Grants talk:Project/Arc.heolo.gy

Observation of a member of the Committee

• The first section does not clearly state the problem that the project is supposed to solve. Therefore it is not clear whether the proposed solution actually solves it.
• There are no well defined project goals.
• No funds appear to be budgeted for the development of various 2d- 3d- parsing libraries. Only some consultations are mentioned.
• The duration of the project is not specified.
• What is the goal of the community engagement?
• No software is self-sustainable. In particular, it is not clear what will happen with hosting when the project ends? Who will pay for it? (And where it will be hosted?)
• No verifiable measures of success are provided.
• It is not clear how many participant the project has. Two or three?

Ruslik (talk) 13:26, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi Ruslik! Thank you for reviewing the proposal. I have made some edits to the proposal page to try and cover your points. Here are the takeaways:

• The problem is a lack of useful interfaces and tooling for expressing the breadth and depth of Wikipedia, a single-article/single-page UX flow is quite limiting
• I have attempted to further express the goals of the project, centered around providing useful software tooling for representing directed graphs.
• Between our 3 participants, this development process is going to be mostly doable in house, with funds being allocated in spaces where our abilities are lacking. For example, I personally will be building the 3d libraries (I already have begun doing the voronoi fracture mathematics required for the 3d design), however will need help communicating with a rendering engine (e.g. Unity) and will seek assistance in that area.
• The duration is 8 months
• Our team, with myself as the Lead, has committed to maintaining the project at the end of the grant and personally funding the hosting if we are unable to find a benevolent host in the future
• The goal is to increase awareness about a changing landscape around digital data, and to provide people a unique way to explore information. Knowledge is power!
• We would be establishing usage milestones once deployment is imminent and we have a better understanding of what traction we are able to get in public spaces for installations
• Three. I forgot to include myself.

--Ianseyer (talk) 22:31, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Use for connectivity

Hi @Ianseyer: and thank you for your proposal.

I think that your idea of building graphs of Wikipedia articles is interesting, but it can be way more impactful if you could use the output for studying connectivity of the graph? There is a significant interest in community in building tools for Connectivity Project (there used to be some tools before 2014, but it died because the software was not maintained and stopped working after an API update), and your project seems to be very close to this need. In particular, I can think of the following applications:

• Identifying articles without incoming links (en:Wikipedia:Orphan). Those articles cannot be reached by any random clicking, thus it would be very useful to identify them
• Furthermore, these articles can form clusters, e.g. a group of 10 articles linked only between each other, but not reachable from any other article (e.g. from the main page).
• Identifying articles without outcoming links, i.e. articles not linking to any other article. This is perhaps fixable.
• Articles linking to disambiguation pages (en:Wikipedia:Disambiguation). These links are most likely wrong and need to be replaced with a link to a specific meaning (e.g. an article linking to en:Arlington, while it should link to en:Arlington County, Virginia, or to en:Arlington, Texas, or to something else).
• Comparison of graphs between different wikis. For example, the link between "C++" and "Java" in English Wikipedia is very short, but it is very long in French Wikipedia, how can this be fixed? Or, for instance, the article "C++" in Cebuano Wikipedia is an orphan not linked from any other article, can we find any article we can link it to?

As far as I know, the biggest challenge is maintaining a database of links between articles, especially in big projects like English Wikipedia. If your project will build and maintain this database, will it be possible to use it for such rather practical purpose? It might be both using tools built by you or by putting the data in a format that other users can use.

In addition, will your project be able to maintain these links for all 290 Wikipedias? Most of them will have really small databases, and usually you will need way less resources than for English Wikipedia.

Sorry if I diverge from your original idea and do not hesitate to ask me if anything is not clear :) Thanks again for your idea! — NickK (talk) 13:40, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

If NickK is right that such a project could be made to help connectivity, I would become an enthusiast supporter! Nemo 08:28, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

I believe that this will be by and large completely enabled by our software, as it stands to be designed. Orphans and self-contained clusters will be very easily identifiable, along with lots of other interesting datapoints ("bridge" articles between clusters, "weak" articles, articles that are so similar that they should be merged, etc). We hope that our tooling could be useful for several aspects of Wikipedia, and hope even stronger that they are eventually incorporated into the proper manifold. --Ianseyer (talk) 21:02, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 1 2016

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 1 2016 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 1 2016 begins on 24 August 2016, and grants will be announced in October. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 18:07, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Arc.heolo.gy

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	5.2
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	5.2
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	5.5
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	3.5
Additional comments from the Committee: The proposed project presents an interesting and creative re-use of Wikipedia content. However, there does not appear to be any potential for impact on the Wikimedia projects themselves, as there is no plan to integrate the software with Wikipedia or otherwise use it within the projects. If they were able to successfully provide this tool, it could be really good. Creating a graph database representing Wikipedia content is a worthwhile goal, which is well within the Wikimedia's strategic priorities. It certainly will have a significant online impact, can be scaled and sustained. I like the idea of the project and what it seeks to achieve. Creating an interactive interface can surge the number of readers and bring a whole new immersion to Wikipedia. It will require significant resource to keep such graphs up-to-date even for en.wiki only I question the value-add of the tool considering how reliable other tools like Wikidata Query Service have become. It's not clear who and for what purpose is going to use this tool after the project is done. It might be impactful if done appropriately - graphs of WIkimedia articles have a wide variety of applications, including bots and further research. The proposed measures of success are not specific, and do not appear to relate to impact within the Wikimedia movement. While the proposed work is not particularly high-risk, the lack of any clear impact potential means that the risk-relative-to-impact is still significant. The project has a great potential but in my opinion the projects lacks a member that can bring an additional value to focus the project around the solution to a problem. The proposal is going around several problems but none is clearly identified. I would like to see better engagement from the Wikimedia community. The main idea is both innovative and builds on the existing solution developed both by the grantee and community. The project has well defined goals but its measures of success and targets need further work: they are not very specific. The grantee has a plan and the project, if successful, will likely have a long lasting impact on Wikimedia projects. Nice idea but I am not sure about the usability of this tool for wide audience - it will be nice for technically experienced Wikimedians but not general readers. I’m not sure this tool is useful for our community. It presents a nice UX but I don't think it's really needed. The proposed scope and budget seem realistic, and the participants are well-qualified to develop a tool of the sort proposed. I am concerned about how they will fill the skills gap identified in the proposal, especially around marketing and events which is crucial to the success of the project. The project may be executed with 8 months but there is little information about the grantee. I am not sure he has ability to execute the proposal. The experience and background of the grantee is unclear. There does not appear to be a significant degree of community engagement, and the proposed engagement strategy principally targets external communities rather than the Wikimedia movement. It’s unusual that the majority of the endorsements are done by IPs. Upon checking the contributions of the grantee, I realized that there was no history or contributions on any project. The grantee must have created the account just for the purpose of the grant, this then brings me to the question, "What informed his decision to do this?". How sure are we going to be about his ability to deliver on this project, also having no ties with the community to me is risky (especially in terms of going according to budget). There low to none community engaged in this project. I am not sure if the community really needs this tool. This is a creative proposal, but the benefits to the Wikimedia movement need to be more clearly articulated. I suggest considering whether and how the proposed software tool might be used within the Wikimedia projects, or used by external researchers to evaluate Wikipedia content, before re-submitting the proposal. The proposal should be reviewed by members of the developer community. In particular, the credentials of the grantee and their ability to actually execute the project should be checked. The grantee should be encouraged to further develop this proposal even if it is not accepted for funding in the current round. I like the idea and will be excited to see it go through, however my only concern is sustainability. The grantee claims to continue hosting the site after the project on personal funds but to me that's not feasible Arc.heolo.gy would be a great tool for users to find what they are looking for on Wikipedia. This tool may also be useful for researchers to map Wikipedia's knowledge and to demonstrate the knowledge gaps on Wikimedia. The budget is reasonable and the goals appear to be realistic.

This project has not been selected for a Project Grant at this time.

We love that you took the chance to creatively improve the Wikimedia movement. The committee has reviewed this proposal and not recommended it for funding. This was a very competitive round with many good ideas, not all of which could be funded in spite of many merits. We appreciate your participation, and we hope you'll continue to stay engaged in the Wikimedia context.

Next steps: Applicants whose proposals are declined are welcome to consider resubmitting your application again in the future. You are welcome to request a consultation with staff to review any concerns with your proposal that contributed to a decline decision, and help you determine whether resubmission makes sense for your proposal.

Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation has been undergoing a community consultation process to launch a new grants strategy. Our proposed programs are posted on Meta here: Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021. If you have suggestions about how we can improve our programs in the future, you can find information about how to give feedback here: Get involved. We are also currently seeking candidates to serve on regional grants committees and we'd appreciate it if you could help us spread the word to strong candidates--you can find out more here. We will launch our new programs in July 2021. If you are interested in submitting future proposals for funding, stay tuned to learn more about our future programs.

Hosting

As a visualization tool for Wikimedia content, such a website could simply be hosted in Tool Labs: have you considered the option? In addition to being appealing, it would be important for the visualisation to solicit contribution, e.g. with creative contribution suggestions in the form of edit links or even Wikidata editing interfaces à la Wikidata game. Nemo 09:02, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

This seems perfect! I was unaware of this as a possibility and will certainly explore this. --Ianseyer (talk) 21:04, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2016

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2016 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 2 2016 begins on 2 November 2016, and grants will be announced in December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 17:20, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Need to focus on how this tool could help grow the informaton on Wiki

You've done a good job explaining how the tool would help wiki consumers, but not contributors. This quote is telling:

In short: the current single-article user experience for Wikipedia is seriously limiting for getting a comprehensive understanding of how various concepts are intertwined with one another. E.g. if I wanted to learn about quantum logic gates, it could easily take me digging through multiple articles before realizing that I missed a vital concept, and need to traverse back to the original and then dig deeper in another direction.

While we are interested in how consumers use Wikipedia, we want to create tools that make engagement with creators and editors on the Wiki better. You've told us how you this tool would help consumers, and that is something that a lot of people can relate to. Now, how would your tool help people who are contributing content to the wiki? -- ☠MarkAHershberger☢(talk)☣ 18:12, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

That's a really good point, and was touched on slightly in this discussion page under "Use for Connectivity." Inherent to the tooling needed to create and analyze the graph, it would enable easy quantification of orphaned articles, "lost" clusters of articles, articles that don't link to other articles, incorrect disambiguation pages, and cross-language comparisons (in the aforementioned connectivity discussion, we could find gaps in other languages by comparing them to a more robust language's wiki entry; e.g. if C++ to Java has 30 paths in english, but only 3 in french, then we could assess weakpoints in the french wikipedia). In addition, the software would be designed to allow for easy creation of additional metric tooling. --Ianseyer (talk) 20:24, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Arc.heolo.gy

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it have the potential to increase gender diversity in Wikimedia projects, either in terms of content, contributors, or both? Does it have the potential for online impact? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	5.4
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	4.9
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Is the budget realistic/efficient ? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience?	5.4
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	3.4
Additional comments from the Committee: I have some concerns about the sustainability of this project. Has potential but I am not sure of the sustainability: I see no other interested volunteers, the grantee has no previous wiki experience and it will require serious server support to build such graphs for en wiki Need for this tool is not sufficiently demonstrated. The measures of success improved from the previous iteration but they are still not specific enough. Unrealistic goals: 100k unique users. Furthermore, from my point of view it is closer to research than a particular tool as I see no particular application of this tool at the end Proposal does not demonstrate a need from the community. The same conclusion as in the previous review: The project can be executed with 8 months but there is little information about the grantee. I am not sure they have the ability to execute the proposal. Not sure that it's realistic: don't know who the grantee is as there is no previous wiki experience Proponents do not participate actively in any of the projects, which might be a reason for the apparent disconnection from the tool that is being proposed and needs from our community. I would suggest before considering such an ambitious grant request to get more acquainted with Wikimedia projects and communities. Little community engagement again. Community engagement appears to be non-existent. The project may be interesting to compare relations and to improve the organization of the content, but the impact is limited in comparison with the cost. They've improved their pitch, but I still don't see good community engagement. I'm not persuaded that this is something wikimedians will actually use. This could be a way to grow usage of Wiki*, but I'd like to see an effort towards that, first. I am still not sure that the author of the proposal has the ability to execute it. The measures of success should be improved. The author should reach out to the community and inquire about the need for such a tool. No serious changes from prior request that was declined before Not clear why this tool would be useful. What will the impact be?

This project has not been selected for a Project Grant at this time.

We love that you took the chance to creatively improve the Wikimedia movement. The committee has reviewed this proposal and not recommended it for funding. This was a very competitive round with many good ideas, not all of which could be funded in spite of many merits. We appreciate your participation, and we hope you'll continue to stay engaged in the Wikimedia context.

Next steps: Applicants whose proposals are declined are welcome to consider resubmitting your application again in the future. You are welcome to request a consultation with staff to review any concerns with your proposal that contributed to a decline decision, and help you determine whether resubmission makes sense for your proposal.

Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation has been undergoing a community consultation process to launch a new grants strategy. Our proposed programs are posted on Meta here: Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021. If you have suggestions about how we can improve our programs in the future, you can find information about how to give feedback here: Get involved. We are also currently seeking candidates to serve on regional grants committees and we'd appreciate it if you could help us spread the word to strong candidates--you can find out more here. We will launch our new programs in July 2021. If you are interested in submitting future proposals for funding, stay tuned to learn more about our future programs.