Grants:Project/Rapid/VideoWiki/Community Engagement Workshop 2020

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".

Recruit new contributors to VidoeWiki project -- by training existing Wikimedians on using the tool
Create awareness about VideoWiki among five Indic language communities
Creating VideoWiki video-articles in various Indic languages

Project Plan edit

Activities edit

What is the purpose and focus of this project, and why is it important?

VideoWiki (also known as WikiVideo) (https://videowiki.wmflabs.org/en), a proposed sister site of Wikipedia, under the Wikimedia Foundation, aims to make Wikipedia more accessible by adding a visual component (“summary videos”) to Wikipedia. WMF has previously supported the initial technical development of project, through we are able to make ourselves sustainably on technological front to some extent. We have received funding from India’s leading non-profit tech incubator, N Core and also from philanthropic foundations, all of which have been used to significantly develop the tool. Several users largely on English Wikipedia have been using it to produce several articles, which can be seen in this category.
As the technical development goes on, we would like to now go on with introducing and helping non-English languages communities to use the tool. The power of VideoWiki lies in using for native languages, which have very less video content related crucial topics such as medicine. Since we are the very beginning, we would like to engage with communities in India, where the VideoWiki team is currently based in.
We have already started engaging with Wikimedians from several existing Wiki-communities in India, and the response has been positive. A very enthusiastic user from Odia, User:Subas Chandra Rout, has developed several articles already — they can be seen at this category.
All of our interactions have only been online and through personal connections. To kickstart the awareness and the usage of VideoWiki in non-English languages we would like to host a workshop for Wikimedians for 5-6 Wikimedians and train them on using the tool to produce videos in local languages.

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

A 3-day training event will be conducted (preferably by early February), to which Wikimedians from 5-6 Indian language Wikimedia communities and also Wikimedians local of the venue city (probably Bangalore) will be invited. We will be having one or two online orientation sessions before the main workshop. During the 3-day workshop, participants will be first introduced the vision of VideoWiki and how the project came into being. This will be followed by a training on the VideoWiki tool — participants will be given a complete demonstration of VideoWiki script writing and rendering videos from the scripts.
During the initial localisation steps of localisation, technical infrastructure such as templates needs to be setup on the local Wikis. It will be done during the workshop. After working on at least two videos each (during the workshop itself), we will take feedback regarding the working of VideoWiki tool in their language, and pass them to the technical developers. If time permits, we will have more hands-on practice of producing articles. Towards the end of the workshop, we will have conversations with the participants about further expansion in India and collect their thoughts on the strategy we should be adopting.

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?

Communities will be notified by detailing them about the purpose and scope of the workshop of selected communities. They will be asked to submit a detailed qualitative expression of interest to participate in the workshop, and decisions will be made based on their statement and previous work with Wikimedia. As these participants will more or less serve as the gateways of VideoWiki’s further work in respective communities, we will consider all possible factors before making a decision.

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

Participants will be experienced Wikimedians only. For this event, we won’t be focusing on bringing in completely new contributors — as it would be overwhelming for non Wikimedians to learn Wiki-editing, also simultaneously the VideoWiki tool. As participants would already be well versed with the Wiki-interface, it would be easy for them to learn and tool, and produce content. As Wikimedians they would know the value of inline citations and using reliable sources, and the same will be stressed while developing scripts.

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

VideoWiki will have its true usage when the videos produced are added to the respective mainspace articles of the Wikipedia, as done by articles of WikiProject Medicine on English Wikipedia. But to do this there needs to be a community discussion where community members can review of the quality of videos produced, and agree upon on adding videos to the mainspace articles. To start such discussion, there needs to 20-30 VideoWiki articles for the community review — so we will follow-up with the participants in this direction.

Impact edit

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:

Number of total participants: 10
Number of language communities to be represented: 5
Number of VideoWiki articles to be produced: 20

Resources edit

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).

User:KCVelaga (who organised several national outreach activities in India) along with User:Pratik.pks (founder of VideoWiki) will organise the event. If the event takes place in Bangalore we will consider taking support for CIS-A2K, if need be.

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

S.No	Expense description	Amount (INR) per unit	No. of units	Total (INR)
1	Travel of 5 Wikimedians from outside the host city	₹7,000.00	5	₹35,000.00
2	Travel of 1 Trainer	₹7,000.00	1	₹7,000.00
3	Local commutation and miscellaneous travel expenses for participants and trainers	₹2,500.00	12	₹30,000.00
4	Accommodation (3 rooms, 3 nights)	₹2,500.00	3 * 3 = 9	₹30,000.00
5	Food & Refreshments (12 people, 3 days)	₹1000.00	12 * 3 = 36	₹36,000.00
6	Contingency	--	--	₹6,000.00
Total		₹144,000.00 US$1941.88 (as of 06:00, 14 November 2019 (UTC))

Endorsements edit

Support The true potential of VideoWiki arises in developing countries such as India. Excited to see the progress on Indic languages. Pratik.pks (talk) 06:27, 14 November 2019 (UTC)