Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Language Diversity Hub and Wikitongues

Overall Positive Feedback

This collaboration between an existing user group and a newly forming hub is good to see and definitely encouraged! The learnings from this work can inform other work happening around defining Regional and Thematic hubs. There is also a good balance between the complexities of research and practice. This means we could expect tangible results that could enable the mapping out of needs and challenges of the communities. As the project plan makes clear connections to a number of Movement Strategy initiatives and the strategy 2030 pillar of Knowledge Equity, it is obvious that impact can be expected for underrepresented communities.

The project goal of identifying language activists in 10 different languages and training them over the course of a year is an innovative approach to building communities and content in new languages. Additionally, the 10 members being part of one cohort would be useful for sharing of knowledge amongst the cohort. It is also clear to see how the project seeks to close some of the gaps caused by inequalities that inhibit small language communities from becoming a part of our movement. Also great to see that this project has a lot of diverse community support. YPam (WMF) (talk) 06:50, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Feedback For Improvement

Measuring impact and success

• From the way the proposal is developed, we can envision success, as the project mentions contribution to Wikimedia projects and training 10 individuals and creation of a toolkit. But the project team has not clearly stated what the measures of success will be on this project. This needs to be clearly spelled out. It would be worthwhile to present in clear details, things like the number of people to be involved, number of new language projects started on incubator, number of language projects growing out of the incubator, number of articles, number of media files or number of wiktionary entries. Some estimates at the outset are important for knowing what targets are being set to gauge the potential impact

In this pilot, we'll restrict our support to projects focused on Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Commons, and Wiktionary. Each project's success will be evaluated according to specific metrics set by the project leader (e.g. cohort member), but we can expect average output based on the project type: for mother-tongue Wikipedias, up to 30 articles, for mother-tongue Commons contributions, up to 8 hours of audio/video or a written equivalent, and for Wiktionary projects, up to 5,000 lexical items (words, phrases). Moreover, since each cohort member will be the leader of a community project rather than the sole person implementing these projects, we can expect up to 100 people directly involved. —Bogreudell (talk) 21:18, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

• Please provide more details on how the communities and cohorts will be chosen. It would be good to have a better understanding of this to assess the potential impact of the chosen approach.

We’ll publish an open call for cohort applicants to the Wikitongues and LDH networks, which include endangered language communities from over a hundred countries. Anyone in the world will be able to apply. (For comparison, nearly 160 people applied to the 2022 Wikitongues Language Revitalization Accelerator.) From the applicant pool, we’ll select 10 finalists based on a criteria matrix: the applicant’s language vitality or endangerment level, language resource level (implying the urgency of contributing to Wikimedia), overall application strength (clear and measurable objectives), and our confidence in the applicant. We will only accept applications for projects led by community members, as opposed to outside researchers. —Bogreudell (talk) 21:18, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

• The application also states that the target individuals are "ten geographically diverse individuals". How will they find them, and how will the project team ensure that they are truly representative of the 95% missing languages? In addition, how will the project team ensure diversity around gender and geography when selecting the cohort members. Some details around this will be very useful.

We'll find and select applicants based on the process described above. As we select our 10 finalists, we'll ensure the cohort has a balance of genders, geographical origin, and urban-rural communities, representing different structural challenges to language revitalization and Wikimedia contribution alike. For an example, see the 2022 cohort of the Wikitongues Revitalization Accelerator. —Bogreudell (talk) 21:18, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Clarity on Project Plans

• It is important to provide more clarity on how the project aims to support the "mother-tongue Wikimedia projects", are quite vague. It would be good to see how the project plans to support those contributors in developing ideas that are, indeed, relevant to their communities. Those contributors definitely know their communities best, but they probably need a thinking partner to help ensure that their idea is what their community needs and not, say, a personal hobby.

Each cohort member will receive a project stipend of $2,000 USD and a year of training and in-kind assistance, including: support for setting and refining their community’s Wikimedia objectives, onboarding to Wikimedia guidelines and best practices, technical training, an introduction to project management and fundraising, and networking opportunities. —Bogreudell (talk) 21:18, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

• The application mentions translating the said toolkit into 11 languages while spending around 10% of the budget. It might not be clear at that point, just how useful is the toolkit might be for other contributors and if there are processes in place to gather that feedback. Has the project team considered producing the toolkit, and then sharing with the larger community to gather their feedback before making any potential improvements and translations?

We've removed this aspect from the project and postponed localization to a later phase after we've evaluated and iterated on the toolkit. However, we will allocate project resources to real-time interpretation for cohort members, if necessary. —Bogreudell (talk) 21:18, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Project budget

• The 30% overhead stated seems quite a lot for a project and traditionally the calculation has been 10%. It would be great to understand why extended overhead is needed and how it will contribute to the success and stronger impact of the project.

We have reduced the overhead to 10%. —Bogreudell (talk) 21:18, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

YPam (WMF) (talk) 07:09, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for this feedback and your patience with our revisions! I have answered your comments directly here and added clarifying sections in the application. —Bogreudell (talk) 21:18, 9 June 2022 (UTC)