Grants talk:PEG/WM ES/CUSL8

Evaluation by the GAC

Comments

I think it will be a nice initiative and i appreciate this project. Did you have prepared/fixed the set of topics which will be displayed/discussed on those two days?--Nasir Khan Saikat (talk) 06:58, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your support. The list of topics falls out of my scope. I can ask the local committee for further information, but I guess they will be similar to those in previous editions: 50% of the scheduled time is dedicated to present the best project made by students and award ceremony. The other 50% usually includes: entrepreneurship/start-ups/SME, software accessibility, open knowledge and academia ... and I hope Wikimedia this year ;)

Tony1 comments

Hi, I'd be more comfortable to know the likely professionals who would be paid for, and the relevant seminars as you see it, with timings.

Lunch looks nasty at 7 euros a piece.

As members know, I do not favour donors' funds going to the purchase of clothing and trinkets. May I suggest that the budget be reduced by 560 euros, or the money kept in reserve for unexpected expenses and returned to the WMF if not spent?

Will the students be computer-science students (tertiary)? I can't get a grip on what people will learn that will be of value to es.WP.

"Contribution to movement learning: Our results could help people do similar project within other IT contests or conferences, specially student-oriented ones." Not convincing. How?

Tony (talk) 13:11, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Tony1

First of all, thank you the time dedicated to our proposal and your comments.

As for the professionals to be paid, I'd like to clarify that we are not going to pay any of their speakers. We will just refund their travel and hotel. In case of a long trip we could pay food expenses. The seminars are responsability of the local committee, our proposal is just paying the expenses for an invited speaker to talk about Free Knowledge or licensing. His/her talk will be scheduled when the committee considers it more suitable. Anyway, I'm sure we can provide justified recommendation for that. I spoke with the committee, they plan to keep a similar schedule to that of all previous editions. You have the links to previous seminars programs in [1-7]. They are in Spanish, but I think they are easy to translate with automatic tools. Anyway, if you have doubt just let me know. We would like to contact Javier de la Cueva, a Spanish lawer and well-known activist of free software and open knowledge.

I honestly do not consider lunch to be nasty for that price. In fact, I'd like to clarify that in Faculty cantine, you can get a good lunch (Spanish lunch: two courses plus a drink and dessert/coffe) for that price. As an example, you can see pictures of yesterday's menu (you can choose one starter from a list of 4 and a second dish form a list of 3).

As for clothing expenses, I think it is possitive that people (students, lecturers, staff, ...) in the Faculty see a group of people (I hope that having fun ;) wearing bright color t-shirts. They can get curious and join us. Anyway, if more people share your opinion, we can just leave the mony for unexpected expenses. No problem.

Probably the most of the participant will be computer-science degree students. In the edithon they will learn to edit Wikipedia, so we can engage editors with high level of specialization in computer science. Additionally, we plan to make a short seminar on wiki-related projects in previous years, so students can see Wikipedia from another point of view (I think most of them consider it just a source of information to copy-paste in assignments). We can show the vandalism problems solved by AVBOT, or uses of Wikis in teaching, so they can get interested and code new open-source software of interest for es.WP.

Finally, we will share our leassons learned. People in other countries could see how to adapt our experience to their context. That's all we can do about replicating the model. We cannot assure physical help, but help to spread the model.

Kind regards.

[1] http://www.concursosoftwarelibre.org/1213/node/41

[2] http://www.concursosoftwarelibre.org/1112/fase-final.html

[3] http://www.concursosoftwarelibre.org/1011/fase-final.html

[4] http://www.concursosoftwarelibre.org/0910/fase-final.html

[5] http://www.concursosoftwarelibre.org/0809/fase-final.html

[6] http://www.concursosoftwarelibre.org/0708/node/147.html

[7] http://www.concursosoftwarelibre.org/0607/final.html

--El Pantera (talk) 01:20, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

My comments

Thanks for the submission. The initiative appears to be very sound to me and I think it's worth supporting at this stage. My only two questions are the following:

1. What are the Wikimedia projects that will be mostly affected by the contest? How do you plan to solve the problem that inexperienced users, who don't know much about editing, may participate and harm the quality of the content? Do you plan to give any lectures on editing and the essentials of the Wikimedia projects in question? What is the response from the community to this initiative?
2. Can you reveal more information about the other expenses not included in this grant request? From the budget, it becomes fairly obvious that there are other expenses that will be possibly covered by the institutions involved.

Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 13:11, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Hello Kiril.

First of all, thank you for your time and comments.

The Wikipedia project mostly affected by the contest will be Spanish Wikipedia (mostly) and perhaps English Wikipedia. In case we have students from other regions with co-official languages, they could also contribute to Wikipedia in their languages, but that is not sure.

Inexperienced users harm the quality of the content, but only temporally. We plan to have one or two people reviewing the articles where we contributed after the edithon. So if they detect something, it could be amended.

As you propose, giving a lecture on editing and the essentials of the Wikimedia projects would be great. But that would take too long time in the tight schedule. It is a Contest on Free Software development, and students' project must play the main role. I don't think the local committee will provide us a very long time slot (or, at least, not in this first experience. If this shows interesting, we can propose a wider Wikipedia event for next year).

As for the response from the community to this initiative. I have spoken to people in Spanish Chapter, and this was welcome. I' rather waiting for the grant to be approved to comment it in Spanish Wikipedia cafe.

As for other expenses not included in this grant request. This is the reason I took so long to answer. I spoke to local committee (I was part of it in the first editions, but not in recent ones. They agreed to publicly share main figures of last year. This year's budget depend on the sponsors obtained, they are still negotiating.

* Awards, the highest part of the budget: 4050 euros (this year they are considering reducing it by half due to the lack of sponsors)

* Transport tickets for students: 1300 euros

* "Gala dinner" for 30 people: 1000 euros (this year they are considering moving to a pizza restaurant to reduce it by half due to the lack of sponsors)

* Hotels: 1000 euros

* T-shirts: 600 euros

* Event-Support: 500 euros

As you said, the they will be covered by the institutions involved (you can see them behind the "Patrocina" label in their web site).

I'd like to clarify that the local committee is run by volunteers, and the organization is non-for-profit. In case a benefit is obtained, it is integrally reinvested in next year's contest. But in case part of the grant in not spent, it will be reimbursed to WMF.

If you think more detailed information on some section would be of interest, jut let me know.

--El Pantera (talk) 00:35, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your answers.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 01:09, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I have read the proposal but it's incomplete. In the strategy there is something about an editathon but not in the proposal. --Ilario (talk) 10:32, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

First of all, thank you for your time and comments, Ilario.

Unfortunately, I do not understand your point. In the proposal we refer to the "edithon" three times:

# When taking about The seminars

# When taking about Measures_of_success

# When taking about Strategy

I would appreciate if you could tell me more specifically where else do you consider we should talk about it? What information about it is missing?

Looking forward to hear from you,

--El Pantera (talk) 23:48, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Feedback from WMF

Thank you (and the GAC) for your engagement on this request so far. Please see our questions/comments below.

1. What is the level of certainty that you will have the time and a room to present on Wikipedia and hold an edit-a-thon? It sounds like the agenda has not yet been finalized and there is still some uncertainty on whether Wikipedia will be included in the agenda. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 18:07, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
2. 80 T-shirts seems like a lot for 50 participants. If you want to provide t-shirts as a gift for speakers and volunteers then 20 should be enough. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 18:07, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
3. The budget for lunch should be EUR 400. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 18:07, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
4. Are the 2 students you propose funding part of the larger group of students involved in the competition? Is the local committee funding the other students? Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 18:07, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
5. For measuring the success of edit-a-thons, it is also helpful to have a metric for measuring if participants have continued to edit 1-2 months after the event. If you collect usernames at the event, you can track this in WikiMetrics. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 18:07, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Please let us know if you have any questions regarding the above. We look forward to your response. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 18:07, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

First of all, thank you for your time and comments, Alex.

1. If the grant is approved, we will have a slot in agenda for both Wikipedia presentation and the edit-a-thon. The agenda is only published a pair of weeks before its celebration (for example, last year the agenda was published on May, 5th and on the 23rd it was celebrated). In fact, we can understand it the opposite way: if we have no time for Wikipedia presentation and edit-a-thon in the agenda, we will refund all the money back.

2. We calculated 80 T-shirts to provide 50 for attendants, 20 for speakers and volunteers and 10 for courtesy gift (Faculty dean, etc). In fact, I am not sure if the different in cost will be significant (there is a minimum amount of money you are charged, no matter how many t-shirts you order). Anyway, if we consider this to be a better policy, I would not mind applying it.

3. Sorry, it was my fault when adapting the budget figures from list to the table to meet template guidelines (I have just fixed it). The price of the food for each participant is just 6 euros (standard menu in Faculty bar), you can see it in the first version of the proposal, so the total money spent on food was right, 120 euros.

4. Yes, the local committee will fund the rest of the awarded students. This year there are 5 other categories of prices proposed. In case there are students that deserve them can be 10 students more (finalist and winner for each one). Nevertheless, in previous years sometimes a category was left without a winner and finalist, because nobody deserved the price.

5. The idea about keeping track of usernames at the event is interesting. We will keep them in mind.

Thank you again for your time (and the bug report ;) , if you need more detailed information on some section just let me know.

--El Pantera (talk) 00:18, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Terms of Approval

Thank you for your response and confirmation that you will have a slot on the agenda for Wikipedia activities.

We do think 80 t-shirts is excessive and will fund up to 20. If you cannot produce the t-shirts locally for a reasonable amount, please let us know and we can send you t-shirts from the Wikimedia Foundation. If this is the case, please let us know as soon as possible to accommodate for shipping times. How you distribute the t-shirts is up to you. For example, you can give it to just the volunteers and school officials, you can give them away in a raffle, or they can be awarded for asking questions during Q&A sessions. If these terms are acceptable to you, then we are ready to approve this grant. Please respond here (and if you agree, update the budget on the grants page) and let us know if you have any questions. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:51, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, we are glad to accept the conditions of the approval.

The budget is already updated

Looking forward for information on next steps

--El Pantera (talk) 17:14, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Approved

Thank you for accepting our suggestions and updating the grant budget. This proposal is approved. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:37, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Grant start/end date change

WMF approved a change in the start and end date of this grant. The new dates will be April 11-June 6, 2014 to include event planning and event wrap-up. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:39, 25 March 2014 (UTC)