Grants talk:Project/PanLex/Balinese palm-leaf transcription platform on Wikisource

Wikisource definitely need better infrastructure to support complex works

This proposal has clearly defined goals and this is well in line with the work undertaken by CommTech, based on Community Wishlist Survey 2020 Results, to improve Wikisource infrastructure over the next year. At the same time, the participants of this Project Grant propsal seem to be aware of the challenges to work on the core platform and rather than that plan to host this tool on toolforge and use OAuth to save edits on Multilingual Wikisource. Having already built palmleaf.org based on MediaWiki clearly shows the competence of the team to pull this through.

I would like to learn about any plans to make sure that this tool can be easily used for manuscripts in other languages as well. The team seems to be already aware of this as they have mentioned their plans to add support for more language on GitHub. Another thing that I am very much interested to learn is what community engagement tactics were used to build such an active community on palmleaf.org in a small language with only 3.3 million speakers?

This project can be a really good model for future projects to improve other aspects of the Wikisource workflow by working with similar partners or volunteer developers, in my opinion. --SGill (WMF) (talk) 18:29, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the positive feedback! PanLex has been interested from the start in making this kind of work possible for multiple languages and scripts. At this point the biggest challenge, as you mention, is organizing and engaging communities. In Bali only a tiny fraction of people are interested in palm-leaf manuscripts and able to read them, but they are working hard to keep knowledge alive (training new people, with some government support). Although the community is small, it is active and tight-knit. PanLex staff have done a lot of work in Indonesia of one sort or another and we speak Indonesian, so it was a good fit. Once we found a couple of the right people and they were interested, they organized most of the actual work on their own, including developing documentation and transcription standards. Having developed a working platform and engaged the community, PanLex was able to secure some grant funding for people in Bali to increase their output. Lautgesetz (talk) 21:27, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, Round 1 2020

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for Round 2 2020 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community comments period, through March 16, 2020.

The Project Grant committee's formal review for round 1 2020 will occur March 17 - April 8, 2020. We ask that you refrain from making changes to your proposal during the committee review period, so we can be sure that all committee members are seeing the same version of the proposal. Grantees will be announced Friday, May 15, 2020. Any changes to the review calendar will be posted on the Round 1 2020 schedule.

Questions? Contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:49, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Multilingual Wikisource or own site

Hi Lautgesetz,

Thanks for this fascinatic and thorough proposal!

You say:

We have determined that the best home for the palmleaf.org content and platform is Multilingual Wikisource, as the Balinese community does not currently have the capacity to run an independent Balinese Wikisource site.

How exactly did you determine this? I can think of a lot of advantages in having an independent Balinese Wikisource site. Just off the top of my head:

• It will have Balinese as the interface language without having to switch.
• It will have auto-enabled webfonts. (Enabling them on a common site can be problematic for technical reasons with the current way that the ULS extensions works.)
• It will have the proper language code applied to the content, witohut having to use tedious templates or HTML.
• It will make Wikidata support much more convenient.
• Finally, and perhaps most importantly: It looks like you want to use a special extension for transliteration, and it makes sense to install it on only one wiki, so that it wouldn't get in the way of other languages.

Setting up a separate domain for Balinese will have to be discussed in the Language committee, but it's totally conceivable. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 06:34, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi Amir, yeah, I'm aware of the advantages and that was actually our original idea. In the discussion on Balinese Wikipedia, Joseagush (one of the main organizers of that Wikipedia) explains that they are not ready for a separate Balinese Wikisource site yet. I agree that it would be preferable overall, but I don't want to create extra work for them. If you think it would be useful to have more discussion on this, I'm happy to go with whatever solution the relevant communities decide. --Lautgesetz (talk) 07:19, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Lautgesetz.

Joseagush, what do you mean when you say that the community is not ready for a separate Balinese Wikisource site yet? Maintaining a separate won't be harder than maintaining the pages in Multilingual Wikisource, and perhaps even easier. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 09:01, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Amire80:, Thanks to discuss this topic. I myself support the idea that Balinese has its own Wikisource. I got two big problem with separate Balinese Wikisource site.

• First, who will maintain this site? If panlex team or you can handle, it would be oke. As you can see in Balinese wikipedia alone, not more than 5 people (basically just me and Chinamoonroll) running the wiki. I, myself, also administrator in the wiki, along with another social medias to maintain also. No more than that. As it is take a lot of my time already.
• Second, Who will sacrifice their valuable time, energy, technical knowledge, and works to make this site as its a long way to go? Balinese wikipedia alone born after 3 times proposed from 2005, 2006, and 2010. Yet it is active in incubator at least one year (from April 2019) after Wikimedia Indonesia support the community each month with training, discussion group, and resources. Joseagush (talk) 00:34, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

PanLex employees won't be able to help on a permanent basis, but depending on the amount of work involved, we could help setting up a new Wikisource site. Whether we use Multilingual Wikisource or a new Balinese Wikisource, the team of people currently contributing to palmleaf.org will be responsible for doing the actual work on Balinese manuscripts, and PanLex will make sure the system is working. I don't know what day-to-day administration is required, but my assumption has been there is less time commitment if we use Multilingual Wikisource. I can ask if one or more Balinese contributors to palmleaf.org are willing to take responsibility for any additional work that would be needed on a separate Wikisource site. I don't know anything about the procedure or timeframe for creating an incubator site or getting it approved. Joseagush has experience with that, I do not. --Lautgesetz (talk) 02:52, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Joseagush, thanks for the responses.

What do you mean exactly when you ask who will maintain this site? What do you mean by "maintain"?

The content needs to imported. If I understand correctly, it is already in the MediaWiki format, and as far as page formatting goes, it doesn't matter whether the importing will be done to Multilingual Wikisource or to an independent site. It will have to be done in any case. It will probably be easier to import it into a new empty independent site because then there's no chance that Balinese content pages or templates will override existing content in other languages.

After it's imported, someone must occasionally check whether it's not vandalized. It's not easier to do this on Multilingual Wikisource than on independent Balinese Wikisource. It's probably easier to do it on an independent site because then it won't be mixed up with other languages. And even though it will be much better if it's done by Balinese speakers, there is also the Small Wiki Monitoring Team who have tools to check for vandalism in multiple wikis.

Is there anything else that you mean by "maintain"? If not, then it's not a problem.

Now for the second issue you raised: getting an independent domain approved. I am myself a member of the Language committee, which approves new domains. While I absolutely cannot speak for the whole of the Language committee, I can say that it's conceivable that this request can be fast-tracked because of its special nature, as you already have a lot of content. I will raise this question on the Language committee mailing list soon, and before doing that I simply wanted to understand your reason for being skeptical about setting up your own domain.

Hi @Amire80:, thanks for fast response.

First issue, I must put my skeptical point of view in this idea, other than just too positif to got Balinese Wikisource, which I supporting also. What I mean is the site needed to be maintain regularly, isn't it? Even if Panlex already moved all their content to the Wikisource? So, who will do that? Coz, I think, the best person to do this is the one who knew this language and SCRIPT, right? I don't know the person from Language committee or Small Wiki Monitoring Team or any in Wikipedia contributor who already knew (can read and write) about Balinese script which can see if someone vandalise or wrongdoing translate the sources (mostly in scripts) or not. So, who will be responsible for that? I support the idea that we will have the Balinese wikisource but if nobody maintain it regularly it just will be a useless burden for you and the committee. That's why need someone to check it regularly. Unless you can make sure who and what capacity the person can edit it. Or ask someone to help it maintain this site.

Second issue, If you guys can promise it can be more faster respond than Balinese Wikipedia proposal itself, (How fast it is can happen? are we talk about months or years period here?) I still and will support than. The problem here is the fact that Balinese wikipedia already started from October 2019 and its statistic is dwindling rather than increasing. Just not much people involved in this wiki yet. I also still try to attract more with help from Wikimedia Indonesia support. To make them handle 2 site (Wikipedia and Wikisource) at once will be a burden to them rather than a supporting place to learn how to use this wiki (in my opinion). Thats why we need step by step rather than hit them with many things that doesn't work. In my opinion, at least 2-3 years from now, Balinese wikisource is good to start. But, if it can be faster, its good to go. Moreover this panlex idea to make auto-translate program is good and promising. Joseagush (talk) 13:50, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Joseagush, I'll start from the second issue: the time it will take to create the domain. Creating the Balinese Wikipedia took a long time, because it started from zero. The case with Wikisource is different and special, because there already is a lot of content. I don't know at the moment how long will it take, but I'll ask the committee, and I expect it to be much faster for your case.

As for your concerns about maintenance, the maintenance needs in the independent site and in the Multilingual Wikisource are the same, and will be easier to actually do it in the independent site, as I have explained above. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 14:15, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Lautgesetz, do you have particular reasons to assume that there is less time commitment if you use Multilingual Wikisource? My experience from helping wikis in new languages is that working in independent sites is far easier for everyone in every regard than working in Incubator or Multilingual Wikisource. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 07:46, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Amire80: I don't have any experience with setting up or administering Wikimedia sites, so I was just going by my impression of what I was hearing -- basically, that it would be less overall commitment and less possible disruption to use an existing site. My hope is actually that this project will bring not only content but users -- at least to Wikisource, and I hope also to Balinese Wikipedia. A couple palmleaf.org contributors are involved in Balinese Wikipedia but I think most are not. If monitoring for vandalism would be useful then I can ask if some of them would be willing to do that. The funding I helped secure (mentioned above) should keep them going for at least a year as they increase the transcribed content to 20,000 leaves, and there is a separate project to introduce the content into high schools. The hope is once it's large enough and useful enough, it will keep going on its own.

One thing to keep in mind for this whole discussion is that although Balinese Wikisource can have a language default of Balinese, the default script for modern Balinese is Latin, so ban should be reserved for Latin script, whereas the palm-leaf content is in Balinese script. The manuscripts are generally in Balinese (ban-bali), Kawi (kaw-bali), or a mixture of the two. There are several reasons for putting all the content on a Balinese wiki: Kawi is a literary language, a lot of manuscripts are mixed between Kawi and Balinese, the script is Balinese, and the community that will mostly be reading them is Balinese. All this is just to say that the language coding will not be trivial in any case, if only because of the Latin/Balinese script distinction. --Lautgesetz (talk) 15:00, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Please complete survey for your Project Grants proposal

Dear Lautgesetz, Iwsfutcmd and Carma citrawati,

We have sent you a survey link to the email address you provided in this Project Grants proposal. We need you to open the email and fill out the survey as soon as possible. We have emailed you twice without response (on March 20 and March 23), and we are not sure if you still wish for your proposal to be reviewed. If we do not receive your survey response by March 31, 2020, we will mark your proposal withdrawn.

We hope to hear from you!

Warm regards,

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 02:41, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi Marti, I've filled out the survey now. I didn't receive the earlier emails for whatever reason. I've filled out the survey now. We still want this grant to be considered. It does not involve any travel or events. --Lautgesetz (talk) 02:50, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Balinese palm-leaf transcription platform on Wikisource

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?	8.3
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	7.0
(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?	8.3
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	5.8
Additional comments from the Committee: Nice project with an impact in extraeuropean languages. The idea is fascinating. It works on a low-presented language, will keep this knowledge that otherwise could be lost due to lack of abilities to maintain a separate platform. And as I see it, this method could be adapted for other languages. I think it can be sustained either as a separate Balinese Wikisource site or as Multilingual Wikisource. This can be a good case study for other languages using a support different than paper. This project seems like a new way for archive.org and WMF to work together. Certainly innovative, not high risk as the language community is small and it is easier to get to the consensus there. Furthermore, they don’t have their own language version of Wikisource, so, they won’t break anything existing. I think the potential impact is greater than the risks and would definitely have a long-time impact. Considering the comments on the discussion page. They've already shown that they can execute and they know their costs. Seems realistic and people are already working with this project for a long time. I think the scope could be accomplished in less than 12 months and the budget is reasonable. I would like to see a Bali Wikisource, but other than that, this is really good. That they have managed to get so much done already shows that there is some level of engagement. I don't think there is enough community engagement and their response to Amir E. Aharoni's suggestion does not look like they engaged with the community. I do expect to see more support from Balinese Wikimedians. Good, impactful and fascinating project. I would like to see them target a Bali Wikisource instead of the multilingual one (as Amir on the talk page said), but even if that were not possible I would like to see this go forward. I'd recommend funding for this project if grantee agree to run it as an independent Balinese Wikisource site per Amir E. Aharoni's suggestion.

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:

• 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.
• If you have had an interview with a Program Officer, you may have orally responded to some of the committee comments already. Your interview comments will be relayed to the committee during the deliberations call.
• You are welcome to respond to aggregated comments here on the talkpage to publicly share any feedback, clarifications or questions you have.
• Following due diligence review, a final funding decision will be announced on May 29, 2020.

If you have any questions, please contact us at projectgrants wikimedia  · org.

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 21:20, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Following feedback relayed to me earlier this week in a call with Marti Johnson (WMF), I have added activities A7 (documentation) and A8 (community liaison) to the scope of the grant, with corresponding changes in the budget. I have also added 10% for contingencies, as suggested. The anticipated community liaison is Carma Citrawati. She has been working with PanLex on Palmleaf.org for the past year and is well-connected to the Balinese Wikipedia community and to Balinese literature teachers, civil servants, and advocates.

It's clear from feedback that targeting a new Balinese Wikisource is preferable to Multilingual Wikisource, so I have updated the proposal accordingly. In my most recent communication with Joseagush, he also supported this (of course he is welcome to comment here). There is already an open request to create Balinese Wikisource.

--Lautgesetz (talk) 21:22, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Round 1 2020 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, US$22,814

Comments regarding this decision:
The committee is pleased to support migration of palmleaf.org’s existing archive of Balinese palm-leaf literature over to Wikisource. We are especially appreciative of the opportunity to see the project team engage Balinese volunteers in maintaining the new home for the collection at Balinese Wikisource.

We highly value your willingness to share your expertise with Wikimedians about digitization and transcription of manuscripts in contexts in which internet access is limited. We look forward to the training materials you have agreed to create for the Wikimedia context so this project can be replicated in other places.

Finally, we appreciate your willingness to prioritize learning extension by presenting your project to audiences most likely to value the work you are doing to preserve Balinese literature.

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