Grants talk:IEG/Accuracy Review of Wikipedias

Latest comment: 8 years ago by Mjohnson (WMF) in topic Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2015

Deadline is today: change status to proposed to submit edit

Shrutika719, in order to submit your proposal for review in this round, you must change your status from 'draft' to 'proposed.' Please do so by 9am Pacific Time tomorrow morning if your intention is to finish your draft and submit!

Warm regards, --Marti (WMF) (talk) 03:41, 30 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

Can't support edit

I'm sorry, but I cannot support any IEG where James Salsman is one of the primary mentors. I believe that his past posts on Wikimedia-l and elsewhere have shown that he does not grasp the mission of the Wikimedia movement well enough to guide you. I would highly encourage you to apply to Outreachy, GSoC, or one of WMF's other official internship programs if you'd like to pursue something like this further. Additionally, no relevant communities were notified of the proposal, and I hesitate to endorse $9000 in development costs from someone who has not published previous open source work (preferably work related to Wikimedia,) and who made errors of Wikisyntax in their grant proposal. WMF does take on a large number of tech interns each year - I would encourage you to apply to one of those programs where you would have a WMF mentor, rather than to try to get this done through an IEG with James as your mentor. Best, Kevin (talk) 18:58, 2 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

Just to provide some context, Shrutika719 is an explicit newcomer to our community, and she has basically followed what our process for outreach programs candidates and her potential mentor recommended. She asked me whether it was OK to present this project in Outreachy and IEG at the same time. I advised her to focus in one program, but I did also say that if she has the energy to push in both sides, there is nothing essentially wrong in trying. And she is trying, in good faith and with the best of her intentions. Guidance from other experienced community members will be really helpful for her. As per mistakes in wikitext, I also made many of these in my first weeks of wiki editor. The actual core skill required is programming, and maybe there is where she shines.  :)
Shrutika719, achieving an Outreachy internship is already complex (finding a project, mentors, microtasks...), and as you may start to suspect, getting an IEG is not a walk in the park either. I encourage you again to focus in one program.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 19:42, 2 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
Like Quim, I'd encourage you to focus on achieving an Outreachy internship, especially since it'd give you an explciitly WMF member, which would likely make your project run far more smoothly :) Kevin (talk) 21:10, 2 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

Community notifications edit

Hi Shrutika. Thanks for submitting your proposal to build a bot to detect instances of outdated information in article content. I wanted to alert you to consider notifying some communities who may be interested or may benefit from the tools you are planning to build. For starters, you may want to send an e-mail to the Mediawiki-l mailing list describing this project and requesting some feedback. You can also consider engaging editors on community portals on Wikipedia projects, such as on hi:विकिपीडिया:चौपाल on the Hindi Wikipedia, or the Village Pump on English Wikipedia. If there are other languages you can contribute in, let me know, and I can easily point you where you can alert those communities. Once you've made some notifications, you can link to those notices under the Community notifications section of the grant page. Thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:02, 7 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2015 edit

 

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2015 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 2 2015 begins on 20 October 2015, and grants will be announced in December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

Marti (WMF) (talk) 17:37, 19 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Accuracy Review of Wikipedias edit

Scoring criteria (see the rubric for background) Score
1=weak alignment 10=strong alignment
(A) Impact potential
  • Does it fit with Wikimedia's strategic priorities?
  • Does it have potential for online impact?
  • Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?
6.6
(B) Innovation and learning
  • Does it take an Innovative approach to solving a key problem?
  • Is the potential impact greater than the risks?
  • Can we measure success?
4.3
(C) Ability to execute
  • Can the scope be accomplished in 6 months?
  • How realistic/efficient is the budget?
  • Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?
3.4
(D) Community engagement
  • Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often?
  • Does it have community support?
  • Does it support diversity?
3.1
Comments from the committee:
  • This is part of our core mission: to display accurate, updated information. Many articles on the English Wikipedia (for example) are still based on their Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 original seed info. However, I think this submission is still too incomplete to tell what its impact might be. Marking out-of-date articles is not sufficient unless funneled to editors with 1) an interest in those pages and 2) a method to fix the outdated information (links to Wikidata references perhaps?).
  • A tool for identifying out-of-date information in Wikipedia articles would have significant positive impact for both research and as a mechanism to feed on-wiki workflows.
  • The idea of directing articles into work queues is not new and is used heavily in both the DYK workflow and the AfC workflow. Currently the number of contributors in those projects are quite low, but the DYK team attracts a lot of page views (they control a piece of the "front page" of English Wikipedia), and the AfC team is working on an "editor retention" project.
  • It is not clear who the target community will be for this project and whether anyone will do the work once this has been built.
  • In principle, a tool capable of detecting out-of-date information on Wikipedia would be a tremendously innovative and high-impact development. However, the applicant has not provided sufficient information in the proposal about their experience and skills in this area (particularly in regard to the theoretical underpinnings of the software they intend to develop). No existing research has been referenced in the proposal that would be suitable as a basis for developing the software.
  • Risk is too great.
  • The wiki-syntax in the proposal suggests the applicants are not familiar with it.
  • No former experience in the projects
  • There does not appear to be any budget or plan for conducting the preliminary research that would be necessary to construct an accuracy evaluation tool.
  • The budget doesn't seem efficient for someone in this region with this level of experience.
  • This is an Outreachy proposal, and Outreachy proposals usually require a technically proficient mentor who is already well known in the technical community to help the student take their proposal forward. I do not think this matches the standards required.
  • There is no indication of community engagement or support. Further, the applicant is mentored by an individual who has a negative reputation within the community.

Round 2 2015 decision edit

 

This project has not been selected for an Individual Engagement Grant at this time.

We love that you took the chance to creatively improve the Wikimedia movement. The committee has reviewed this proposal and not recommended it for funding, but we hope you'll continue to engage in the program. Please drop by the IdeaLab to share and refine future ideas!

Comments regarding this decision:
A tool capable of detecting out-of-date information on Wikipedia would be a tremendously innovative and high-impact development. However, we would appreciate your return to IEG with a developed budget in any future ideas you may have, as well as more information involving the research and expertise needed to accomplish your project.

Next steps:

  1. Review the feedback provided on your proposal and to ask for any clarifications you need using this talk page.
  2. Visit the IdeaLab to continue developing this idea and share any new ideas you may have.
  3. To reapply with this project in the future, please make updates based on the feedback provided in this round before resubmitting it for review in a new round.
  4. Check the schedule for the next open call to submit proposals - we look forward to helping you apply for a grant in a future round.
Questions? Contact us.
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