Grants talk:PEG/User:Gretchenmcc/Linguistics Editathon series: Improving female linguists' participation and representation on Wikipedia

Latest comment: 7 years ago by Nemo bis in topic Contributions

initial comments and feedback edit

@Gretchenmcc: hello - I wrote pretty much this exact comment on the talk page for Grants:IdeaLab/Seeking_Lost_Women_Educators, but think it may also be of value to you (even though you obviously are already familiar with the Art+Feminism initiative):

I know that part of the intended deliverables from the current Art+Feminism grant is the development of materials for both trainers and participants that can be used and adapted by others wanting to run similar events. Also, the plusfeminism.org domain was specifically purchased in order to allow "the set up of various thematic editathons (e.g. Art+Feminism, Medicine+Feminism) as subdomains (i.e. art.plusfeminism.org, medicine.plusfeminism.org)"

do you think your idea could perhaps work as one of the first of these themes, i.e. a Linguistics+Feminism spin-off? I don't want to suggest you shoehorn your project into something that you didn't already have in mind, I just note that the sustainability of this project is very much dependent on your time and efforts, and there might be a way to leverage some of the great materials and infrastructure coming out of Art+Feminism while you work towards network-building and building capacity for the linguist community to start organizing other editathons. -Thepwnco (talk) 00:20, 24 March 2015 (UTC)Reply

@Thepwnco: That's an interesting idea and thanks for bringing it up! I've definitely been getting inspiration from the Art+Feminism resources/grant application already and a lot of in-person advice and experience from helping facilitate at my local Art+Feminism editathons, but I'd be reluctant to commit to doing everything under the plusfeminism umbrella for a couple reasons:
  1. I can link to specific Art+Feminism resources without being part of the plusfeminism organization, but I'm actually finding that it's not a problem of not enough resources, it's a problem of eleventy-billion different resources and beginners not having a single logical point of entry that provides a complete path but minimal superfluous information for their particular goals. And I've already made this for linguistics anyway.
  2. I'm already spread thin over multiple platforms as it is: I have multiple posts on my own blog and website, the blogs of satellite organizers, the official websites of conferences and organizations, the #lingwiki hashtag, my profiles on Wikimedia and Wikipedia, WikiProject:Linguistics, the editathon slides, and so on. I'm not lacking for web presence, and these other locations have the advantage of having existing linguist followers. One more website to keep updated is actually more work for me, not less. If/when I do make a compiled page, it might as well just be on meta.Wikipedia itself (for the moment, my user page and my blog's #lingwiki tag both have summaries).
  3. Having two names for the project would be really confusing for participants. Moreover, Linguistics+Feminism/linguistics.plusfeminism/#linguisticsplusfeminism would make an inferior hashtag to #lingwiki since it's really long for Twitter, sometimes contains a special character, and isn't obviously about Wikipedia.
  4. I completely agree that this project as written currently relies a lot on me, but it's easier for me to replace myself by advising other linguists on how to run editathons, as I'm already doing for the satellite events, especially since I've already made and tested the how-to-edit-for-linguists slides which can now just be re-used by anyone with no more effort on my part! Joining the plusfeminism project would not materially reduce my workload at this point (but I'm very excited to meet some of the organizers at AdaCamp and swap tips!).
  5. One big future area I'd like the linguistics editathons to expand in (especially in 2016 because of conference schedules) is targeting specifically linguists and activists who work with under-documented languages. I think this is a hugely important area to work in, and it's one where many women are doing very important work, but mainstream feminism has a...complicated relationship with colonialization, and I don't want to put off anyone who would be interested in contributing but has been burned by white/settler feminism.
  6. Another area that I'd like to expand in is compiling resources for linguistics profs to have their classes edit Wikipedia. While especially undergrad linguistics classes tend to be heavily female-dominated, the profs that I've chatted with so far are mostly interested in their classes editing stubs and language articles, not biographies, for very understandable pedagogical reasons. I think #lingwiki is a better description for this type of event; Linguistics+Feminism would require constant explanation that yes, phonology/syntax/semantics classes can participate too.
Basically, I think that while a certain portion of #lingwiki goals and projects overlap well with the plusfeminism project, and none of them actually contradict, there's also a portion that's simply targeting linguistics in general, and it would be confusing and logistically unhelpful to subsume either the entire #lingwiki project or a portion of it under the plusfeminism banner. Art+Feminism is basically working from "art on Wikipedia in general is basically okay, but female art representation needs a lot of help", whereas #lingwiki is working from "linguistics on Wikipedia in general needs a lot of help, and female/minority linguistics representation needs extra help". I'm definitely very happy to keep liaising informally with Art+Feminism people though! --Gretchenmcc (talk) 03:11, 24 March 2015 (UTC)Reply
@Gretchenmcc: thanks for your thoughtful response! Those sound like very good reasons against subsuming this project under plusfeminism - I will also share back with Art+Feminism organizers because I think there are useful takeways for them from your response too. -Thepwnco (talk) 21:51, 26 March 2015 (UTC)Reply

Eligibility confirmed, Inspire Campaign edit

 

This Inspire Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for the Inspire Campaign review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review begins on 6 April 2015, and grants will be announced at the end of April. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us at grants(at)wikimedia.org.

Community notifications edit

Hey @Gretchenmcc:, congratulations on meeting the eligibility requirements for your grant application! One of the next steps is to make sure you have notified any community groups or on-wiki noticeboards relevant to your proposal. The big one for this would be WikiProject Linguistics on en.wiki. I see you have engaged there previously, but a post briefly outlining this grant, and how it will impact linguistics coverage on en.wiki, would be great. If you forsee your project working with any other language wikipedia, or some of the other projects, such as Commons or Wikisource, notifications to those projects would be good also. If you have any questions about this, let me know! Best, PEarley (WMF) (talk) 21:58, 8 April 2015 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, @PEarley (WMF):! I made an additional post on WikiProject:Linguistics and also a post on WikiProject:Languages, and linked to all of them in the community notification section on the main grant page. I'm encouraging people to also edit in their own language Wikipedias if they want, but I don't have any other coordinated efforts with respect to them at the moment, so I think those are the most relevant locations. If you have any thoughts about where else to talk to, what else a notification post should contain, or anything, do let me know! --Gretchenmcc (talk) 01:24, 21 April 2015 (UTC)Reply

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Linguistics Editathon series: Improving female linguists' participation and representation on Wikipedia edit

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?
8.5
(B) Community engagement
  • Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often?
  • Does it have community support?
8.8
(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?
9.4
(D) Measures of success
  • Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success?
  • Are they realistic?
  • Can they be measured?
8.1
Additional comments from the Committee:
  • The proposal has a good target audience that is underrepresented on Wikipedia and a specific plan to engage them at conferences. She has community support lined up and understands where to look for community resources from her previous work with the Wikipedia community.
  • Offline organizing that is targeted at online content creation with high potential for impact. Hopefully, this model can be adapted and used in other parts of the movement.
  • See potential to increase gender diversity in terms of contributors, but would like to know how this project increases gender diversity in terms of content.
  • Evidence of existing community and good ties to social networks. Would like to see more engagement with existing WikiProjects and experienced Wikimedians.
  • Great plan with a good timeline and budget that seem reasonable. Proven experience work with both Wikipedia and Linguistics community.
  • Main concern is that it all depends on one person. Would like to see another volunteer added as a co-organizer in order to spread some of the work around.
  • She has measures of success around content creation that are adequate. The most important learning could come from her success at using her networking to get good attendance at events. Would love to see more measures of success around doing events at conferences with feedback related to that topic, and learning patterns, too.
  • The metrics of success seem both realistic and easy to measure, as well as easy to share across the Wikimedia movement.
  • The proposal is strong, though not the most specifically focused on addressing the gender gap.
  • Really like this project. The grantee should seriously consider adding another person to the project team to help support the very important follow-up and mentorship phase.

Inspire funding decision edit

 

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for a Project and Event Grant through the Inspire Campaign.

The committee has recommended this proposal and WMF has approved funding for the full amount of your request, 3,736 USD

Comments regarding this decision:
Thanks for engaging in the Inspire campaign! We’ll be in touch about setup soon.

Next steps:

  1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement.
  2. Review the grant implementation information.
  3. Start work on your project!
Questions? Contact us at grants wikimedia.org'


Interim reports and other links edit

I've written initial reports for the editathons in May and July, if anyone would like to see my interim progress.

I've also created the following additional resources in relation to this project:

  • French version of the lingwiki editathon slides, created with the support of the CLA, can be found at bit.ly/lingwikifr.
  • Slides from the seminar that I did at the LSA institute on how to have your linguistics class edit Wikipedia can be found at bit.ly/lingwikiclass.
  • A cute guide to linguistics stub sorting on Wikipedia, that I created with User:Keilana for linguistics enthusiasts who aren't sure if they have enough knowledge to edit: bit.ly/wugsorting.

Please let me know if there are any questions! --Gretchenmcc (talk) 17:25, 17 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Request for budget change edit

I'm requesting changes to the distribution of several budget line-items due to 1) an unexpected sponsorship from the CLA for some of the May costs, 2) unexpected savings in a few areas and 3) unexpected costs in others (including changes in currency exchange rates). The final total budget and results from the project remain the same.

I did the calculations in a spreadsheet so I've attached a google docs link with line by line explanations and colour-coding rather than trying to replicate it in wiki tables that don't auto-calculate. A few notes:

1. The whole grant took place in two currencies, Canadian dollars and US dollars. I elected to request funds in USD because the bulk of my expenses were originally in USD, but as I'm Canadian and live in Canada, the USD expenses were ultimately all converted to CAD by my bank and/or credit card, whereas the CAD expenses were not converted. I have therefore elected to report all actual expenses in CAD as they appeared on my bank/credit card statement. It's confusing, but less so than any other options. This is especially relevant because the Canadian dollar has fallen since this grant was awarded.

2. In the spreadsheet, the "projected USD" column is the expenses as budgeted for in the grant. The "projected CAD" column is the expenses in Canadian dollars as calculated using the exchange rate that my bank gave me when it received the grant as a wire transfer from Wikimedia. The "actual CAD" column is the amount I paid in CAD, either when purchasing in CAD or the CAD amount that my credit card charged me when purchasing in USD. Sometimes the actual amount reflects a different exchange rate, sometimes it reflects costs different than projected, sometimes both - see the "comments" column.

3. This already-complicated accounting scenario is one of the reasons why I am requesting changes after the fact rather than in advance, because I could not predict what the exchange rate was going to be. The other reason is that by the time I realized I'd need to request changes, I also realized that all the changes were fairly likely to balance each other out (in particular, I found out that my expenses for the May editathon would be less than predicted during the same week or so in which I realized that the July editathons would be more expensive than predicted). So rather than do multiple requests, it seemed more straightforward for everyone to do them all at once, and to do so later when I knew what they actually were.

Furthermore, for many of these costs I didn't have a choice -- when finding that a flight is more expensive than anticipated, it does not make sense to wait another couple days to book it (no doubt allowing it to increase further). I similarly had no choice about the fact that the Canadian dollar fell or in incurring the increased meal plan cost - there was no cheaper meal plan or adequate kitchen facilities that I could have used (and submitting grocery receipts would again have meant a budget adjustment of some kind). However, knowing that I had these increases allowed me to make adjustments to other items which kept me in budget overall.

I apologies for not requesting in advance, but I do think that all revised expenses are reasonable for the purposes of the grant (they're all re-allocations between already-approved line items) and that doing so afterwards simplifies the accounting and reduces the uncertainty.

The only remaining upcoming expense is the food cost for the editathon in October, for which the budget is now $130 instead of $150 - since that editathon is in Montreal and food will therefore be bought in CAD, there is no exchange rate uncertainty and I think this will still be an adequate amount of food. I'm happy to answer any questions. --Gretchenmcc (talk) 17:48, 17 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Hi Gretchenmcc. Thank you for the detailed explanation and spreadsheet. I'm sorry that this currency issue has been so complicated! All the budget changes are approved. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 18:33, 17 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Contributions edit

In the report, it's not very helpful that the list of contributions only lives on some tumblr posts. For instance, when you say "grammatic of Tagalog", do you mean the contributions of w:en:Special:Contributions/Rosemarie_sarenas? It's not clear how to judge what your students/attendees learnt/did. Nemo 14:05, 3 June 2016 (UTC)Reply

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