Grants:Project/Rapid/LDTC Wikipedia Edit-a-thon Series

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Rapid Grants

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LDTC plans to host 4 edit-a-thons to expand current information on topics related to endangered languages and linguistics. We will target graduate students and native speakers.

targetWikipedia; linguistics, language

start dateSeptember 1

end dateSeptember 30

budget (local currency)$740

budget (USD)$740

grant typeIndividual

grantee• [[User:ldtchawaii.edu-|ldtchawaii.edu-]]

contact(s)• ldtc@hawaii.edu• ldtc.org

https://www.facebook.com/LDTC.UHM/

https://twitter.com/LDTC_Hawaii

website (if applicable)• ldtc.org

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Review your report

Please see the sample Editathon/Training application before drafting your application.

Project Goal

Choose one or more of the following goals. You can add or delete goals as needed.

1. Recruit new editors
2. Increase skills for existing editors
3. Add or improve content

Project Plan

Activities

Tell us how you'll carry out your project. Be sure to answer the following questions:

1. Are you doing one editathon or training or a series of editathons or trainings?

We are planning a series of edit-a-thons to be held during the months of September 2019, November 2019, January 2020, and March 2020 in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, USA. The in-person events for each editathon will take place in a coffee shop, at the campus library, or other suitable weekend venue. The in-person editathon will be about 4-5 hours on Saturday morning. However, each edit-a-thon will take place throughout the entire weekend, starting Friday afternoon and lasting until Sunday at midnight. Therefore, during this time, participants will be encouraged to edit Wikipedia at home as well as at the event. The in-person edit-a-thon event will include training for new editors, refreshments, and plenty of time for editors to work on several pages. At least one of the four edit-a-thons will be broadcast via Facebook Live to a community of over 300 people, many of whom have participated in our online language documentation training that occurred from January-March 2019 [1]. All edits throughout the weekend, both in-person and online, will be considered to be contributions to our edit-a-thon.</nowiki>

2. How will you let your community know about the event? Please paste links below to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions.

As we get closer to each event date, we will notify our community via Twitter [2] and Facebook [3] We will also submit announcements for the events to our website [4] the Linguistics departmental webpage [5] and distribute emails to the email listservs of related departments and of our wider community. We will target two major communities: graduate students in linguistics or a related field, and native speakers of other languages that have some linguistic training. We believe that Wikipedia editing is an important skill for graduate students to have since they are well-equipped to making quality edits to Wikipedia. We also see Wikipedia as a valuable resource for speakers of under-documented languages, who are experts in their language, to use in order to improve their language’s presence online. As such, we believe this professional development will be valuable for both parties.

3. Do you have experienced Wikimedia editors to lead the event?

Yes, we have several experienced editors to lead the event: Dannii Yarbrough [6], Ashleigh Surma [7], and others. Both users listed have led several edit-a-thons and have trained several dozen people. Additionally, we also have many students who have attended several edit-a-thons that LDTC has hosted in the past, who can edit on their own and help train new editors.

4. Do participants have the equipment or skills needed to participate and contribute high quality content? If not, how will you support them?

We expect many of the participants to have the equipment and skills needed. For those who do not have the skills, our experienced editors will be able to train them. For those who are unable to attend the in-person session, we will disseminate in-depth training materials created by Gretchen McCulloch [8] We will ask participants to bring their own laptops to the edit-a-thons. However, we will provide books and links to useful resources for editors. As a world class research institution, UH Mānoa has an extensive library collection of reference grammars and other language documentation materials, including the world’s foremost collection of published materials on the peoples and languages of the Pacific region. Our good relationship with library curators has been invaluable in the past for allowing us to provide a plethora of linguistic grammars and other source materials for our editors. For editors working at home or out-of-state, we will assure they have links to open-access materials.

5. How will you engage participants after the event(s)?

After every event, we will post on social media, sharing photos to show our appreciation to participants. Individuals who participate will be invited to continue participating in subsequent events. Further, because we plan to train participants in our language documentation training program to edit Wikipedia articles. Thus, even after the edit-a-thon, we will encourage participants to improve their language page as part of their training. One of the Language Documentation Training Center’s primary goals is to increase the online presence of endangered languages, so we will easily be able to incorporate Wikipedia into our larger training program. The Wikipedia pages edited during our events will be used during LDTC workshops as an example of public products that can be created as part of language documentation work. Finally, we hope that by giving speakers of under-documented languages an accessible way to document their language, they will be inspired to continue with this important work.

6. Is there anything else you want to tell us about this project?

We have successfully hosted seven edit-a-thons similar to this in the past, so we are confident that we will be able to continue to improve and expand our workshops. See [9] for activity reports.

Impact

How will you know if the project is successful and you've met your goals? Please include the following targets:

1. Number of events: 4
2. Number of participants: 30 unique individuals over the course of 4 events; 15 participants per event
3. Number of new editors: 10
4. Number of of articles created or improved: 20
5. Number of repeat participants (for projects that include a series of events): 10

Resources

What resources do you have? Include information on who is organizing the project, what they will do, and if you will receive support from anywhere else (in-kind donations or additional funding).

The directors of the Language Documentation Training Center will organize the project. They will advertise the event and secure the venue. The directors have access to a wide community of people through the university and on social media to which they can advertise. Further, several local business and the on-campus library have enthusiastically hosted LDTC edit-a-thons in the past and will be happy to work with the directors for future events. We do not expect support from anywhere else.

What resources do you need? For your funding request, list bullet points for each expense and include a total amount.

We need:

• Refreshments: $170 x 4 events = $700 (roughly enough for six catering platters and six assorted drinks from Foodland Farms https://shop.foodland.com/shop#!/?department_id=530762&page=3)
  • Platters: $19.99-$26.99
  • Assorted drinks: $1.99-$3.99
• Parking fees: $5/car for 8 cars =$40

Total: $740

Endorsements

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