Grants talk:PEG/Ravidreams - Tamil Wikimedians/TamilWiki 10 years

Thanks for the submission. It's very nice to see that there are planned activities and even an international meetup among the Tamil-Wikipedia community members. My questions are the following:

1. Do you have any ideas of what to include in the programme for the meetup? What will it mostly focus on? Do you plan to have discussions among the community members only or presentations with other interesting sessions to fulfill the time slots?
2. Where the meetup will actually take place (Chennai or anywhere else)?
3. Could you please share some of the preliminary results from the ongoing 12-month essay contest? What are the things that went good and those that went wrong? Do you plan to make any changes in order to correct the development of the project?
4. How do you plan to execute the offline outreach efforts? I can see that you're interesting in supplying promotional materials, but it's not perfectly clear to me as to how this merchandising will be distributed. Do you plan to do it at the meetup or there are other planned activities?

Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 09:46, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi Kiril, thanks for the questions.

1. The meetup will be held during September 28, 29. First day will be an exclusive cultural trip event for around 50 core Tamil Wikipedians. Besides capturing images for Commons during this trip, this will be an opportunity to get to know each other and informally brainstorm Tamil Wikipedia's progress and plans for future. The second day event is open for public and probable contributors. Second day morning will see two parallel sessions that will conduct tutorials for newbies and existing contributors. The topics will range from general introduction to contributing, tutorial for taking better pictures, contributing with bots, introduction to sister projects etc,. I can provide a detailed list of these sessions ASAP. Second day afternoon will be a gathering of Wikipedians and public to celebrate 10 years of Tamil Wikipedia formally. Besides regular stuff like cutting the birthday cake, the session will see talks from Tamil Wikipedians and invited guests from the local chapter and other organizations operating in the Open content sphere. The event will be concluded with a press meet.
2. The meetup will take place in Chennai. We are following up with two or three highly probable venues in reputed Universities and the decision will be made soon.
3. The contest started in June 2013. First month saw expansion of 115 articles. You can see the results here. This helped us register positive growth in the global ranking of Wikipedias based on 1000 most important articles. The participation for the consequent months has slightly dropped as people feel that there are not enough topics in their area of interest and knowledge. We have taken this feedback into consideration and plan to include the extended list of important articles as probable topics for the contest. This change will be implemented from the coming month. One main reason behind conducting this as a year long contest is to have continuous activity and chance to iterate the contest's format with real time feedback like these.
4. The offline outreach efforts will be year long and follow different channels. Not all our outreach efforts involve merchandise. In fact, the T-shirts are limited in number and mainly for existing Wikipedians to give them a sense of pride, belonging and accomplishment. And, of course it will help in branding and outreach too. We have been getting excellent coverage in the print, television and radio media for the last few months about our 10 years and Wikimania participation. We hope to get more coverage in the press by conducting this event in Chennai which is capital for Tamil mass media. We are also in touch with many niche magazines to bring special issues commemorating Tamil Wikipedia's 10 years. The handbooks that we print will be distributed during this event and future outreach efforts that we regularly conduct across different cities.

Please let me know if you need more clarification. Thanks.--Ravi (talk) 11:45, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

1. Could you provide numbers in table in USD ?
2. Is there a webpage/wikipage of meetup with program and list of potential participants?
3. How are you about to select people who receive scholarships ?

Polimerek (talk) 22:38, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

We have now provided USD amounts in the budget table. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 01:42, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Asaf, thanks for providing the USD values.

Polimerek, 40+ core Wikipedians have confirmed their participation here. 15+ people have expressed interest but not sure of participating yet. Besides these Wikipedians we expect at least 50 - 100 more people to attend the second day event when we conduct workshops and 10th year celebrations. These will include people from media, blogosphere, academia, Tamil language development organizations and FOSS organizations. Selection for scholarship will be based on overall contribution, activity in recent months and their financial need. Overall contribution will take into account the number of edits, articles created, images uploaded, outreach efforts, adminship, design and coding efforts. Only around 12 people from India and 3 from Srilanka have expressed their need for travel scholarship. Around 25 people need accommodation assistance. Many Wikipedians in Chennai have offered to share the space in their own homes. Still, it will be a good idea to stay in one place to encourage networking among Wikipedians.

We expect to finalize the details of the second day program by this week. --Ravi (talk) 06:37, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Remarks

I think it is a clear proposal. Had some questions.

1. I think the most important part is the two day meetup, which is actually a kind of conference. Could you give us some more information on the program of those days? At first sight, it would seem like the first day is a touristic visit, and half of the second day a kind of celebration party. Could you share your latest time table, a list of speakers or an overview of the points to be discussed at the tutorials.
2. Do you information on attendance yet (it is coming up quite quickly)?
3. I think the offline outreach efforts are well elaborated on, and a very good idea. What is the link with the Canadian newspaper? MADe (talk) 09:12, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Agree with MADe. Additional question about the book. Is it an idea to make an e-book more ecoloy friendly, saving paper and ink.  Klaas|Z4␟V:  10:07, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi MADe, We expect to finalize the details of the second day program by this week. 40+ core Wikipedians have confirmed their participation here. 15+ people have expressed interest but not sure of participating yet. Besides these Wikipedians we expect at least 50 - 100 more people to attend the second day event when we conduct workshops and 10th year celebrations. These will include people from media, blogosphere, academia, Tamil language development organizations and FOSS organizations.

First day will be an exclusive cultural trip event for around 50 core Tamil Wikipedians. Besides capturing images for Commons during this trip, this will be an opportunity to get to know each other and informally brainstorm Tamil Wikipedia's progress and plans for future. The second day event is open for public and probable contributors.

Second day morning will see two parallel sessions that will conduct tutorials for newbies and existing contributors. The topics will range from general introduction to contributing, tutorial for taking better pictures, contributing with bots, introduction to sister projects etc,. Second day afternoon will be a gathering of Wikipedians and public to celebrate 10 years of Tamil Wikipedia formally. Besides regular stuff like cutting the birthday cake, the session will see talks from Tamil Wikipedians and invited guests from the local chapter and other organizations operating in the Open content sphere. The event will be concluded with a press meet.

Two core Tamil Wikipedians are based in Canada which has a sizable population of Tamil diaspora. They are in touch with the Canadian newspaper to bring out a special issue commemorating Tamil Wikipedia's 10 years.

Hi Klass, we will definitely release this as an e-book. We also plan to release few other e-books based on our Wikipedia's content in the coming year. For example, a book gathering snippets of Did You Know section, a book of selected essays etc., But, we didn't include this in the grant proposal because it doesn't involve any cost. At the same time, we are printing this book to reach potential contributors outside the online zone. Most of the Tamil population is located in developing countries like India and Sri Lanka which do not have dense computer, internet and smart phone penetration. Besides, some of the target age groups like elders and students will find it easier to understand Wikipedia through a traditional print book. We also plan to circulate this book among media who may find it easy and appropriate to publish a book review. Copies of the book will also be provided to local libraries.--Ravi (talk) 06:37, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Ravid for the extra info. MADe (talk) 13:53, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Great proposal, a few thoughts

Hi, the proposal is great. Thank you for submitting. I have no substantial additions, as I see the proposal is based on experience both in grant-making and executino. Three things I would recommend though:

• In the measures of success you want 300+ active contributors, while the current number is 100. This seems to me to be a bit high. But I might've misunderstood what active contributor means.
• The prize section, while a significant budget item on your list, appears to be empty. Would you provide some details - such as number of prizes, and thoughts about what to provide? It is customary that prizes are of motivational manner, and not of great economic value, to preserve the volunteering spirit of wikipedians.
• Just a suggestion - when you print a t-shirt, consider adding a QR code that sends people to either a random article in the Tamil Wiki, or to the introduction of how to become a wiki contributor. This has no cost in terms of t-shirt production, and may help you gain users.

Oh, and one more thing - the book you're planning to publish is going to be openly licensed, right? Just checking...

Again, thank you and good luck. NLIGuy (talk) 09:34, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi NLIGuy,

• Active users are people who made at least 1 edit in the last 30 days. Among the global Wikipedias having under 100,000 articles, Tamil Wikipedia ranks 5th in terms of active users. For the last two years, we mostly had around 250 active users. Due to our continuous efforts this year, we crossed 300 active users once. We aim to cross that milestone regularly after these planned activities.
• Added the description for prizes now. There will be 12 first prizes, 12 second prizes, 12 special prizes and 2 championship prizes. Championship prize will be 3000 INR (~45 USD), first prize will be 1000 INR (~15 USD) while second and special prizes will be 500 INR (~7 USD) each. The prizes are clearly motivational and intentionally kept low. This is a year long contest and every month we will have one first prize, one second prize and one special prize. The championship prizes are for contestants who have the most wins throughout the year. This is to encourage continuous activity from people who have already won. The first and second prizes are for expanding the highest number of important articles past 15 kb limit. The special prize is for the contestant who writes the most elaborate article.
• Adding a QR code that sends people to the "Become a contributor" page is a great idea. I will pass this to our design team. We can also get this added to all our banners and other outreach materials.
• Yes, the book is collaboratively written in Tamil Wikipedia at ta:விக்கிப்பீடியா:தமிழ் விக்கியூடகக் கையேடு. It will be available under the same license that Wikipedia follows.

I thank everyone for the thoughtful questions and suggestions. It certainly helps us to improve our planning. --Ravi (talk) 18:02, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

A note about "Active users" -- this is a perennially confusing term, but is a statistic produced by the wiki itself (i.e. Mediawiki software considers "active users" users who have made 1 or more edits in the past 30 days), whereas on stats.wikimedia.org, reportcard.wmflabs.org and in our grantmaking and strategy discussions we favor and track the metrics "active editors" and "very active editors", which correspond to (the obviously much lower figures of) users who made 5 or more edits or 100 or more edits, respectively, in the past 30 days. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 06:27, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Evaluation by the GAC

GAC Members who read the grant request without comments

1. .

GAC Members who approve this grant request

1. MADe (talk) 13:52, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
2.  Klaas|Z4␟V:  23:17, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

GAC Members who oppose this grant request

1. .

GAC Members who abstain from voting/comment

1. .

Reallocation request

A reallocation request has been posted here. Please advise if any change is needed. Thanks.--Ravi (talk) 07:48, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

This request to change the project budget has been approved, and you can visit the page linked above for details. Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 23:21, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for approving the revised budget. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Ravidreams_-_Tamil_Wikimedians/TamilWiki_10_years#Budget_and_resources has been updated accordingly.--Ravi (talk) 15:32, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Is the grant agreement confidential?

Hi Winifred, for the sake of transparency, documentation and learning for the wider community, am I allowed to share the grant agreement I signed either publicly or with few community members in private mail? Please clarify. Thanks.--Ravi (talk) 14:06, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Greetings, Ravi! It's already available here: Grants:PEG/Example_project_grant_agreement_for_groups_and_organizations. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk 19:51, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi Winifred, thanks for the link. This is good enough.--Ravi (talk) 13:28, 16 May 2014 (UTC)