Grants talk:PEG/Wiki Loves Monuments international team/2016 coordination

A decision has been made on this grant. Comments are still welcome on this page.

GAC members who abstain from voting/comment

1. I am the submitter, so I cannot vote my own proposal. --Ilario (talk) 13:15, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

GAC comments

Thanks for the submission. I plan to support this proposal mainly because of the project's high impact in the global community but there are still some things that need improvements. First, the measure of success sections also include unmeasurable goals. Second, the emergency costs are rather high exceeding 10% of the total amount. Third, it would be helpful if there are some learning patterns created or successful stories told on the coordination of the communities in the previous year and the major challenges this year. It is noticeable that some countries that participated in the past are not participating this year. Have the people on the international team thought on the reasons for the withdrawal and the changes that should be made to improve the contest globally? Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 22:24, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Kiril Simeonovski:,

the measures seems to me to be evaluated or measured. It means that something cannot be measured, but it can be evaluated if reached (with a simple binary answer yes/no). As I said, there are some qualitative measures that cannot be measured, but we can identify if they are reached. Please suggest us the points to be corrected.

At the moment we are trying to involve as much countries is possible, last year we also thought to submit a survey at the end to measure the satisfaction and to solve the biggest barriers, but we did not it cause the limited manpower, I hope that this year we can produce at least a survey. The biggest workload now is to set an international team with more resources than last year. We can pickup from your comment a follow-up to the event (may be a new grant) to collect stories and to set a learning pattern but also to submit a survey to all new/current/past participants. At the moment I think that the best is to focus on the event, afterwards we can look for a follow-up. Last year a suggested a permanent international team, those suggestions can help to implement it with specific goals.

The emergency cost covers not only the normal emergency but also the risks. This year we thought that, in relation to the change of the grant format, some countries will not apply in time for a grant, so we have a small budget to cover at least the local prizes.

I hope that my answer are sufficient. --Ilario (talk) 13:05, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Community comments

Hi,

Great that you are working on this. I was wondering:

1. Who will be hired for the "Professional or administrative support" (which has two rows in the budget)?
2. Could you provide a table with how the 5,000 euros in prizes will be divided? I am not sure that I understand how they will be divided.
3. Will the coupons be sponsored? Will they cover travel to Wikimania?

Again, thank you for your work!

Best, John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 13:00, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi John please find below the answer:

• Professional or administrative support is to pay the employee of fiscal sponsorship. Last year we paid the worktime for the fiscal sponsor, this year is the same. The fiscal sponsor acted with a very professional approach, and was perfect, it seems correct to pay for a professional level of work. For software development we are looking to have a jury tool available for all countries (even if everyone can develop their own) and to have a technical support during the event. At the moment the engagement of a technical supporter is more than 24/7 and it cannot be done on volunteering basis. This approach will help to reduce the risks. The budget is limited, so the best is to contact people who already developed a tool to pay for a maintenance solution and for supporting time.
• The distribution of prizes is simpler than explained. Basically we would avoid to have unclaimed prizes. The first three winner will receive 1'000EUR, the 4th and the 5th 500EUR. IF someone withdraws, we will distribute the prizes but after the 4th position the maximum prize is 500 CHF.
  • Scenario 1: one of the first three winners withdraws, we have two prizes to distribute to the 6th and 7th position (because from the 4th position the maximum prize is 500 EUR);
  • Scenario 2: one of the winner of 4th and 5th place withdraws, we have a prize for the 6th position (if the 6th withdraws, it will be for the 7th position and so on);
  • Scenario 3: someone withdraws and we would distribute the prize, but from 6th to 10th position all withdraw. The prize will be considered unclaimed and it will be returned back to the WMF.
• Last year we tried to finance scholarships but the problem is that we finish to early for Wikimania to have a realistic cost. The grant has an end date so we have to fix the budget before Wikimania, so we cannot manage a scholarship. The coupons may be sponsored, but the sponsorship activity requires a long time plan, at the moment we have short time to look for sponsorship, probably in future it would be possible.

I hope to have been sufficiently clear. --Ilario (talk) 19:29, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

WMF comments

Hi Romaine and Ilario. Thank you for this grant request, engaging in the discussion, and once again spending considerable time and effort to organize the international portion of WLM. It is no small project, but very appreciated by many in the community! We have a few questions/comments below and look forward to your response:

1. One of the goals is "Creating and maintaining helpful documentation for multiple target groups, including national organizers and participants". I assume you mean the information documented on these pages. Have you identified gaps in the current documentation or received feedback on areas that people need more or better information?
2. Please provide more information on the jury tool. We understand this has been a challenge in the past, but do not have a clear picture of the situation. Would this tool be adapted and used for all local contests? How difficult will it be to maintain the tool for future contests?
3. Have you already identified who will provide the admin support and do the programming work?
4. As discussed above, it would be great to do post-contest survey to better understand what is particularly helpful to local organizers and if/where more support is needed. We can help develop this if needed.
5. We don't believe emergency costs for late local organizer grant requests are necessary. With the new Rapid Grants program, we have a very quick turnaround on requests. Please remove this item from the budget.

Please let us know if you have questions about the above. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Hello Alex Wang (WMF), Thank you for the questions.

1. Yes, but it are multiple pages. It is an ongoing process, and based on feedback we improve the documentation on these pages. I have received some feedback and modified the pages on this matter.
2. If the tool is used by all local contests is completely up to the local team, but we will make at least sure that the tool is available for those teams who want to use it. Ilario is better informed in this subject, but I can try to describe the situation of last year a bit, the situation we like to avoid now. Last year there was no organised support, and it was assumed that there would be multiple tools available for usage. This resulted in the end in much confusion, and problems, as the tool seemed not ready and documented in time, which caused an alarming feeling at many teams who relied on the tool. This year we like to have the tool ready in time, prepared, so we are sure it can be used by all the teams and all the teams are informed in team and can deliver their results of the local contest in time for the international round, without rushing. The tool also can be used for other contests, but WLM is currently the largest user of the tool.
3. Question for Ilario.
4. Okay.
5. Here we have a disagreement. (But first I must say it is not just for late organisers, it is for unforeseen costs in general.) Spoken with many teams over time, I notice often that new teams see a high burden in getting a grant from WMF. Local teams have to acquire money to run the project, working on getting monument lists, write press release, organise activities, organise prizes, organise a jury, and a lot more. This is a lot of work for small teams, and if they also have the risk of not getting the money, this is a high mountain they have to climb. We as international team think that it is important for a successful Wiki Loves Monuments, that we can provide a local team the guarantee that they are funded if they comply with the minimal/basic rules set for Wiki Loves Monuments. And it works, last year we could comfort some teams that if they would end up in having money troubles, we could guarantee a very basic contest in these countries. And what will happen if a local team fulfils the minimal requirements there are for organising Wiki Loves Monuments, while WMF does reject their funding? Then both the local team and the international team have the troubles because countries drops out. And that is the last thing we want, as this makes WLM directly less successful.
   Further I must say that we already have communicated that there is emergency money available if a problem occurs or financial difficulties arise, the same as we did last year.
   If WMF can guarantee that if a local team fulfils the minimal requirements for the organisation, the money is guaranteed, then we can talk about removing this part from the budget, otherwise this is for me a breaking point.

Also I like to note that I have heart from some local teams complaints about WMF making problems with them not having a bank account or something like that. We can't afford such issues. For the success of Wiki Loves Monuments we need as much as teams on board as possible, and this helps and motivates them to organise a local contest.

To conclude, for many years we have budget for unforeseen expenses. This part of the budget we do not want to spend, but having an emergency amount available, that we can guarantee if issues arise, that is part of why Wiki Loves Monuments is successful. The motivation why this should be removed from the budget is far from sufficient to come even close to considering such. I am sorry, but I am completely against removing this part of the budget. Romaine (talk) 02:49, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi Alex Wang (WMF), please find below the answers shared with the team.

1. Yes, part of the documentation focuses on improving the material in the link you have provided (material for local organizers), for example, how data can be migrated to Wikidata. However, we would also like to focus on "helpful documentation" which relies on last year’s work on WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) captured at List of ToDos. Given that this year we have a bigger team ([1]), each team member will be active in some parts of the WBS developed in 2015. I hope that everyone at the end will contribute to identifying the gaps and helping the international team with appropriate documentation to close those gaps.
2. It is our intention to focus on one of the jury tools and specifically that used by the majority of the participating countries. At the moment, we are working with Ilya who has developed WLX jury tool. This tool will be provided to all countries, however, all countries will retain the freedom to use any of the tools listed at Tools page or to create their own. It is worth to note that offering support for one jury tool is aligned with the international team’s efforts in the technical space, that is: providing support for centralnotice setup, the upload campaign setup, and the landing setup. In order to understand the features that need to be developed for this year’s use of the jury tool, we ran a survey on July 4, 2016. Through this survey, we collected feedback from past years’ organizers about the jury tool that they had used, what they liked about it, and what they thought could be improved. Based on the feedback, we have identified few areas that we want to improve the tool on. Given that the tool has been recently made open source ([2]), the future maintenance of the tool will be less at risk. We are now in the process of moving the tool to ToolLabs which will make the hosting of the tool easier in the future. To provide a way for maintenance continuity, we are planning to ideally have one more developer to work with Ilya this year, so the knowledge can be transferred to others for the future years. This will help us assure continuity in the services we offer and will mitigate the potential risks.
3. Yes, Wikimedia CH will be fiscal sponsor but they requested to delay a little bit the end of the grant (until end of February).
4. Considering that this year we have more members in the international team, running a survey at the end of the process works well. We hope that the survey can be used to help us learn the degree of the satisfaction of the local organizers with the services offered by the international team, and provide a way for us to learn what we can improve in the future years. However, we would like to emphasize the importance of having a neutral survey. Therefore, we suggest that we prepare the first draft of the survey, but we receive feedback from the grantmaking team on how the questions can/should be changed. A small group from the international team will work on this survey, probably those who applied for the grant considering that it should be a part of the finalization of the grant.
5. Yes, we agree. In the past year, we have put a small budget aside for local teams because the WLM 2015 started very late and local teams had little time to apply. However, this year they can address their grant needs through Rapid Grants. This being said, we would like to ask that you consider 10% of the total grant requested for unforeseen costs.

--Ilario (talk) 19:20, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Grant approved

Hi Ilario and Romaine. Thank you for your thoughtful responses to our questions. I agree that filling gaps in documentation is very important and I'm also looking forward to talking to Ilya at the upcoming CEE Meeting more about the jury tool. It's fine to use 10% of the grant budget for unforeseen costs. Please do let participating countries know about Rapid Grants. We have been able to do a 1-2 week turnaround on approvals. I hope we Rapid Grants can fill the last-minute funding gap you've experienced in previous years. If you are still finding it would be useful to fund local teams directly, please keep us updated and we can always discuss. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi Alex Wang (WMF), another point is open (probably not clear), Wikimedia CH asked to proceed to the payments of prizes in February because in September/October they are busy with the fundraising and in December/January with the closing/opening of the financial year. So we would ask to extend the end until end of February. --Ilario (talk) 20:36, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi Ilario. That is fine with us if you think it's ok for the prize winners. Please just let Janice know what end date you would like and we can update the submission/grant. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 20:40, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Extension of the deadline

Dear grantmaking team, I would ask to extend the grant until 10th March. The report is quite ready but we are collecting all financial records to fill the last section of the report. Kind regards. --Ilario (talk) 11:22, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi Ilario. Thanks for the update. It is fine to extend the reporting deadline to March 10th. Best, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 05:13, 3 March 2017 (UTC)