Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Examining how Professional Academic Organizations engage with Wikimedia (ID: 22278145)

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello BrettButtliere (talk · contribs) and Matthewvetter (talk · contribs) and thanks for this proposal focused on developing a more robust community amongst academic professionals in relation to engagement with the Wikimedia movement. Please see my comments and questions below:

• First, I appreciate the general rationale behind this proposal. Questions around how best to support and sustain the participation of academic communities and professionals have proliferated across Wikimedia communities and affiliates. It's also very clear that your team has good expertise on these topics and capacity to connect with academic communities, and is therefore well-equipped to complete the proposed work.
• The two major goals of this project are to develop a database of organizers/potential leaders and establish what activities academic institutions have engaged in with respect to Wikimedia projects. While it is clear to me why these goals are useful for your team's immediate and longer term plans, how will this information be published and shared with relevant Wikimedia communities?
• One important concern I have is that the broader impact of this initial work seems to depend on larger research and community engagement activities that will happen later beyond the scope of this grant. Importantly, proposals supported through Rapid Funds should yield some outcomes that broadly benefit the Wikimedia movement by the end of the project. We generally do not fund proposals that largely depend on future funding to support the needed outcomes. Can you explain how the immediate goals of the project will have benefits for the Wikimedia movement by the end of the project independent from longer-term work and goals?
• Beyond the scope of this proposal, I also want to acknowledge that activities you've mentioned that primarily consist of research/publication activities may not be eligible for funding in Rapid Funds. Have you considered the Wikimedia Research Fund in relation to some of the longer term work you are planning?
• One other potential source of information that may be helpful here is the history of funding the Foundation has done with academic institutions around different activities, which is documented on Meta-wiki, and that we may be able to make available to you depending on the information you need. I'm happy to chat with you separately to think together about how best to review and transfer this information to you, as it is publicly available.

When you're able, please respond to my questions above, as these will help me finalize a funding decision for the proposal. Let me know if you need any clarity around these questions as well. With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 06:14, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi I JethroBT (WMF) (talk · contribs),

Thank you for your interest in and questions about our research.

One of the major goals of doing this work is to identify those that we should speak with about what they are aiming to do. To this extent, we have been and expect to continue meeting individuals from different communities, with the goal of understanding how we can help best take this to the next level. and that is one way we think the project contributes, is by trying to identify best practices and actions for the next levels as well as disseminate that knowledge among those user groups that we are interacting with.

We agree the application probably is written with too much academics in mind (I still learn how to write grants), but our goal is to generate energy, organization, and action toward the adoption of Wikimedia among academics. The main findings so far are that there are many people doing many things, and much energy to go beyond edit-a-thons though it is unclear exactly what is next. I mean how to get professional organizations really caring and e.g., making textbooks with Wikibooks or having students contribute through class essays (Vetter, 2019). Thus, we thought to get a general survey of what has been done. Of course your funding data can also be very interesting and useful in this regard.

Thus, the major ways the project will contribute to the community outside of the formal publication, are e.g., the community being built, the discussions that we are having, and in the distribution of our results at e.g., Wikimedia conferences, blog posts disseminated among user groups, and etc. The ultimate goal is to help organize people toward this goal. The formal publication is only because this is what we need to show our universities that we did something, more on this later.

We agree that perhaps applying to the research fund could be more appropriate, but felt it could be better to enter into collaboration in a small way to start. Certainly the project/ application is in some way kept artificially small because 5,000$ does not cover even actually the time that Matt and I have put into this so far, if we are honest, let alone if we actually do the project. :)

The point is that we are considering the Research fund, though we are preparing a larger project for that. Specifically, we have identified in our discussions that many academics experience difficulty receiving 'professional credit' for their contributions, and this creates a tough situation for contributors because it, at least sometimes, kind of literally costs them in terms of job outcomes (fewer citations, fewer papers etc). To this end we are working with Sage Ross to develop a more research and funder focused version of the Programs and Events Dashboard, which we are provisionally calling the Wikimedia Impact Tracker, such that researchers can demonstrate the impact of their project related contributions and funders can track the impact across programs of grants. We believe this will have a significant effect in terms of encouraging contributions.

We would be happy to talk to you more about these ideas, to hear how you think we can best achieve these goals, and also to discuss/get those lists of events funded and especially champions who we might interview/ survey/ help toward this goal.

Please let us know if we can provide any further information.

Thank you again,

@BrettButtliere & @Matthewvetter BrettButtliere (talk) 10:33, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi BrettButtliere (talk · contribs) and I JethroBT (WMF) (talk · contribs) , I will add that, to help clarify the focus of this proposal on distinct outcomes separate from long-term goals, the work we hope to do in creating a database of organizers (past and present) will be executed with the goal of building a professional network at large-scale capacity. This database in and of itself will be extremely useful to multiple stakeholders in the Wikimedia community, including those in topic-oriented task forces or projects (e.g. Wikiproject Science, Wikiproject Writing) as well as stakeholders at the intersection of academic/professional orgs and Wikimedia engagement (Wiki Education; WikiJournals User group). We can share the database with relevant listservs as well as create some documentation on Meta if that is appropriate. We would also propose an announcement for The Signpost and/or Village Pump for example. To this end, would it be helpful to write up a more detailed proposal for sharing the database? Do you have specific recommendations for audiences and stakeholders? Thanks, Matthewvetter (talk) 13:05, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Ultimately, I am starting to think that something as simple as inviting these individuals to an email list, or a user group, can really be useful for them and in the community in formalizing and easing things, as resources are shared. I am not sure that anything like this exists, we have not found a group like this yet, and we think it should exist. and could go a long way toward organizing efforts, especially if there were some people really driving it like e.g., Matt and Sage and we are trying to build a team around this concept. BrettButtliere (talk) 16:29, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@BrettButtliere and Matthewvetter: Thanks for these responses-- it's helpful to learn that 1) the database may have some utility for other topic-specific WikiProject groups and other affiliates operating at the intersection of the movement and academia, 2) that you are able to create documentation around this work and share in some public forums, and 3) that an important goal of this project is to produce some tools to support community building. No need to formally revise the proposal for a more detailed outreach plan-- I think these kinds of approaches are more than satisfactory in ensuring the work is shared with some relevant communities within the movement. I'll be approving the proposal shortly. Thanks! I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 16:33, 3 November 2023 (UTC)