Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2015-2016 round1/Wikimedia Israel/Proposal form

Missing overview

@לסטר: Michal, please add WMIL's overview, one or two sentences for the purposes of community review. Thanks! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 20:00, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Winifred. I linked to the overview chepter in the Proposal form. Michal לסטר (talk) 10:36, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

OK, Michal ! Let me know if what I put in the summary template works for you. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 02:42, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Access to annual plan 2016

@לסטר: Michal, I can't follow the external link to the annual plan 2016 provided here. Can you please double check to make sure it's publicly accessible? Thanks! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 04:34, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you Winifred. I believe that the problem was solved. However if you still face problems with accessing the file please inform us. Best, --Shai-WMIL (talk) 07:20, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Shai! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 18:15, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Comments and praise

In general I like your plan. It is clear you build on earlier experience and thta you understand the issue of Golas and targets. Comments

• Table 2 last column should be on total number not just the delta beteeen Sept 1 and year end
• Education. You talk of support for education on both Uni level and ?secondary? school. From other chapters experinces I am familiar and comfortable with teh support for Uni level but have often seen the efficience on supportprogram on lower leels less efficient. can you elaborate on how you look at support for these two educationlevels?

We provide support both for programming in high schools (mostly working with gifted students' classes) and with students. The reason we do that is because we feel that there's a better chance to transform school pupils into long-term wikipedians (they have more time for "extra-curricular" activities, and less income worries, for instance). Our academic work is focused more on the academic quality of content, and (in the next few years) on scaling up our efforts, to make "wiki-academic" assignments a regular sight in the academia, without the need for intensive involvement from our volunteers and staff. We are able to do that, quite frankly, because we've become very professional in running both types of programs.

• Training. I have no problem with this program but wonder if nothing like this has alreday been done, (as has happened in many other chapters).

Yes, there are similar programs (one is "training the trainers" in the UK) and we're trying not to re-invent the wheel...

• the layout you have used made the reading and grasping of you plan a bit hard. I would prefer if you can use a someone more standarsized next year

Anders Wennersten (talk) 15:54, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Can you be more specific?

Hi Anders Wennersten, Thank you for the feedback! I've answered some of your questions - answers are intertwined with your comments. Best, Alleycat80 (talk) 11:13, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Thnaks for your answers thta make the issues I brought up clearer to me. The comment on layout was not really an issue more a personal comment. The many inlcuded "boxes" in the text disturbed my reading.Anders Wennersten (talk) 05:25, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

questions from FDC staff

Thank you, friends and colleagues, for submitting this proposal. The FDC staff have reviewed it, and we have some questions. Please let me know if any of them is unclear! Thank you for your time in responding to these. KLove (WMF) (talk) 22:10, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks לסטר for your answers! KLove (WMF) (talk) 05:28, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Program questions

• Community Support: What is the intended outcome of the many face-to-face gatherings you are planning, and how does tightening bonds contribute to engagement? Do you monitor the participants to see if their contributions continue or increase?

Face-to-face meetings are good for building the community by creation and strengthening of social ties, which would lead to cooperation and improving the atmosphere in the virtual space. In-person meeting quickly can clear obstacles and misunderstandings, and this is a good way to get volunteers that are not that active currently more involved.

We are not following the activities of the participants apart from activities related to the meeting, because in most cases they have been active editors before the meeting.

• Can you share more about the legal aid you provide to Wikipedians? Do you contract a lawyer for these efforts or work with the WMF legal team, or are you providing informal advice?

WMIL provides legal aid in all the forms that are mentioned: By consulting a lawyer (volunteer), reaching out to WMF legal team or providing informal advice and support.

• We understand you plan to use the Hackathon to build an active community of MediaWiki developers in Israel. Can you explain what kind of support you will offer to the participants after the initial Hackathon, beyond hosting a gathering one month out?

WMIL has extensive ties with the open source community that will support, if needed, with mentors and technical help.

• Who will have be overseeing the pilot in academic institutions program?

The Education & Instruction Coordinator and the ED will be overseeing the pilot in academic institutions program.

Budget questions

• We will need a more detailed budget with expenses by line items. You may submit a copy of this privately, if you can’t share the details at that level publicly.

budget

• Can you explain why you plan to use your reserves for the Hackathon, rather than the grant funds you intend to raise?

We are using our reserves because want to share the costs of the hackathon using what resources we have, so we are raising external funding (we have raised about 30,000$ to this point), and if we can raise additional large sums, we might not need to resort to using our full reserves, but we do want to dedicate this sum to funding the hackathon in the case we can't manage to raise enough external resources.

Many thanks, KLove (WMF) (talk) 22:10, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Michal Lester לסטר (talk) 09:14, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Questions from FDC members

• You have attached a Logic Model diagram to the Education (gifted students) and Training sections, but not to the Community Support section. Do you have this 'who, what, when, where [and most importantly] why', in particular for the sections relating to WikiSource and Wiktionary? Wittylama (talk) 09:17, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

One of the roles of the Wikimedia Israel is to support all Wikimedia initiatives communities (This is my answer to WHY).

WikiSource Community support currently focused on community needs, and is reactive and not proactive. The Community coordinator is the contact person. She invites them to WMIL’s events and updates the community regarding international events like the WikiSource Conference. From time to time, (usually once a month or more often) the volunteers contact her for help with sourcing public domain materials from libraries and archives, and she helps them to get materials.

In the coming year we upgrade our support with Wiktionary community to help it gain new editors and to strengthen their sense of community in order to create more content and improve its community atmosphere.

• There are a couple of numbers that look like mistakes:
  • in the "Financials for the current funding period" table, the projected revenues are 2/3 order of magnitude lower than revenues as of September. Are you only counting the additional revenues expected in the last months of the year? If this is the case, it is inconsistent with other usages (including the expeses row).

We are very pleased to report that by 1 September 2015 revenues indeed almost reached the projected sum for the complete calendar year. The anticipated revenues for the 4th quarter are very minimal but we are continuing efforts to raise funds. Projected expenses is composed from: 676,840 (Actual expenses, until 1 September 2015) + 257,000 (Projected expenses, from 1 September 2015) = 933,840.

• • in the global metrics, individuals involved (c) should at least equal newly registered users (a) plus active editors (b). However:
    • in the Training section you list 1000 newly registered users (a), 17 active editors (b) and 717 individuals (c).

The numbers were crossed. 1000 of individuals involved. 700 newly registered users. We estimate that some of the individuals will not become newly registered users.

• • • similarly, in the "Wikimedia initiatives - Community support" section: 495 (a) + 91 (b) > 541 (c)

Sorry! typo mistakes. It should be 586 of individuals involved.

-Laurentius (talk) 19:32, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks for providing also 2015 numbers in the global metrics tables. But do than numbers refers to actual results as of September or end-year projections? - Laurentius (talk) 19:32, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

This is an accurate estimation, based on our experience

• You are diffentiating between "contributors" and "editors". What are the definitions of "contributor" and "editor"? - Laurentius (talk) 19:32, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Editors: Editor in HEWP is anyone who has voting rights or is very active. I would say that WMF definition to very active editor fits.

Contributors: We detect two main groups in the contributors:

Newbies are those who edit for less than a year (31%)

Contributors are those who edit for two years and over (53%) for two to four hours per week (41.5%) .

We find contributors group a new target audience for WMIL activities. It is an evasive group, they don't active in the village pump or come to the social gatherings. We'll have to find new ways to reach them. The next step will be to run a 2nd survey only to them.

• I note that one of your goals for addressing the gender gap is photographing women in their workplace. Are there any specific cultural challenges involved in this project? How do you deal with the minority of Hebrew-speaking readers for whom images of women are controversial? (This is more a curiosity question, and I do not foresee it having any effect on the decision made by the FDC.) Risker (talk) 03:20, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

I got the idea at the Wikiwomen lunch in Wikimania Mexico. There are lack of present-day images of women in their workplace. We think it a great way to encourage more female school students to contribute to Wikipedia. There is no specific cultural challenges involved in this project beyond the “regular” gender gap.

Michal לסטר (talk) 12:49, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Corrections to global metrics targets

לסטר, would you please correct the mistakes in your global metrics targets for individuals involved discussed here on this page using strikethrough? These changes are approved. Thank you! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 18:23, 28 October 2015 (UTC) Done. Thank you. Michal לסטר (talk) 10:24, 29 October 2015 (UTC)