Grants talk:PEG/UG TH/Wiki Loves X in Thailand 2015

GAC members who support this request

1. An average of 1000 USD per contest is acceptable. Something to be optimized but it seems to me reasonable. --Ilario (talk) 14:05, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
2. Seems reasonable and impact is achievable and sufficient rubin16 (talk) 18:59, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
3. The request is reasonable in terms of both the costs and its goals.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 16:14, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
4. (for comments see below) --Packa (talk) 08:10, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

GAC comments

Packa's comment

First comment: Very nice but also very ambitious project. Therefore I would like to ask who will organize it. I see only Taweetham a B20180... --Packa (talk) 00:24, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

General answer: We usually have ~10 volunteers (but ~5 core volunteers) for WLM in the past two years. We also had accumulated a number of partners. (pantip.com ranks 10th website in Thailand - same ranking as Wikipedia in Thailand, dtac is one of the three major mobile operators in the country.) Specific answer: At this moment, you can also see Earlgray.Ler2ra, Potapt and Sasakubo1717 on the grant page and/or Thai discussion page. More people will show up later. --Taweethaも (talk) 23:32, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Taweetham. I see Earlgray.Ler2ra and others, but I understand that endorsements is not the same as organizer. But did these people you mentioned have experience with organizing such big project? --Packa (talk) 20:52, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Earlgray.Ler2ra just joined us during WLM2014 while Potapt and Sasakubo1717 have been with us since WLM2013. Most of us has at least one-year experience in the WLM. The current team has also completed other Wikimedia-related projects in the past five years and has/had special rights (admin/arbcom/check user). Please refer to our timeline since 2011. We believe that the current proposal is a natural next step for us to grow and fully realize our potentials in Thailand. --Taweethaも (talk) 01:57, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, OK. Remember only that organizing WLM or your Wiki Loves X is not the same as working inside Wikipedia (as an admin etc.). The difference is huge. --Packa (talk) 23:47, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Packa. I am fully aware of that since I had held all positionss, sysop/arbcom/check user. In the past few years, I have redirected my energy towards outreach activities. WLM2013 is my transition point. WLM2014 and dtac collaboration in 2014 are the my starting project. The current proposal for 2015 is based on what we have learning in the past two years. --Taweethaも (talk) 14:06, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Female participation

Hi, the request does says that you do expect 30% of total participants to be female. Could you please highlight how you intend to achieve that? Will you be promoting more towards the women community? Do you plan to give out some special prizes? -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 08:32, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

It is in the eligibility criteria for writing competition. At least one team member must be female. --Taweethaも (talk) 16:22, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Alright, that sounds interesting! -- ♪Karthik♫ ♪Nadar♫ 06:17, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

WMF comments

Thanks so much for your proposal and engagement with the GAC in the discussion so far. It is really great to see that so many of the lessons learned from 2014 projects are being incorporated. We especially appreciate the focus on quality content/impact on the Wikimedia projects, engagement of non-male users, and streamlining of activities/administration to decrease the burden on volunteers. The WLE/WLM aspects of the proposal are quite clear, but it would be great to have more information on the school training and WLX:

1. How will you engage teams from schools and conduct the online trainings? Do you already have the training materials? If not, Anna Koval can point you to the best materials for translation.
2. There is a list of 100 schools, but what is the capacity of your volunteers to conduct the trainings and provide follow-up support and mentorship between trainings?
3. A target of 5,000 photos seems low considering you had 4,287 submissions for WLM in 2014. Submissions tend to go down year-on-year, but with the addition of WLE, I would expect a higher measure of success.

Thanks, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your comments. Please find my point-by-point response below.

1. I had received materials form Anna's team since Wikimania 14. We will quickly develop a Thai version of it based on what you have there in English and what we had in Thai Wikipedia. The more challenging tasks is to set up a right environment and incentive for participants to learn the materials.
2. It will be online mentoring and we hope to get more volunteers from the current community members.
3. As we have learnt that the number does not mean much from WLM2014. Quality is more important. We wish to make a last long impact by training people. In order to do that, we do not want to be stressed out too much by a quantitative target. I can however, set the second target, by saying at least 5% of uploaded photos should be used within 2 months of upload.

--Taweethaも (talk) 04:29, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi Taweethaも. Thanks to you and Early for taking the time so early in the morning to talk with me and Anna yesterday. We are excited about the potential of this project and hope our discussion was useful. To summarize, here are the points we discussed and next steps:

1. Team to review the education program's resources for training students and update your Thai language materials if necessary.
2. Team to carefully consider the active editor/admins' capacity to review, mentor, and follow-up with students participating in the contest. Please get commitment from a core team who will be able to participate in this aspect of the project. They can either demonstrate commitment on the grant request or on the project page on Thai Wikipedia.
3. Team to carefully consider the number of schools you are able to support. 77 teams is very ambitious, and while of course not all will participate and some teams will drop out, we recommend you scale down from the beginning. It might be useful to put a cap on the number of teams that are able to register. We would love for this to be a successful outreach campaign that results in quality articles and editors that continue to edit even after the competition and draw of prizes is over. We are much more concerned with quality over quantity and a smaller pilot is a good way to start.

We would like the team to address #2 and #3 before we move forward with approving the grant. Please let us know if you have any questions about our discussion or this feedback. Thanks, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:32, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for spending your time with us on 6Feb15 06.30-7.00 ICT. Here are our responses to your commensts/suggestions.

1. We will definitely put our best effort to make appropriate materials for this training. We have added details to what materials we will use.
2. I have sent the request the community. You can see that number of signatures has doubled overnight. The new endorsors include Octahedron80 who is #1 contributor on Thai Wikipedia. Thai contributors are perhaps a bit shy to comment here in English.
3. The cap has now been put in place. (<=35 teams, <=100 people for the first round and <=10 teams <= 30 people for the final round) We are open for public registration. If there are more people than what we can handle we will screen them using multiple-choice question (MCQ) test. An easy way to come up with this is that every admin send me a few questions and I set up a CANVAS course for registered participants. Later on, we will phase out MCQ test and put a practical task + peer review in place. We will set a standard and give certificates to people who pass certain threshold regardless of the outcome if they get selected to the next round.
   • We are confident to be able to deal with a moderate number of people for the first round as they will (1) only perform tasks restricted to their sandbox and (2) be screened by MCQ test. The purpose of the first round is to be a good reader or a good user of Wikipedia. The will learn (1) the technical aspect of Wiki markup language, (2) General Wikipedia process - how an article is written (3) how to read critically.
   • We scale down the second-round to 10 teams for high-quality contribution. The numbers of articles and number of people in the proposal now included subitems for high-quality items.

--Taweethaも (talk) 02:39, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Approved

Hi Taweethaも. Thanks so much for the updates. Apologies I did not see them until today! The request is approved. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 01:45, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Merchandise request

Hi Alex. We have started WLE and finalised advertisment documents for all three projects. We sent an email to you regarding Wikimedia Merchandise request for WLX and 100K article project. For record/accountability purpose, I put the request numbers here:

1. 1,000 small items for advertisement purpose (stickers, pencils, pens)
2. 200 souvenirs for participants (lapel pins, globe buttons, notebooks)
3. 40 large prizes (scarfs, bags, hoodies)

Please kindly let us know if WMF approves the request. --Taweethaも (talk) 03:40, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

1. On 9th June, we picked up the following from post office and paid for custom/fee THB391.-:
   • Wikipedia Pen 50
   • Globe Stickers 1,000
   • Globe buttons 150
2. On 10th June, we sent 158 envelopes to schools and universities around the country.

--Taweethaも (talk) 08:09, 13 June 2015 (UTC)