Grants talk:IEG/Elaborate Wikisource strategic vision/Final

Report and quote!

Great report! Thanks for sharing so many great lessons - I see a lot of learning patterns in here that would be great to capture for wider dissemination :) One of these patterns I noticed is around how to use surveys to collect information. I really appreciate your reflection on the usefulness of Qualtrics. That's really helpful for us (at WMF) because we have wondered if it is worth offering such tools - this is a great user story! In fact, it is so great that I took a quote from your reflections piece and plugged it into the Qualtrics overview page that was recently put together! Thanks again for all the hard work. Looking forward to hearing more from the two of you in the future. (And if you are interested in building out some of the learning patterns, we are having a hackathon next week to do so as a group!) Jwild (talk) 23:59, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Report accepted, with comments :)

Hi guys, Congratulations on completing this 6+ months of advocating, organizing, and communicating about Wikisource! I'm really impressed with what you accomplished, and think you guys should feel very proud :) Some specific feedback/comments:

• Wikidata books taskforce - this seems like a large and tangible move towards one of your key goals, and very worth celebrating :)
• It is great to see the numbers about posts/month for the Wikisource mailing list. Should be interesting to see how sustainable that activity is for volunteers over time.
• Thanks in general for your thoughtfulness about the future of WCUG and your ultimate goal to sustain these projects regardless of your own levels of participation. This is a common issue for community organizing, and I can see you've done what you can to lay the groundwork for sustainability. I do wonder, a bit, whether it is within reach at this point, or whether further incubation is needed (and maybe you wonder this too!).
• Congratulations on exceeding many of your measures of success, particularly around participation. As for the goals, it seems many of them will take more than 6 months, and I'd guess that in a movement of this size, with so many collaborative processes and big dreams, that is somewhat to be expected. Do you expect the new Wikisource user group will be able to lead towards accomplishing the goals the rest of the way? If so, what resources might this group need?
• In terms of your "yet to improve": the Wikimania scholarships open call for applications will begin soon. I'd suggest that you encourage Wikisourcers to apply, and that the WCUG also consider organizing a Wikisource meetup there - seems like a great idea to gather folks internationally!
• Thanks for the long list of project resources - you guys are really prolific :)
• The OCR software request from the survey seems like an interesting idea to flag - I wonder if the WCUG might explore something like this further?
• What else do you think the user group or community in general might do with the survey results? I'm curious to hear what most surprised you in those results, or what you think shows the way for the future most obviously.
• About a future IEG: Let's have a call in early January to discuss further. I'm curious to know if you'd want us to consider a renewal 6 months for this project, based on wanting to move anything forward towards increased sustainability as a result of what you've learned from the survey etc, or if you think it will make more sense for the WCUG to seek an organizational Project and Events Grant, or to see if other Wikisourcers may want to pick up where you left off by applying for an IEG for a different scope in a future round. Perhaps there is no future need for funding, but if you do see some need, I think we'd be happy to see momentum continue.
• I'm marking this report accepted now, which means we'll need the remaining funds returned to WMF within 3 weeks - that would be Jan 13 - if you aren't requesting a renewal for this IEG. So, let's aim to have a call in early January, before then. And we'll leave this IEG project as a whole as "in progress" still until the question of the remaining funds is resolved either way.

Thanks again for all of your hard work! Hope you are having a bit of a rest until the new year begins again :) Cheers! Siko (WMF) (talk) 23:20, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Noting here that funds are still being retained with WMF's permission until 31 March 2014, while discussions of a possible renewal continue. Best regards, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 19:01, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Noting here that the grantees decided to focus on other things instead of renewing this project, and remaining funds have now been received. Thanks! Siko (WMF) (talk) 01:30, 18 March 2014 (UTC)