Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Conference Fund/Wikisource Conference 2024

WMF review and feedback

Hi @VIGNERON and the Wikisource Community User Group.

Thank you very much for this proposal and for your initiative in organizing the Wikisource Conference 2024. I highly appreciate the time and effort you put into this proposal. I have reviewed your proposal and have some comments and follow up questions:

• I am not very clear on the actual objectives of the conference. I see the high level goals, but those are not actionable objectives. What kind of actions or impact will you consider as a success after the conference? What is the change in reality that you are envisioning as a result of the conference? What do you hope to achieve?

The following are the objectives for the upcoming Wikisource Conference:

• We plan to get the global Wikisource community at one place and focus on capacity building for regions where it is currently lesser known. As we have already mentioned in the proposal “We will discuss how we can bridge the geographical gap and expand Wikisource to other regions.” This will help us grow the Wikisource community and also foster a community of collaboration. Hence, growth in Wikisource communities and partners after the conference around the world will be a measure of success.
• In the recent years, there have been some partners that different communities have collaborated with in order to advance Wikisource such as PPIM, British Library. This conference will become a space where there will be showcases around those collaborations and brainstorming sessions that focus on leveraging existing partnerships while fostering new ones. Growth of projects that involve more partners will be another measure of success.
• There are multiple technical challenges identified around Wikisource and different individuals and teams are working to address some of them. But even then, we feel like there is a need for prioritization and thoughtful collective efforts on the part of various communities. The conference will pave the path to strengthen the Wikisource technical community and foster their relationships with contributors. Better Wikisource technical infrastructure will be the final measure of success.

• I appreciate your outreach strategy and the intention to engage with non-wikimedians. But due to the nature of Wikisource, in order to have fruitful discussions and engagements, you will need to engage with non-wikimedians that are already familiar with the platform and have some of the basic understanding and skills for working with Wikisource. How will you manage participants with different backgrounds and diverse levels of wiki expertise?

• As mentioned earlier (“we will discuss how we can bridge the geographical gap and expand Wikisource to other regions.”), we are focusing on both beginners and advanced contributors of Wikisource. We will plan the Conference program accordingly with sessions that will include basic and advanced training.
• We believe that this strategy will help in building more Wikisource communities in currently underrepresented regions.
• Wikisource is not only about transcribing texts but is an ecosystem of digitized collections, digitization initiatives, transcriptions, technological infrastructure (such as tools and OCR) and reuse. So, we need to work with partners such as the British Library and will be inviting them to join the conference to shape its future strategy. We need to connect with volunteer developers and technology partners such as Transkribus. We will also invite Comms partners like UNESCO.

• 110 scholarships out of 170 total participants. Who will the other 60 be? Will they all be localas/ self funded participants?

• We have changed the numbers. The other participants are Invited Speakers (7), Organizers (10), WMF (10), WMID (6), support staff (Interpreter and videographer - 6) and Local participants (20).

• What about diversity criteria such as gender; emerging/ underrepresented communities etc?

• We have already budgeted for participants from different regions. We will ensure that participants from different gender backgrounds have equal representation.
• The organizing team already has representatives from different regions and genders. Organizers in this conference come from communities that have been historically underrepresented. While the last Wikisource Conference was organized in Europe by contributors and affiliates based in Europe, this conference marks a shift in this trend as it will have members from ESEAP, MENA, and South Asia.

• No need to budget for insurance for scholarship recipients, as all participants who are traveling outside their home country, funded by the conference grant, are covered by the WMF health insurance.

• Thank you for the information.

• I’m happy to see the in wiki collaboration between the different groups. How many active organizing team members do you have?

• Currently we have 6 COTs from around the globe (ESEAP, MENA, and South Asia regions) and 10 Local organizers from Bali, Indonesia.

• Who are some of your current partnerships? Do you have any existing relationships with Google, Libraries or other knowledge institutions?

• We are planning to engage partners that have supported the Wikisource Loves Manuscripts pilot in Indonesia such as PPIM, and UNESCO Jakarta. Wikimedia Indonesia already has an existing relationship with these and other partners in the region.
• We would also like to engage some of the Wikimedia Foundation’s Wikisource partners such as the British Library and Transkribus.

• I see that you identified one of the desired learnings to understand ‘what are the major technical challenges for the Wikisource community’. I actually want you to already have quite a good idea of some of the challenges the community is facing, before the conference, and to have a plan of how to mitigate and address those at the conference. This should not be a learning - this should be something to base the program on. This is probably a demonstration of one of my main concerns for this conference. I do not clearly see the direction, vision and actionable plan for this conference. The very high level goal is understandable - but how will you get there? What needs to happen at the event and how will it move the needle and change the reality for Wikisource or for the community of contributors?

The conference aims to address three different challenges that the Wikisource community faces.

• • Technical challenges:
    • We recognize the necessity for improved tooling within Wikisource. Our agenda is to tackle existing technical challenges head-on by addressing the significant backlog of tasks, as evidenced by the numerous pending items on the Wikimedia Phabricator board. Concurrently, we are dedicated to forecasting and planning for future tool requirements, ensuring that we are prepared to implement these advancements as needed.
  • Social challenges:
    • Discussions: Engage in dialogues about innovative outreach strategies to promote Wikisource in underrepresented regions. This includes identifying key areas where Wikisource presence is lacking and brainstorming culturally sensitive approaches to increase awareness about the movement.
    • Workshops: Conduct workshops with experts in community building and partnerships to share best practices and success stories. These sessions can facilitate the creation of a roadmap for expanding Wikisource’s reach.
    • Expected Outcomes: Concrete plans for outreach initiatives, identified potential partners, and a set of actionable steps tailored for each target region.
  • Long-term Strategy:
    • Roundtable Sessions: Host roundtable discussions with diverse community members to gather a wide range of perspectives on the future of Wikisource. This will include debates on the sustainability of current practices and exploration of new collaborative opportunities.
    • Panel Discussions: Organize panels with thought leaders and stakeholders to discuss the long-term vision for Wikisource. These discussions should focus on aligning the platform’s goals with the evolving needs of its users.
    • Expected Outcomes: A collaboratively developed long-term strategic plan, with clear milestones and a framework for cross-community collaboration that will guide Wikisource’s growth and development.

By focusing on these key areas, we intend to provide clear direction to the movement that will significantly advance the capabilities of Wikisource and enhance the experience of all stakeholders. These challenges cannot be solved by individual actions and need collective efforts. Hence the conference will be a convening to that effect and invite people with different expertise in different areas to contribute towards the future of Wikisource and the free knowledge ecosystem.

Budget:

• You mentioned you will grant 70-74 international scholarships. So why is it budgeted for 89?

• Our new budget will accommodate 45 international scholarship recipients, 2 invitee international speakers, and 7 international organizers.

• Airport shuttles - have you checked if those are not included in the hotel services?

• We have verified with the hotel that they offer a shuttle service for an additional fee. Based on our previous experiences, we do not recommend this option due to the need for personnel to wait for participants’ arrival. Delays can make scheduling pick-up times challenging. It is easier for participants to travel to the hotel from the airport on their own using public transportation or ride-sharing services.

• Why is it budgeted for 120 units of ‘travel from and into home airport’ if the total number of scholarships is 110? The expenses also seem quite high. Why is that? How far is the hotel from the airport?

• A total of 110 participants, including both international and Indonesian attendees as well as the organizers, will be attending. This number is unrelated to the distance from the hotel to the airport, which is included in the local transportation budget. The ‘Travel from and to Home Airport’ budget line is for the participants’ travel expenses to the airport.

• What is ‘dinner for organizers’ and why is it for 33 people?

• The ‘dinner for organizers’ was a planned dinner intended for the organizers of the Conference. If deemed unnecessary, we can certainly consider removing it from the budget to allocate resources more efficiently.

• We now ask you to limit swag to low cost items like stickers.

• We will limit the swag to low-cost items such as stickers and remove the participant gifts and merchandise from the budget.

I’m afraid your budget request is far far more than what we can support. If this is a result of the location, I would advise you to look for a different one. You are also welcome to include in kind donations and to partner with potential sponsors. But your current budget is about $2,000 USD per person, and $3,070 USD per scholar. As the general standard is less than $1,000 (for the bigger events). Unfortunately we will not be able to support the event with the current budget request and scope. You will need to scope down dramatically (meaning to cut down about 2 thirds of the current request) for your proposal to be considered at the moment. If you would like to consult with the WMF Travel team, this can be arranged.

• As mentioned above, this conference is being organized by communities from languages and regions (ESEAP, SA, MENA) which were hardly represented at the last Wikisource conference. The decision to host it in Bali where the community has been doing remarkable work with palm leaf manuscripts holds significant value. Additionally, Wikimedia Indonesia, as a Wikimedia Chapter, is perfectly positioned not only to support the conference as a fiscal sponsor but also as a co-organizer having experience in hosting international conferences.
• We see that even during the ESEAP Conference the average cost is 2000 USD per scholar. That was a regional conference but since this is a global conference, we believe the costs will be higher.
• We have explored that option of potential sponsors but that unfortunately is not possible at this point.

I also ask that you better explain the need and objectives for this conference. Is it not clear now why the need for this to be a global event when it can be very well represented as part of the regional conferences. The relatively low rate of responses to the community engagement survey (out of the 12,000 you sent it to) also does not indicate an actual need.

• It has been almost 10 years since the first Wikisource Conference and the Wikisource community has grown remarkably since then. We think it is really important to have a forum where the entire Wikisource community can get together and share their best practices with other communities in different regions. We will not be able to accomplish this at regional conferences.
• We think there is some confusion in terms of the engagement survey reach. Considering there are about 200 members in the Wikisource global community Telegram group, we think we were able to engage a large number of respondents in the two weeks of the survey and it does demonstrate the need for this conference. The number mentioned is the total number of participants in various channels but a vast majority of them were not Wikisource contributors. The intention was to make sure that many different communities have awareness about this conference at the least.
• As mentioned above, there are multiple challenges that different communities have been working to resolve such as growing Wikisource communities, improving partnerships, and fostering the developer community.
• Wikisource communities have grown in recent years in regions like ESEAP, South Asia, and MENA, while back in 2015 it was mainly active in Europe. The 2015 Wikisource conference did help propel this forward. Even with small representation from these regions, participants were able to go back to their communities with the learnings and promote Wikisource further. Going forward, we would focus on further expanding Wikisource to other regions as well. There are certain online activities and engagements going on already: https://diff.wikimedia.org/fr/2024/02/29/reseau-pprendre/
• As mentioned above as well, Wikisource is not only about transcribing but it’s an ecosystem consisting of digitized collections, digitization initiatives, transcription on Wikisource, technological infrastructure (such as tools and OCR) and reuse. So, we need to work with partners such as the British Library and will be inviting them to join the conference to shape its future strategy. We will also invite Comms partners like UNESCO.
• To explain further, there have been multiple examples of different developers supporting the Wikisource infrastructure such as the Wikisource grants were given by Wikimedia Italia, Wikisource volunteer developer community (such as Sohom, Jay), WMF developers (Sam Wilson) and fellows (Kolawole), and affiliates (such as Indic MediaWiki Developers UG). We also need to connect with technology partners such as Transkribus.
• Finally, we will be developing a long-term socio-technical strategy for Wikisource with cross-community collaboration such as building a Wikisource Hub. We believe this is a really crucial step for the future of the digitization workflows, content partnerships, Wikisource transcription workflow, individual & institutional recuse, and technical community collaboration. Hence, the conference would become the platform for discussing the formation of Wikisource Hub involving various affiliates and partners and having a shared vision. This would be similar to the Hubs conversions that took place at the 2022 ESEAP conference.

When you're able, please respond to the questions on meta and revise the proposal on Fluxx if needed (I have sent the application back on Fluxx so you can edit it, just don't forget to re-submit when you are done). These revisions will be due by March 6, 2024 after which the Conference Grant Committee will begin formal review of the proposal to make the funding decisions.

Best, CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 09:42, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi Chen,

Thanks for you questions. Sorry for the last day answers, here are the answers from the organisation team (which I thank a lot for their work).

I hope it answers your questions, please feel free to reach us if you have more questions.

Cheers, VIGNERON * ^discut. 12:52, 6 March 2024 (UTC)