Grants talk:IEG/Motivational and educational video to introduce Wikimedia/Final

Report accepted

Dear Pine,

In preparing for our meeting this morning, I see that I have not yet formally accepted your report. I am accepting it now, with apologies for the delay, and with the following comments:

• I appreciate your diligence in making me aware of the obstacles you faced with LearnWiki all through out this project. I know it was discouraging to realize that the goal you initially envisioned would actually require a lot more resources than you initially understood, and that completing the videos was not possible. However, because of your proactive efforts to keep me aware of your process, we were able to rethink how this project might be structured and aim for different outcomes, your scripts, that were more feasible with the resources available.
• I see the most important outcome of this project as the learning that happened through your reflection about how to plan and manage a project effectively. There was a lot of learning it brought to both of us. I understand much more now about what it takes to get educational videos out and it will inform my thinking about similar project proposals in the future. I imagine both of us have a higher threshold of understanding now about how much it takes to get videos through to production!
• Thank you for how hard you worked on this project. It's so clear how much you wrestled to make the project succeed, and I appreciate your dedication and care.

I wish you the best of luck in whatever endeavors you pursue next, Pine.

I don't believe there are any lingering administrative tasks for this project, besides closing out your Final Report. I believe things are 100% complete at this point, but I am pinging our grants administrator just in case.

Warm regards,

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 17:59, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, Marti. I've had some time to reflect on what I'm now calling "LearnWiki Project Phase 1", what I would have done differently, and how to build on what is already done.

I continue to believe that more and better training with VisualEditor, and the New WikiText Editor / 2017 Wikitext Editor, for Wikipedia in multiple languages, Commons, Wikidata, and other projects would be valuable. It won't be a panacea for improving editor retention, but I think that we could make the learning curves less steep and less frustrating than they currently are.

There's another aspect of what happened with LearnWiki that I will mention. LearnWiki suffered substantial negative effects from my attempt to make Cascadia Wikimedians User Group successful while I was also responsible for LearnWiki. I understood early on in my time in CWUG that there were risks that there would be human resources shortages, but I think that underestimated those risks to CWUG, and those issues with CWUG had significant secondary negative effects on LearnWiki.

I plan to continue to work on LearnWiki, or something like it, with my volunteer time for the foreseeable future. When we talk today I hope that we can think through how this "LearnWiki Project Phase 2" can be successful. I imagine that there will be need for WMF funding at some point, but I'm going to wait to make funding requests until I have a fuller understanding of current training needs and practices across the Wikiverse, and I'm currently planning not to ask for funding for my personal time, although I may request funding of time for a contractor/grantee to do video editing.

I look forward to meeting with you. :)

--Pine^✉ 18:25, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Return of unspent grant funds received

Hello Pine, just noting here (in case I hadn't publicly acknowledged on meta yet) that WMF confirms having received your return of unspent grant funds, as listed in your final report. WMF received your check of US$271.35 on 29 August 2017. We've marked your grant 'completed' on our end. Thank you! -- JTud (WMF), Grants Administrator (talk) 19:20, 20 February 2018 (UTC)