Grants talk:Project/Rapid/UG-GE/National Cultural Monuments of Georgia

Application received

Hello, Mehman97. Thank you for your Rapid Grant submission. We have received a high volume of requests, which may delay our review, but please feel free to ping us to follow-up. We appreciate your patience and will respond to your request as soon as possible.

In the meantime, if you have any questions or updates about your request or the grants process, please write us at rapidgrantswikimedia.org. All the best, MMontes (WMF) (talk) 17:55, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks again MMontes (WMF), kindly, --Mehman 97 18:01, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Comments from WMF

Hello, Mehman97; thank you for resubmitting this proposal. As we are beginning to receive Wiki Loves Monuments requests for the month of August, I wanted to ask why you would submit this as 'National Cultural Monuments' rather than a 'Wiki Loves Monuments' submission. Regards, MMontes (WMF) (talk) 19:21, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi MMontes (WMF)! I first submitted this grant last month and thought to accept it in July, not in August. As for the "Wiki Loves Monuments", our user group is still discussing whether to hold this competition or not this year, how to accept the decision, I will submit an application until August 15. But I can definitely say the following, that at the moment this competition is important for us, which has been successfully continuing second month, both, at the local and international level. Kindly, --Mehman 97 12:20, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello, Mehman97; we can only support one of the two. We can give you a few days to decide in the User Group if you choose the National Cultural Monuments of Georgia contest or if you will turn it instead into a Wiki Loves Monuments submission. Once you have all decided, let me know and I will resume the review process. Regards, MMontes (WMF) (talk) 16:57, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello MMontes (WMF); We in our community discussed and decided that this competition is more important, so as we planned earlier this year, we will not hold "Wiki Loves Monuments". Therefore, we are focused on this grant. Kindly, --Mehman 97 22:36, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Further comments from WMF

Hello, Mehman97; we respect your decision to keep this initiative independent from Wiki Loves Monuments. Taking a closer look at the prizes, WMF would be willing to fund only three top prizes and one for most active editor in one single category, for a total of 700 USD, and the certificates. Regards, MMontes (WMF) (talk) 01:26, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello, Mehman97; when you comment on this discussion page again, please ping WJifar (WMF). Regards, MMontes (WMF) (talk) 03:14, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Hi WJifar (WMF) & MMontes (WMF)! Unfortunately, I reply to your comment late due to Wikimania. Again, unfortunately, I see that my request was not successful, since you are ready to confirm half of the financing of the contest and this is a problem for us. Half of the funding that you are going to confirm is sufficient only for prizes at the local level, but we also need funding at the international level, if we award only local participants of the contest (from Georgia), it will not be fair to international participants (from Panama, Argentina, Russia, Turkey), what are they to blame? On this, please reconsider your decision, while I removed several lines from the financing table and maybe it will be for the better. I repeat, the current decision will create a problem for us and confidence in us will drop. Kindly, --Mehman 97 10:21, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Hi WJifar (WMF), can you give us a specific answer on this grant? Kindly, --Mehman 97 16:10, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

@Mehman97: Apologies for the delay in our response here. Staffing issues on our team and a high backlog of Rapid Grant requests have made it difficult for us to respond to all requests and needs as quickly as we would like to. Unfortunately, we are not able to retroactively fund events, and due to UG-GE's successful Simple Annual Plan Grant for this year, we cannot provide funding to you through Rapid Grants, so I will be marking this proposal as not funded. I am sorry that this experience was frustrating for you and your team, as I think we could have worked out a way to fund this in different circumstances. Regarding the substance of the concerns around the budget, the main concerns from us were the overall number and cost of prizes being distributed, and not the other expenses or the total expenses overall, so it was not helpful to remove other expenses from the budget in this case. I would have recommended reduce the total number of prizes (e.g. Top 2 for local, Top 2 for international) to balance the needs of your event and our budgetary expectations when it comes to prizes. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:45, 13 January 2020 (UTC)