Grants:Project/Rapid/Pine/Continuation of educational video and website series

statusFunded

Rapid Grants

Pine/Continuation of educational video and website series

Pine requesting funding to continue, with some modifications, the program that was previously called the LearnWiki project.

targetInitially, English Wikipedia and other languages that use VisualEditor referencing in English. This grant will fund development of a single module of a much larger program with numerous modules. In the scope of the larger progam Pine would like for there to be translations available to non-English languages, using Pine's time and/or the time of volunteers, and future modules may also cover topics for other Wikimedia sites like Commons and Wikidata.

start dateJanuary 14, 2019

end dateEstimated at two months after the start date. The start date is not yet fixed, per comments above. If someone was working on this full time then they could probably finish this mini-project within two weeks of the start date.

budget (local currency)US$2000

budget (USD)US$2000

grant typeIndividual

grantee• Pine

contact(s)• Please email User:Pine using the "email this user" feature• There will be no secondary contact.

website (if applicable)• Not applicable at this time

friendly space expectations

ucc

privacystatement

Review your report

Project Goal

Briefly explain what are you trying to accomplish with this project, or what do you expect will change as a result of this grant. Example goals include, "recruit new editors", "add high quality content", or "train existing editors on a specific skill".

Introduction

• The goal of this grant is to make incremental progress on the program that Pine previously called LearnWiki, which aims to train editors on a variety of subjects including the use of VisualEditor, copyright considerations, and the Five Pillars. The goals include:

• Increasing retention, productivity, and morale of new contributors by reducing the steepness of the learning curve for Wikimedia skills;
• Increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of helpers, such as helpers in the English Wikipedia Teahouse and #wikipedia-en-help, by allowing the helpers to refer newbies to the modules of this program to learn information in a way that requires less time and effort for the helpers.

A few explanatory notes

• The goals of the larger program as originally scoped are largely intact, but completing the many modules of the program as it was originally scoped will require far more time and budget than Pine requested in the previous Individual Engagement Grant. This Rapid Grant will pilot the development of a single module, leading to both (1) a usable single module of the larger program and (2) the testing of the module development process, which will produce valuable information about the development process. If this program continues with future funding then the information that is gathered from the piloting of the process will be used to refine the development process for future modules.
• Interface and policy changes happen periodically which may result in modules needing to be updated in the future. Pine is trying to create modules in a way that makes modifying them an updating them relatively easy, although by its nature editing video often requires nontrivial effort with current software and hardware tools.
• The term "project" as used here should refer to this single module. The term "program" refers to the much larger scope of work, with numerous modules, of which this module is an element.

The goal of this specific grant

The goal of this $2000 mini-project is to create and complete a single module from start to finish, specifically the module regarding English Wikipedia references that was originally discussed here (link to original LearnWiki script outline). In addition to the output of the module content, this rapid grant will fund a valuable test of the process for creating a complete module, providing information about time and budget required, and the effectiveness of the module development process including communications with English Wikipedians.

Both the content of the module output and information from the testing of the process are outputs from this mini-project. The collection and reporting of information about the development process is very important.

Project Plan

Activities

Tell us how you'll carry out your project. What will you and other organizers spend your time doing?

Please see the "Project goal" section above. If there are additional questions about how time will be used, Pine will be glad to reply.

How will you let others in your community know about your project (please provide links to where relevant communities have been notified of your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions)? Why are you targeting a specific audience?

• The original LearnWiki project was well publicized. Information was sent to Wikipedias in multiple languages and to mailing lists. If this grant is approved then Pine will return to those locations to provide an update regarding the new funding for the project again post notices to multiple locations, primarily English Wikipedia, Meta, mailing lists, and to a lesser extent Commons (because this initial tutorial does not cover a topic that is relevant to Commons, but future tutorials may), and Spanish Wikipedia (because Pine is less certain that within the $2000 budget there will be sufficient funds to make a Spanish language version of the tutorial, but Pine would like to do so if there is sufficient remaining budget after creating the English language version and if WMF approves).

For the original LearnWiki project, in addition to notices that were placed on Commons, Meta, Outreach, English Wikipedia, and mailing lists, here are others:

• Asturian Wikipedia: https://ast.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Uiquipedia:Chigre&diff=prev&oldid=992082
• Spanish Wikipedia: https://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Caf%C3%A9/Archivo/Noticias/Actual&diff=prev&oldid=88719580
• Ukrainian Wikipedia: https://uk.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D0%92%D1%96%D0%BA%D1%96%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%96%D1%8F:%D0%9A%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BF%D0%B0_(%D1%80%D1%96%D0%B7%D0%BD%D0%B5)&diff=prev&oldid=17495124

Additional notices may have been placed by translators.

What will you have done at the end of your project? How will you follow-up with people that are involved with your project?

• Please see the "Project Goal" section. Please ask any questions about this on the talk page.

Impact

How will you know if the project is successful and you've met your goals? Please include the following targets and feel free to add more specific to your project:

1. Number of total participants
2. Number of articles created or improved (if applicable)
3. Number of photos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (if applicable)
4. Number of photos used on Wikimedia projects (if applicable)

This is not an edit-a-thon or campaign where the above metrics are easily tracked. It would be difficult to say with certainty that because a user watched a video they were able to improve an article, although it might be possible to use analytics to determine that users who watch the videos or read the Additional Materials website are more successful at creating content. The goals for this specific module are to achieve the following within 30 days of publication of the video to English Wikipedia:

1. 200 views (in the longer term the video will likely get thousands of views if people find it to be helpful);
2. Generally positive feedback to be left on relevant talk pages regarding the usefulness of the video for content contributors, and generally more positive feedback than negative feedback;
3. Translation of the video subtitles into at least two additional languages, possibly by volunteers. Pine would consider this to be a significant sign that contributors in non-English languages feel that the videos are valuable. Pine may have enough skill with Spanish to do a Spanish translation, and if there is unused funding in the $2000 grant then Pine may consult with WMF regarding using that funding a the Spanish translation;
4. "Organic" sharing of the video, beyond the sharing that Pine does.

Resources

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

The organizer of this project is User:Pine. At this time there are no plans for anyone else to work on the project, but Pine plans to re-engage with volunteer translators to ask them for their advice about the draft scripts and to ask them to translate the video subtitles after the videos are published.

What resources do you need? For your funding request, list bullet points for each expense:

• Pine bill at at $30 per hour, which is the same rate as in the previous Individual Engagement Grant. Pine estimates that this single module will cost $1500 total, but requests a $2000 grant so that there is a $500 contingency. Unspent funds will be discussed with WMF; these may be used for Pine making Spanish subtitles, some other related work on which Pine and WMF agree, and/or returned to WMF after the completion of the work that is funded with this grant.

• Estimated breakdown of hours:

• 4 for communications prior to script development;
• 12 for script development including communications with content contributors regarding the script;
• 20 for video production including processing time. Processing time includes time spent encoding and uploading;
• 7 hours for Additional Materials (information that is on web pages and complements the video);
• 7 for publication, communications, and reporting after production.

• Notes regarding the budget

• If future modules are funded then Pine anticipates that the process will become more efficient, and that the amount of time spent on communications on a per-module basis will decrease;
• There are multiple possible ways to handle the billing for processing time. Pine's plan is that:

• If Pine does other grant-related work during encoding and uploading time then Pine will bill at the normal rate;
• If Pine spends nontrivial time doing activities which are unrelated to the grant during encoding and uploading time then Pine will bill nothing for that time.

• Reminder: this grant request is for the development of a single module. The entire project would cost far more than $2000 to complete. If a single person works on this program then that person (at present, only Pine) would have enough work to keep them busy for a full time job.

Endorsements

1.  Support I have known Pine through in-person and online wiki projects since about 2010. He carefully documents what he does and is excellent at seeking community feedback. In this project he is proposed to develop wiki community infrastructure which is tedious for any volunteer to make, which is why the learning resources he is describing do not already exist. There still are no popular Wikimedia educational videos. Anyone like Pine who would attempt to make them is likely to get some viewership and advance the conversation about what makes a really successful, really useful video. I would like to see lots of people do experiments with educational videos because the demand for video tutorial has been very high for years and as a movement we neither are meeting this demand nor are we making solid plans to meet this demand. This project requests a small budget to fund someone to do the administrative labor of compiling and remixing the information we already have in a video that is more thoughtfully composed that what we could expect of volunteers. I want to see this happen. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:59, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

   I continue to support this after revision. Video in general is expensive, we need more, and this program promises a lot at lower cost than the other options. Any precedent for more Wikimedia video tutorials is useful. Wikimedia is underrepresented in video. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:08, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

2.  Support This is something that is urgently needed, along with other issues that need to be addressed to better inform new users not only how to edit , but what kind of content is acceptable. I have been familiar with Pine's work for many years - this is a project than can be realised by someone with his experience of developing such material, and most importantly, who fully understands Wikipedia and what is required. Kudpung (talk) 07:18, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
3.  Support This is an idea that can work. We've tried many things before. It would be great to suggest to visitors to the en:Teahouse that they take a look at such videos. We should expect to receive a lot of criticism because productions weren't done the right way. I don't think that should impede this project. We should expect critics and thank others for their input. I would like to see this work for those who also contribute to the Simple Wikipedia. I will leave more comments on the talk page. Barbara (WVS) (talk) 21:52, 29 August 2018 (UTC)
4.  Support --Alaa :)..! 19:18, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
5.  Support --Atlasowa (talk) 20:58, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
6.  Support -- Nabin K. Sapkota (talk) 06:54, 21 April 2019 (UTC)