one language they're not fluent in; in fact, I was suggesting (and please do correct me if I got my facts wrong!) that:

there is practically no one for whom a Mapudungun Wikipedia would be significantly more accessible than a Spanish Wikipedia (which certainly cannot be said about your examples of Spanish and English, or Hebrew and English), i.e. that all speakers of those indigenous tongues also speak Spanish, at least as fluently, and are in fact used to consuming factual information and knowledge in Spanish rather than in the indigenous language.
there are far too few literate speakers of these languages for a viable, usable-as-general-reference Wikipedia. (as distinct from usable-as-a-vehicle-for-language-preservation-and-exercise.) My source is Ethnologue, which suggests that there are fewer than 1% literate first-language speakers of Mapudungun, i.e. no more than 3,000 people. For the Aymara language, Ethnologue suggests there are as few as 900 people in Chile. For Rapa Nui, Ethnologue indicates, again, fewer than 1% literate first-language speakers (most of whom are on Easter Island), i.e. fewer than 33 people.

Are these two propositions not the case? If my facts are correct, your well-intended plan is simply not viable -- the numbers are just not there, and the Mapudungun/Aymamar/Rapa Nui Wikipedias still fall outside our mission. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 03:12, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

In basketball and soccers exists a rule "Statistics Aren't Everything": if the numbers of native speakers is low isn't our problem, just we're trying incorporate a 300 000 persons that can't edit in their native language because we don't have the information in mapudungun or rapanui to say "Wikipedia in your language needs you". 300 000 persons in US or Europe is a small town, but in Chile it's a lot of people. So, how can we do the mission of Wikimedia Foundation if we haven't the support of WMF?. The funds is for outreach in these communities and as I remember in ChapConf 2011, we must try to outreach our activities, so "close the doors in my face" isn't a good answer to our mission. Another thing related is that B1mbo had some contacts with native speakers communities, universities and other institutions related, and they want to participate in Wikipedia in mapudugun, aymara and rapanui... only exists aymara. I want to share a short sentence from our Strategic Plan: "We value openness and diversity". Superzerocool 14:28, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd just like to weigh in from a somewhat different angle. Note: from a financial perspective, the expense is not a problem. We can afford it. However, I don't think it makes sense to spend funds creating a booklet to talk about Wikimedia projects that effectively don't exist. If there is a strong desire to encourage the formation of a community to edit projects in these language, it would be better to get a group of community members together to create some resources on the wiki and maybe do some editing workshops. Let's get a community together before we throw money at it. Once there is a spark of interest, it might then make sense to provide some brochures, if that is helpful (I doubt it is, but that's my POV). Also, I agree with Asaf's earlier point on investing resources on languages where the potential for creating a viable editing community is very low. While our mission is broad, we don't have unlimited time or resources to achieve it and if we value every human being equally then we are serving humanity best by investing in projects that can reach a lot of people in Chile or elsewhere. Barry Newstead (WMF)

Non-Wikipedia Projects

As Ilario helpfully pointed out above, Wikisource and Wiktionary editions for indigenous languages are a different matter altogether, and those can and should be supported, if only there's a community to receive such support. But the current proposal is asking for funding for printed materials relating to Wikipedia, not Wikisource or Wiktionary. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 03:12, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, your facts are not correct. The numbers on Ethnologue are really outdated, from 1982 in the case of Mapudungun. That means in the middle of a military dictatorship that suppressed the use of any language except Spanish. The numbers have not increased a lot and are estimated around 300,000 speakers in Chile (use of languages are not asked on the census so it's difficult to find out); but, the improvement on alphabetism is much different (around 75% in the 80s to 97% now in all the country). Only in the past 20 years have been policies for the use of indigenous languages, alphabets were created, the language was allowed on public offices. Now the Ministry of Education has created special programs for the teaching of indigenous languages on schools and there is a debate about the creation of a Mapuche university. In Rapa Nui, the Rapa Nui language is used extensively on schools and there are at least 1,000 students (3K times larger than your number) that speak Rapa Nui language and they don't have a Wikipedia to use in their language and they have to use the Spanish version or other one. IMHO, we can't decide which language they prefer and that's why we want to foster the development of the Mapudungun and Rapa Nui projects so people can have for the first time in history, to choose which language they prefer to use.

Yes, probably we won't reach the same number of users of other kind of project, but it's a highly symbolic and important project for the people in my country. The idea was asked personally by the President of the Republic to Jimmy Wales and he supported the idea [3] and I'm pretty sure USD 1,400 grant is not a "large" grant. --B1mbo 14:38, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Regarding Jimmy and mapudungún Wikipedia, I must say that as coordinator of his visit to Chile in 2008 (when that video was recorded), we prepared previous to his meeting with Bachelet (just 2 minutes before), as starting topic to brake the ice of the protocol. And Wikipedias in indigenous languages was a very good one. She was impressed with our work (as Wikimedia community) in African languages and mapudungun, with the revitalization of the last decades, would be a great success also. Jimmy told her that we didn't have a mapudungun Wikipedia, that we needed support to foster it and she was surprised about that. So she tried to contact a key person in the Education Secretary to schedule a working meeting but it never happened because at that time we (chilean wikimedians) didn't have a solid organization as a group. Just to illustrate the point about the importance for us of this particular program.

Beyond the discussions about the importance of these indigenous languages and if the usage of Spanish can replace the benefits of available educational materials in mother tongue education (vast reference studies here), we have to read the same page: grants are requested to fulfill Wikimedia Foundation mission and target. We both (chapter and WMF), in our chapter agreement, are commited to encourage the growth, development and distribution of free multilingual content. This mission is reflected in the 2011-2012 Wikimedia Foundation Plan:

Support healthy diversity in the editing community by doubling the percentage of female editors to 25 percent and increasing the percentage of Global South editors to 37 percent (Strategy Plan 2015 Targets - pag. 8)
In 2011-12, the majority of spending goes towards growing, strengthening and increasing the diversity of the editing community, as well as investments in key geographic areas, mobile development and innovation. (2011-12 Plan Overview - pag. 25)
Internationalization: Features which are designed to enable participation in languages which are currently poorly technically supported - includes input methods, font delivery, etc. (2011-12 Plan – Key Activities - pag. 27)

I can't see in what part of the plan we are not aligned and money is discouraged to be spent. We are being very serious about the work we want to do with these communities that want to be trained to participate as editors in Wikipedia. Those materials are not give-away diptics or look-how-worried-we-are-about-this-poor-and-almost-defuncted-language merchandise. Our plan is to develop a focused coaching for people that will make the community in that language to grow. And these materials are the key to teach other people in the Wikipedia edition. If I can make an analogy, if we use materials in Spanish to teach how to use Wikipedia in Mapudungún, would be as printing materials in English to teach how to use Wikipedia in Spanish.

Our commitment to foster particular languages in Chile is based in a clear criteria: those languages are part of a intercultural bilingual education program in Chile, leaded by the Education Secretary. These languages are alive, with no need of preservation as you said above. You can see more about this in Endangered language. If we were trying to include a program to create materials in Yaghan language, we would support your reasons openly. --Zuirdj 02:48, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

The first comment

I have studied your request and I think that is very well balanced. In addition, I believe that behind the numbers is a plan from which you determined the number of trips that are going to do, the number of leaflets you need to distribute etc.

Regarding the amount of the budget only have the following question: I see the printing of the booklets in Argentina costs $ 1 each while they will cost you $ 2.34 each. As you have not planned costs of design, I guess they are the same as Wikimedia Argentina print. I think we should make more from Iberocoop possible synergies. Printing the leaflets and booklets in Argentina even after paying the transport costs to Chile, it seems that you can save more than $ 2,500. In addition there is the advantage of Wikimedia Argentina can get better prices by increasing the quantity.

Previous reviewers have already requested that they would like information about your plan. I also like but this does not worry me because I sense there is.

What I advise is that you should work non-financial requirements. Other chapters that have requested grants in the past to start their activities ended the year without investing the money. I think this is mainly due to having made a plan, without having identified who agreed to carry on it. It may even be a good opportunity for you to take this request to identify these activities and ask members of your chapter to sign this petition indicating their commitment to develop each part. For example: You have two trips planned to Concepcion. What activities will happen there? Where (in what prmises)? Approximately when (what month)? Who (to sign the volunteer who will)? Specifically you expect to print material in several languages. Have the chapter members whose native languages are those, who are active in these Wimedia projets, who believe that there is an opportunity to promote the project, and who are committed to do it personally? --Josepnogue 13:12, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi Josep. The idea of printing in Argentina is a possibility we have thought sometimes before. The problem is that our projects should not depend on other organizations' goodwill... We have an excelent relation with Wikimedia Argentina and would be great if we can save money or print more material working with them, but I think it would be wrong to budget using a price that is not available (yet) for us.

Thanks for your advise, we have tried to do that but is difficult when we have only volunteers. Now that we have more concrete projects we are working with more planification. --B1mbo 01:43, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I am not native English speaker and perhaps my statements may seem too rude because I say the nude facts. My intention is to help you in suceeding in your first grant. I think it is very important for the moral of your people and for the confidence in the chapters in general. To avoid misunderstandings I'll try a translation to spanish at the end. I am neither a native spanish speaker but my spanish is much less wrong than my english.

I'm sorry but I can not agree with you. The good will of Wikimedia Argentina is beyond doubt. In addition they already have contacts with suppliers and experience in printing booklets so their budgets can be more accurate than yours.

I also must insist that you should identify the volunteers commited to carry on the activities. Consider that 60% of your budget is for printing booklets. These booklets may become obsolete as soon as the new WYSIWYG editor be ready. If you do not have the commitment of individual members of your organization to make these trips and this activities we run a clear risk of ending the year without having distributed those materials and finaly throwing them away because they become outdated. This situation can be specially meaningful for minoritary languages where finding volunteers can be more difficult.

Spanish

Siento no poder estar de acuerdo con ustedes. Wikimedia Argentina es una entidad en la que pueden depositar toda su confianza, su buena voluntad está fuera de toda duda. Además ya tienen contactos con proveedores y experiencia en imprimir folletos por lo que pueden obtener unos presupuestos más precisos que ustedes.

También debo insistir en que es necesario identificar a los voluntarios comprometidos en llevar a cabo las actividades. Tengan en cuenta que el 60% de su presupuesto es para material impreso. Estos materiales pueden quedar obsoletos tan pronto como esté listo el nuevo editor WYSIWYG. Si ustedes no disponen del compromiso de miembros concretos de su organización para hacer estos viajes y estas actividades, se corre un riesgo claro de que se demoren y de terminar el año sin haberlos distribuido. En circunstancias normales sería solo un retraso, pero actualmente pueden acabar teniendo que arojarlos a la basura por haber quedado obsoletos. Esta situación puede ser especialmente significativa en las lenguas minoritarias, donde encontrar voluntarios puede resultar más dificil.--Josepnogue 18:42, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for misunderstand from B1mbo's message. We have a good friends in Wikimedia Argentina and they helped us to make possible Wikimedia Chile, but the point about printed material, the cost to import to Chile is little expensive due customs services, especially in printed materials. Now I've a question, how can we say "hey Wikimedia Chile exists" if we don't have printed material?. In the past, we participate in FliSol with printed material (yes, with these cost) and the people recognize us. Wikimedia Argentina ever have the better disposal to help all chapters and chapters-to-be, but about the printed material, we don't trust in chilean and argentinian customs services (pe: for Wikipedia's 10th anniversary, Wikimedia Argentina can't receive their t-shirts and other stuff from WMF, because customs retain it due some taxes and local industries protection). Sorry for the extension (and bad english) ;). Superzerocool 00:27, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry if it my statement was misunderstood, we are not doubting in any minute of the goodwill of Wikimedia Argentina, especially after they have done a lot of things for us and we have worked in the past and currently. But as I said, we shouldn't put "all our eggs in one basket" and depend exclusively in the goodwill of WM-AR and the access to a market we don't have now. We don't have access to booklets at US$1 yet so we can't make a budget based on a theoretical price. Of course, we should look for the opportunity it it's possible but there are several issues as Superzerocool mentioned: taxes, customs, courier, etc. --B1mbo 01:40, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I would like to say that Wikimedia Chile can count on the support of Wikimedia Argentina for whatever they need. That has always been the case, and remains so. However, we should not underestimate the shipping costs (Buenos Aires is about 1400 kilometers away from Santiago) and the barriers or costs associated that may exist both for exporting from Argentina or to import to Chile. That said, if it is more convenient to print booklets or whatever is needed in Argentina, count on our help to do so. Regards, --Isha 15:02, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I have to second this point - will these booklets be obsoleted when the WYSIWYG editor is deployed? If so, the money may be better spent elsewhere, or it may just be a better idea to wait until after the new technology is introduced to design and print them. Craig Franklin 12:53, 22 January 2012 (UTC).

The problem is that we don't know yet when the WYSIWYG editor will be deployed. It was announced for this year, but it may not be ready. In fact, I've heard the idea of a WYSIWYG editor at least in the past five years. With that in mind, we can't wait till the WYSIWYG editor to be finally released to do our work as a chapter supporting the Wikimedia projects. --B1mbo 17:47, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Approval

This request is approved, except for the item for indigenous languages. Per our comments above, we remain unconvinced that the facts warrant spending any money on these languages in the interest of our educational mission. If an active Mapudungun or Rapa Nui community emerges, we are ready to reconsider supporting it. As it stands, when even the article on Mapudungun in the Mapudungun incubator is less than 20 words long, it seems there's no community to support, and spending money on printed material does not make sense at this point. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 01:27, 25 January 2012 (UTC)