Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Extending Cite Unseen (ID: 22766380)
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Applicant Details
edit- Main Wikimedia username. (required)
SuperHamster
- Organization
N/A
- If you are a group or organization leader, board member, president, executive director, or staff member at any Wikimedia group, affiliate, or Wikimedia Foundation, you are required to self-identify and present all roles. (required)
I'm a board member or president of a Wikimedia Affiliate or mission-allied organization., I'm a group leader of a Wikimedia User Group (submitted to the Affiliation Committee).
- Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)
I am on the Board of Directors for Wikimedia District of Columbia. I am also a group leader for the Ohio Wikimedians User Group. This grant is for a software development project outside of the scope of these organizations and my roles in them.
Main Proposal
edit- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.
Extending Cite Unseen
- 2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.
2025-01-01 - 2025-05-31
- 4. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
United States of America
- 5. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign, project, or event? If so, please select the relevant project or campaign. (required)
Not applicable
- 6. What is the change you are trying to bring? What are the main challenges or problems you are trying to solve? Describe this change or challenges, as well as main approaches to achieve it. (required)
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Wikipedia is built on citations, and a lengthy article can have hundreds of them. A standard Wikipedia citation will include basic metadata such as author, title, publication, and date. However, there is often little else to indicate the nature or reliability of the source. The English Wikipedia, for example, maintains an extensive list of perennially discussed sources and their reliability, but this data is not natively surfaced in the UI when viewing a list of citations. There are other interesting and important indicators to consider, such as whether the New York Times article being cited is a news article or opinion piece, or whether the cited article is sponsored by an external party. These sort of classifiers provide important context and can even help indicate the reliability of a source, but these details are not readily surfaced in our existing citation system.
Enter Cite Unseen, an open source user script on the English Wikipedia that adds categorical icons to Wikipedia citations to provide readers and editors a quick initial evaluation of citations at a glance. This helps guide users on the nature and reliability of sources, and to help identify sources that may potentially be problematic or should be used with caution.
Cite Unseen was initially developed at the CredCon hackathon in November 2018, jointly created by Kevin Payravi (SuperHamster) and Josh Lim (Sky Harbor), with support from the Credibility Coalition and the Knowledge Graph Working Group. The project won the CredCon hackathon and received funding to continue development at the Wikimedia Hackathon 2019.
Cite Unseen's categorization dataset currently holds over 3,400 domains in 20 categories. These categories include:
- Perennial sources list statuses (generally reliable; marginally reliable; generally unreliable; deprecated; blacklisted)
- Advocacy groups; books; blogs; user-generated news; editable sites; state media; news; opinion pieces; press releases; satire; social media sites; sponsored articles; tabloids; and TV and radio programs
- Predatory journals listed on the predatory source list
Out of the 1000+ tracked user scripts on the English Wikipedia, Cite Unseen is the 58th most-installed with 379 users (186 who are currently active).
Since the Wikimedia Hackathon in 2019, Cite Unseen has only seen incremental development and feature development. There is an appetite for this tool and a need to expand with new features. Through talking to users throughout the users online and at Wikimedia events, I've realized the following needs:
- A need to port the script to other language versions of Wikipedia
- A need to expand the sources list, particularly to cover non-English sources
- A need to make it easier for users to submit categories for domains
- A need to keep semi-automated lists of domains up to date
- A need to make it easier for users to configure their settings for the script
- A need to promote the script and do outreach to gather quality feedback
This grant request is to fund software development efforts to address these needs.
- 7. What are the planned activities? (required) Please provide a list of main activities. You can also add a link to the public page for your project where details about your project can be found. Alternatively, you can upload a timeline document. When the activities include partnerships, include details about your partners and planned partnerships.
To address the needs above, these are the planned new features as part of this grant:
- Semi-automated flows to keep source lists up-to-date.
- Some of the existing categories of tracked sources, such as advocacy groups, were originally created by crawling through Wikipedia's categories for advocacy groups and extracting official links. Since these initial scrapes, these lists have largely been static other than for a few one-off additions. The goal is to create an automated flow to periodically re-generate these lists and merge them in after manual review, to ensure that these lists are kept up-to-date.
- Allow annotations on categorized domains.
- Currently, when a domain is added to a category, there is no additional metadata attached, such as explaining why that domain was added to that category. The goal is to enhance our database (currently just a massive JSON file) to hold these sort of notes.
- Allow users to easily recommend adding a domain to a category right from an article's references list.
- Currently, if a user wants to recommend that a domain be added to a category, they either leave a message on the user script talk page, or submit a code change through the script's GitHub repository. This is a relatively slow process that most users don't want to go through. The goal will be to update the script to add an intuitive way for users to submit domain categorization recommendations right from an article's references list. The design has to be finalized, but it would look something like a "+" button next to each citation; once clicked, a modal appears allowing the user to select what categories the citation should be a part of, and submitting that for review without ever having to leave the article.
- Add a UI for changing a user's custom settings.
- Cite Unseen is quite configurable, allowing users to add or ignore domains per category, and to hide or display certain categorical icons. This configuration, however, requires maintaining a custom JSON file, which is not an ideal experience. The goal will be an intuitive UI that allows the user to manage and change their configurations, instead of having to manually adjust a JSON file.
- Internationalize and port the script to more language versions of Wikipedia
- An open-source tool such as TranslateWiki or Weblate will be used to facilitate translating into many languages.
- Collaborate with non-English speakers to expand sources lists
- Cite Unseen's sources lists is maintained primarily by English speakers and includes the English Wikipedia's perennial sources list. When we port Cite Unseen to other language versions of Wikipedia, there will be a large gap in the categorized sources. This effort will be to collaborate with non-English speakers to populate the sources lists. The initial focus will be the largest language versions of Wikipedia, and the language versions that have Wikimedia affiliates who can collaborate on this project.
In addition to the above tasks, this grant project will also include outreach invite more users to try Cite Unseen. This can include outreach on various WikiProjects and social groups (including Wikimedia groups on Discord and Telegram), as well as at conferences and other Wikimedia events.
- 8. Describe your team. Please provide their roles, Wikimedia Usernames and other details. (required) Include more details of the team, including their roles, usernames, Wikimedia group, and whether they are salaried, volunteers, consultants/contractors, etc. Team members involved in the grant application need to be aware of their involvement in the project.
Kevin Payravi (User:SuperHamster) has been a volunteer Wikipedia editor since 2007 and works as a professional software developer. In addition to day-to-day editing, Kevin has developed a number of open-source wiki-related tools, including User:SuperHamster/CiteUnseen, View it!, and Indie Wiki Buddy. Kevin also serves on the Board of Wikimedia DC and as an organizer for the Ohio Wikimedians User Group. Kevin will be the primary developer on this grant and recipient of the funds.
Jake Orlowitz (User:Ocaasi), founder of the Wikipedia Library and active on a number of credibility-related projects, can serve as an advisor for the project and assist in public interfacing and outreach.
- 9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities? (required)
From the get go, Cite Unseen's existing 180+ active users are the target audience for this project. As features are being designed and developed, users will be kept informed of the changes and asked to provide feedback. Cite Unseen has a mailing list of its users that can be mass-messaged when significant features have been released.
As part of this project, I plan to grow Cite Unseen's user base, primarily via outreach on various WikiProjects and social groups (including Wikimedia groups on Discord and Telegram), as well as at conferences and other Wikimedia events. When Cite Unseen is ported to other language versions of Wikipedia, that will naturally attract an influx of new users and feedback.
- 10. Does your project involve work with children or youth? (required)
No
- 10.1. Please provide a link to your Youth Safety Policy. (required) If the proposal indicates direct contact with children or youth, you are required to outline compliance with international and local laws for working with children and youth, and provide a youth safety policy aligned with these laws. Read more here.
N/A
- 11. How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community.
This grant proposal is based on years of gathering feedback from users via the script's talk page, as well as discussing with users at various in-person events such as WikiConference North America (see 2019 program submission) and Media Party 2019 in Buenos Aires. Kevin has also worked with and discussed new features with the Wikidata WikiProject Source Reliability group, which hosts regular calls to discuss reliable sources and the tooling surround them.
- 12. Does your proposal aim to work to bridge any of the content knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Language
- 13. Does your proposal include any of these areas or thematic focus? Select one option that most applies to your work. (required)
Open Technology
- 14. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Linguistic / Language
- 15. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select one that most applies. (required)
Improve User Experience
Learning and metrics
edit- 17. What do you hope to learn from your work in this project or proposal? (required)
- How much interest do other language versions of Wikipedia have in Cite Unseen? Which languages have the most interest and can provide the most support in terms of helping to categorize sources?
- Do perennially discussed sources have different reliability ratings across different language versions of Wikipedia? How do we reconcile these differences?
- Are there new categories that other language versions of Wikipedia need?
- 18. What are your Wikimedia project targets in numbers (metrics)? (required)
| Other Metrics | Target | Optional description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 500 | At the time of this proposal submission, we had roughly ~180 active users on the English Wikipedia. Through the outreach and new features this grant includes, the goal is to get Cite Unseen to at least 300 active users on all language versions of Wikipedia that will support Cite Useen. |
| Number of editors | 0 | N/A |
| Number of organizers | 2 | Kevin (as primary developer) and Jake as advisor and outreach. |
| Wikimedia project | Number of content created or improved |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | |
| Wikimedia Commons | |
| Wikidata | |
| Wiktionary | |
| Wikisource | |
| Wikimedia Incubator | |
| Translatewiki | |
| MediaWiki | |
| Wikiquote | |
| Wikivoyage | |
| Wikibooks | |
| Wikiversity | |
| Wikinews | |
| Wikispecies | |
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
- Optional description for content contributions.
N/A
- 19. Do you have any other project targets in numbers (metrics)? (optional)
No
| Main Open Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
- 20. What tools would you use to measure each metrics? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support. (required)
For script usage on the English Wikipedia, there is a bot-maintained "most imported scripts" page that can be used to monitor installations over time.
For global script usage, the Global Search tool can be used to search for instances of users importing Cite Unseen.
Financial proposal
edit- 21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1H8mQL6QnnzeJZaAGCEWFUOLIqiiIbgYwzGw5Viz2EbY/edit?usp=sharing
- 22. and 22.1. What is the amount you are requesting for this proposal? Please provide the amount in your local currency. (required)
5000 USD
- 22.2. Convert the amount requested into USD using the Oanda converter. This is done only to help you assess the USD equivalent of the requested amount. Your request should be between 500 - 5,000 USD.
5000 USD
- We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
Yes
Endorsements and Feedback
editPlease add endorsements and feedback to the grant discussion page only. Endorsements added here will be removed automatically.
Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:
- Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
- Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
- Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
- Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
- Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).