Grants talk:Project/Hydriz/Balchivist 2.0

Proposal Clinics

Dear @Hydriz:, Thank you for taking time to prepare your proposal for the Project Grants open call for software and research projects. I wanted to bring your attention to the optional proposal clinics resource offered by our team as the means to support the interested applicants to get feedback from Program Officer and the subject area expert co-facilitating the clinic. If you would like to attend and ask questions, you can find the dates, times, and videoconference links posted on this page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project.  Please feel free to inquire in case you have any questions. Warm regards! RSharma (WMF) (talk) 16:28, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Free license for code

Could you confirm that all code written for this grant will be released under a free license and specify which one? And will it be developed in the open/publicly? Thanks, Legoktm (talk) 05:54, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Yep, that is correct. I intend to continue using the GNU GPL v3 License that was also previously used for Balchivist 1.0. Development will also be done publicly with the code being hosted on Wikimedia Phabricator. Task tracking will also be done there as well. Some of the tasks have been tracked on the Datasets-Archiving project before, but a new project will be created to manage the progress of this project. --Hydriz (talk) 06:32, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Have the new interface replace the current one?

https://dumps.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html has always seemed like something ripe for improvement, so I'm glad to see that as part of the proposal. Is there a reason you're proposing to only have the new UI run in Cloud VPS instead of replacing the current dumps.wikimedia.org one? Legoktm (talk) 05:57, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Currently, it is planned that the new system is managed independently from the existing infrastructure of Wikimedia dumps and to reduce the scope of this proposal, especially due to parts of the project involving the archiving aspect of the datasets. For now, the only change to the dumps.wikimedia.org website planned is to add a link to this new tool. Eventually however, I will be working on integrating this system with the existing Wikimedia dumps infrastructure, which thankfully my advisor is mainly managing, but that is something that will be done after the conclusion of this proposed project. --Hydriz (talk) 06:39, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Eligibility provisionally confirmed, Round 2 2021 - Research and Software proposal

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've provisionally confirmed your proposal is eligible for review in Round 2 2021 for Research and Software projects, contingent upon:

• confirmation that the project will not depend on staff from the Wikimedia Foundation for code review, integration or other technical support during or after the project, unless those staff are part of the Project Team.
• compliance with our COVID-19 guidelines.

Schedule delay

Please note that due to unexpected delays in the review process, committee scoring will take place from April 17 through May 2, instead of April 9-24, as originally planned.

• Please watch your talkpage, which will be the primary method of communication about your proposal. We appreciate your timely response to questions and comments posted there.
• Please refrain from making changes to your proposal during the scoring period, so that all committee members score the same version of your proposal.
• After the scoring period ends, you are welcome to make further changes to your proposal in response to committee comments.

COVID-19 planning for travel and/or offline events

Proposals that include travel and/or offline events must ensure that all of the following are true:

• You must review and can comply with the guidelines linked above.
• If necessary because of COVID-19 safety risks, you must be able to complete the core components of your proposed work plan _without_ offline events or travel.
• You must be able to postpone any planned offline events or travel until the Wikimedia Foundation’s guidelines allow for them, without significant harm to the goals of your project.
• You must include a COVID-19 planning section in your activities plan. In this section, you should provide a brief summary of how your project plan will meet COVID-19 guidelines, and how it would impact your project if travel and offline events prove unfeasible throughout the entire life of your project.

Community engagement

We encourage you to make sure that stakeholders, volunteers, and/or communities impacted by your proposed project are aware of your proposal and invite them to give feedback on your talkpage. This is a great way to make sure that you are meeting the needs of the people you plan to work with and it can help you improve your project.

• If you are applying for funds in a region where there is a Wikimedia Affiliate working, we encourage you to let them know about your project, too.
• If you are a Wikimedia Affiliate applying for a Project Grant: A special reminder that our guidelines and criteria require you to announce your Project Grant requests on your official user group page on Meta and a local language forum that is recognized by your group, to allow adequate space for objections and support to be voiced).

We look forward to engaging with you in this Round!

Questions? Contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

Marti (WMF) (talk) 05:41, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Balchivist 2.0

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?	8.0
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	7.8
(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?	8.2
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	7.4
Additional comments from the Committee: The project fits with Wikimedia's strategic priorities and I think that it can be sustained in the future and scaled if necessary to include new dataset types. all code is to be open, work going through Phabricator - it will be able to maintain by others though not many volunteers around interested in maintaining dumps The projects fits wikimedia strategic priorities. It can be sustained,scaled or adapted elsewhere after the grants ends. Wonderful idea!. This project does fit well with Wikimedia's strategic priorities. The project seeks to improve the archiving infrastructure as well as to provide an interface for researchers to download dumps which an excellent idea. Since there is already Balchivist 1.0, Balchivist 2.0 will contribute more to the project. I think this project can be sustained and scaled for future initiatives. Create a new version will improve the capacity to spread archives of all Wikis. This kind of process become critical in our mission and the possible impact would be greater than the risks to create a new script from zero. The project is iterative and potential impacts exceed the possible risks, which are low. There is an evaluation plan. just an iterative new generation of the tool Takes innovative approach to solving a key problem. The potential impact is greater than the risk. The project has an evaluation for that measures the success of the project. This can solve so many problems by providing better reliability and support for adding new datasets hosted on Wikimedia Cloud VPS, allowing users to easily search for both current and historical datasets (not just limited to database dumps). The project has great potential to thrive. There are several clear indicators that the project is realistic and can be evaluated. The project can be accomplished in 12 months. The budget is ok. The grantee probably has necessary skills. absolutely able to execute, long time contributor and developer of the first tool The project can be accomplished in 12 month. It is very realistic in-terms of its budget allocation. The project has seeks to have skilled participant or team members This project can be completed in 12 months or less. The budget looks ok and can be scaled. The team have the necessary skills/expertise to execute this project. It's a little support from community, but the project isn't intended to be used for almost all users. There is some community support and the community engagement is sufficient for a project of this type. it was mentioned that it gives the right to fork and that is good. Dumps are really needed by bot owners and other users of the wiki-information. Even I personally consider dumps interface and searching for a particular dump from a particular day as a challenging task The project targets at the wikimedia community, through creation of a tool that would be used to archive data generated on the wikimedia platform. The community supports the projects. The project supports diversity in its engagement. This project does not need much community support as outlined, but the team itself is diverse. The project is generally focused on all Wikimedia projects, which is great. I support this small project as an important step in updating the outdated archiving infrastructure, which is used to preserve the history of the Wikimedia projects. Not sure about 40 USD/hour. Is this rate reasonable for the type of work in context? Yes projects is a kind of project that I will like to support fully. I support the approval of this proposal based on the experience of the grantee and the community response. I also considered the project's target, the budget, and the overall impact it will bring to the movement.

This proposal has been recommended for due diligence review.

The Project Grants Committee has conducted a preliminary assessment of your proposal and recommended it for due diligence review. This means that a majority of the committee reviewers favorably assessed this proposal and have requested further investigation by Wikimedia Foundation staff.

Next steps:

1. Aggregated committee comments from the committee are posted above. Note that these comments may vary, or even contradict each other, since they reflect the conclusions of multiple individual committee members who independently reviewed this proposal. We recommend that you review all the feedback and post any responses, clarifications or questions on this talk page.
2. Following due diligence review, a final funding decision will be announced on Thursday, May 27, 2021.

Questions? Contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

Marti (WMF) (talk) 22:11, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Round 2 2021 decision

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for a Project Grant.

The committee has recommended this proposal and WMF has approved funding for the full amount of your request, $16,000

Comments regarding this decision:
The committee is pleased to support an extraordinarily well prepared and dedicated long-time Wikimedia community developer in improving an existing tool that is very useful for the audience that accesses data dumps.

NOTE: Funding of any offline activities (e.g. travel and in-person events) is contingent upon compliance with the Wikimedia Foundation's COVID-19 guidelines. We require that you complete the Risk Assessment Tool:

• 14 days before any travel and/or gathering event
• 24 hours before any travel and/or gathering event

Offline events may only proceed if the tool results continue to be green or yellow.

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
2. Review the information for grantees.
3. Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
4. Start work on your project!

Upcoming changes to Wikimedia Foundation Grants

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.

Marti (WMF) (talk) 04:50, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Progress/updates

Hi @Hydriz, I'm wondering if you have any updates or progress to share on this :) Legoktm (talk) 21:17, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Legoktm, thank you so much for checking in. The progress for the project was stalled as I had some personal issues that prevented me from working on this project. I expect to resume in mid-April and will provide more updates via Phabricator and on the timeline page. Thank you! --Hydriz (talk) 09:35, 3 April 2022 (UTC)