Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Amical Wikimedia 2023 Grant

Feedback from the Northern and Western Europe (NWE) Regional Funding Committee on your proposal

Hello Medol

Thank you for taking the time to submit your General Support Fund proposal in the Northern and Western Europe region. We are pleased to have reviewed your application and have the following comments and questions:

• Firstly, we recognise this as a strong application and there was a lot of praise from the NWE Committee for the depth and breadth of partnerships that you have built.
• Secondly, the NWE Committee understands there have been issues with internal governance. We would like to know what you have learnt from that experience and how it will shape institutional governance moving forward? Relatedly, do you think here is a stable and healthy status in your current board and community relations? What are the needs at this point to continue the recovery process?
• Thirdly, the NWE Committee would like to hear more detail about how Amical works with Catalan speakers outside Catalonia, notably in the Land of Valencia, as well as in the Balearic Islands, Andorra, France and Italy? Do you have collaborations with other affiliates?'
• Fourthly, with a track record of budget underspend, the NWE Committee would like to hear your assessment of Amical’s readiness to take on a larger budget.

We understand that you might find it beneficial to discuss some of these issues with members of the committee, and we would be happy to speak with you. Please let us know if that’s something you feel you would benefit from.

Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you.

On behalf of the NWE Regional Committee,

Lajmmoore (talk) 23:18, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Hello Lajmmoore,

A real pleasure to "meet" you; as far as I have learned you seem to be a quite active and efficient wikipedian! I am Claudi Balaguer (user Capsot) and I reply on behalf of Medol and the entire Board.

1. Thanks a lot for the nice comments. It has been quite difficult for us to figure out how to do it, so we are really pleased to know we did it properly. :)

2. Well, we learned a lot since we were a new team... In spite of our lack of experience I think that our Board did a good job in trying to heal the wounds and bringing people together. The internal governance issue has been solved and, as aforementioned, Amical is much more united now than it was about three years ago. There is currently a healthy and stable status; nonetheless we haven't succeeded to attract many more new members and we currently don't know if there will be volunteers to replace us in the next board. The challenge has been tough and some of us seem to be not interested/willing to be in the next Board, though some of us could change their mind. And if the need should arise, we would probably continue... What is certain is that the next Amical's Board won't be left empty. Our main problem in my view is what we rely mainly, and probably too much, on volunteers, so our need would be to try to alleviate partly the work and duties of the Board with professionals.

3. From the very beginning, we have tried and strived to be in touch with everyone, especially the most "estranged" ones. I live in Northern Catalonia, it is a quite tough situation here since the Catalan language is greatly endangered; however I managed to create some dynamism with our Viquitrobada (our diminute version of Wikimania) last year that took place in Elna/Perpinyà ([1]) and has been, besides reaching local institutions, Catalan activists and wikipedians, the opportunity to knit together our community and was a real success in many aspects. I also intervened in this year's Viquimarató de la Llengua in Perpinyà/Perpignan with the Oficina Pública de la Llengua Catalana at the Casal de Perpinyà (November 18th: [2]). We have a wikipedian, Xavier Dengra, who was previously treasurer, who does an excellent work with a group of librarians in Andorra and many members of our Board went to València in early 2021 in order to show we cared about them and about what they do while showing our inconditional support to our Valencian members and their great projects. A few months later a few members (Medol and Catgirl) of the Board also traveled to l'Alguer (Sardinia) to renew and strengthen our contacts in that Italian and Catalan city during the Adifolk festival.

We also have always been in touch with the people of the Brussels lobby (Dimitar Dimitrov and Anna Mazgal) and we are currently a member of the new initiative branded Wikimedia Europe (if I am not wrong about the name...). We had a member of Wikimedia France (User:Culex) who participated to the 2021 edition of the Viquitrobada and he even was the first speaker. Then, recently Wikimedia France reached us in order to give them some help about an event that was taking place in Mallorca and we tried to help in a very modest way. Capucine, Wikimedia France's president met then, before leaving for the island, in Barcelona with our president and Catgirl, and many projects, especially Wikimedia Europe, have been mentioned.

4. As said before, we still don't know what/who the next Board will be. However, as I mentioned before, a certain presence of professionals is needed. Our first step was to hire someone (Judith) who has been a great help in administrative issues and recently in organizing the 2022 Viquitrobada in Amposta ([3]), which also was rather successful and the thing we can be really proud of is that we had a few "historical" wikipedians and members of Amical come back after many years of "disappearance". This need of staff obviously generates a greater spending (we didn't spend much in late 2020, 2021 and part of 2022 because first we had no staff anymore, then Covid refrained many activities and finally Amical's instability and the arrival of a new Board did not allow much room for spending more). Our new budget has increased noticeably since we think, and have thus planned, that Amical needs a position akin, or somewhat similar, to the one Àlex Hinojo (User Kippelboy) had when we were known, ages ago, as the "Catalan Army". He did an excellent job and I hope we can get to find someone who can do at least half of what he did back then. :) We have calculated that that position would not be occupied until the second half of 2023 (that decision will depend on the new board though...). Lastly, Judith's position also costs Amical (currently) about €2,300 per month (we only had her from May on in 2022).

I hope that my explanations were thorough and clear enough. Feel free to reach me if you should need further details or have new questions, I will be glad to reply. I will try to add a few pictures of our activities later.

Best regards, Claudi/Capsot (talk) 23:16, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

A few pictures

• 
  Viquipèdia masks
• 
  Former and exiled President Carles Puigdemont and Ivan Besora (Adifolk's chair) during the Adifolk (Sept. 2021)
• 
  One of Catgirl's many picture during the Adifolk (L'Alguer, Sardinia, Sept. 2021)
• 
  Ball de bastons (Adifolk, L'Alguer, Sardinia, Sept. 2021)
• 
  Welcome sign (2021 Viquitrobada in Elna, Northern Catalonia, Nov. 2021)
• 
  The Northern Catalan writer J.L. Lluís and the 20th anniversary T-shirt
• 
  Visiting Elna's cloister (Viquitrobada 2021)
• 
  Group picture in Elna (Viquitrobada, Nov. 2021)
• 
  Group picture in Calonge (VENI VIDI VIQUI, Aug. 2022)
• 
  Frank/Flamenc being our guide (Wikimeet VENI VIDI VIQUI in Calonge, Aug. 2022)
• 
  Merchandising (2022 Viquitrobada in Amposta, Nov. 2022)
• 
  Group picture (2022 Viquitrobada in Amposta, Nov. 2022)
• 
  First Viquitrobada's cake, Nov. 2022)
• 
  Second Viquitrobada's cake, Nov. 2022)

Feedback from Satdeep Gill, Culture and Heritage team (WMF)

Hi Wikimedia Amical,

I am from the Culture & Heritage team at the Wikimedia Foundation and I would like to share some thoughts and also ask some clarifying questions:

• I believe you have a solid plan and resources in place to execute the mentioned project. I appreciate the large number of people to be involved and the specific target of reaching 20% women biographies on Catalan Wikipedia (which is currently less than 18% percent).
• I am interested in getting to know more details on activities related to the sister projects, Commons, Wikidata, Wikisource etc. Are you able to share any examples from previous years and the kind of impact you are planning to generate from them?
• I am also very intrigued by the learning resources (videos, documentaries) that you plan to create in this project. Have you created any such resources in the past? If yes, what are you doing differently this time? Can also you share your expectations from creating these new resources?
• Finally, it would be great if you can share a bit more about the various partners that you mentioned in your application. For instance, what kind of activities and content has been generated with the folklore related project? Also, can you share more about Bibliowikis?

Feel free to reach out to me with any questions. SGill (WMF) (talk) 14:50, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello Satdeep,

My deepest apologies, I have just noticed your message right now, when I wanted to add a few picture about our events (I am not finished yet...). I have been extremely busy lately (I am a teacher and we have just ended the trimester) and my colleagues did not notice your message either. We will try to reply as soon as possible even though I beg you to be patient since being volunteers does not give us as much time as we wish we could have to deal with all the issues (we once more have a problem with our website and lost most of our data, which will have to be uploaded again...) and things we have to do.

Meanwhile, I paste here the link to our blog: [4]. Even though it doesn't relate to, nor answer, your questions, it might prove interesting.

Best regards, Claudi/Capsot (talk) 14:01, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

PS: I believe that the percentage of women biographies should be pretty close to 20% currently since it was at 19.86% in August 2022 (at least it seems) [5].

Hello Satdeep, this is @Quelet, member of the Amical Wikimedia governing board. We would like to address your thoughts and questions:

Tackling gender bias is one of our main principles as a governing board. Currently we develop several continued activities to address such a bias. Contests are also held every year - they are related to a global initiative called Viquidones (i.e., Wikiwomen). Likewise, we have fostered a project to analyze the amount of women eponyms in street and school names, and we are going to repeat the 100 BBC Women project held annually. Moreover, we must tell you that reducing the gender bias is something shared by all our community - many volunteers are editing new biographies to contribute to reduce the biography gender gap.

As far as sister projects is concerted, we are especially involved in Commons and Wikidata. We organize several Wikimarathons and place calls to our community in specific Commons subjects. Regarding Wikidata, we are quite lucky to have a group of members that are very active in this sister project, so they engage and transmit passion and enthousiasm to everyone else. These members have fostered infotables, that are inlcuded in Wikipedia pages using Wikidata as data source. Other sister projectes like Wikibooks, Wikicites and Wikitexts are edited every now and then.

Learning materials have been designed recently, mainly videos. One must note that video resources tend to become obsolete fast, and that we must update them often. This is the reason why we have preferred to desing one-minute videos on very basic tasks, see e.g., https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajuda:Videotutorials. We are not planning to make new tutorials in the very near future.

Folklore was one of the main subjects of the S'Alguer meeting - it consisted mainly of uploading photos to Commons, and it was also useful for outreach: explaining Amical's purpose and projects. Several organizations became interested in our activities and asked for further information. Regarding bibliowikis, this is a project that stalled for a while, but we are trying to restart it. Its main related project is #1lib1ref, where library networks are asked to add references to Wikipedia pages. Furthermore, we have organized online courses and other activities specific to librarians. In 2022 we have been unable to organize such courses, but we are planning to recover them next year.

Please feel free to contact us for any doubt you may have. We will be very happy to share ideas and discuss problem solutions.

--Quelet (talk) 08:10, 30 December 2022 (UTC)