Grants talk:IEG/WikiSkills

Eligibility confirmed

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for review and scoring. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period (through 2 May 2016).

The committee's formal review begins on 3 May 2016, and grants will be announced 17 June 2016. See the round 1 2016 schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us at iegrantswikimedia · org .

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 11:40, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for WikiSkills

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	5.9
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	6.1
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	5.7
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	3.7
Additional comments from the Committee: At the moment this project is more of a research project. Doesn't really fit into Wikimedia strategy; it assumes it could get a link on the login page, and seems to collect private information. Done right, this could have great impact for getting new contributors in. A lot of effort by Wikipedians is building to-do lists in portals which maps to interests at a high level. If a potential editor doesn’t have the initiative to search, how would he/she examine the matched interests list? Reading is totally different than writing in a Wikipedia context. We do not have a need to suggest topics for Wikipedians to write about. They are quite capable of choosing their own writing activities. This may be good for the education program, where teachers could select material to have students write about (but I personally believe that to benefit the community, students writing on Wikipedia for credit must be allowed to select their own subjects). Interesting. I'm not sure the proposed solution works the same way as "things near you that need photos." Yes, I believe it can be accomplished. I have seen at least one prototype come by that attempts something like this (possible translation nudges using the CX translation tool). There are several fundamental issues with the plan at this time that makes me doubt its feasibility: 1) Using LinkedIn information would violate our privacy policy. 2) User profiles have a history across Wikimedia projects; this proposal suggests adding user profiles in some form without any plans of gathering community support for it. 3) Adding this tool on the wiki interface itself requires either a MediaWiki extension or default enabled gadget. Both would require various forms of community consensus that don't seem forthcoming. Unfortunately all the users mentioned in this proposal appear to be fairly new. It is impossible to judge the skills/experience. This proposal is aimed at all editors, but this project could quickly become blocked as irritating if it actually tried to reach all editors. I have concerns that the community would only contribute their skills. As I know people edit Wikipedia as their hobby and as not their expertise. This proposal seems to have minimal outreach. The applicants don't seem to have reached out to any wiki communities, and don't seem to be community members themselves. This is also a potentially controversial proposal that requires a lot of buy-in from these target communities (especially if it is going to be implemented on the wiki's UI itself somehow), who may not be aware of this project. This proposal has a wide target, but low engagement in the front-end. This proposal would be as much a community engagement heavy one as it would be a technical one. I could see serious oversight in terms of community engagement in the proposal. This project has a clear target and metric to be collected. The user experience could be a debate in Wikipedia, but this tool could be a way recruit new editors based in own skills. I have some doubts about the LinkedIn option and how this could affect the person behind the user (for example, to "un-anon the user"). I don't see the impact of the project. Interesting as research project but the impact of an application like this must be checked. It would be better to proceed with a small pilot project and to use these data as grounds for a biggest grant. I would suggest proposers to better familiarize with the community first and return the next round. Aside from that there is a good plan here with a great potential.

-- MJue (WMF) (talk) 17:15, 3 June 2016 (UTC) on behalf of the IEG Committee

Round 1 2016 decision

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!

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.