Grants talk:Project/Tamil Wikimedia-Noolaham Foundation/Multimedia Documentation of Traditional Trades and Crafts of Eastern, Northern and Up-Country Sri Lanka

Latest comment: 6 years ago by Nemo bis in topic UNESCO guidelines

If the grantees determine their needs and helps, then I can help them.--Shriheeran (talk) 16:25, 7 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

To Do edit

  • Media samples
  • Research methodology
  • Sample workflow

--Natkeeran (talk) 14:10, 9 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

Early review & suggestions edit

Hi @AWang (WMF) and Mjohnson (WMF):. We are preparing this project to be submitted for the Round 1 2017 Project Grants. We plan to submit it before 14 March for consideration. Ravidreams who is advising us on this project as a volunteer suggested that we contact you early to get a quick review and suggestions. We welcome your suggestions to improve the project. Thank you. --Natkeeran (talk) 15:43, 10 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

Feedback edit

Hi @Aprabhala, Shijualex, and Mayur: We welcome your feedback to this project. Oral Citations project is of interest to us. Similar to this project, it deals with the issue of finding ways to write about topics that don't have extensive scholarly references. Thank you. --Natkeeran (talk) 21:01, 10 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

Eligibility confirmed, round 1 2017 edit

 

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 1 2017 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during the community comments period, through 4 April 2017.

The committee's formal review for round 1 2017 begins on 5 April 2017, and grants will be announced 19 May. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 23:33, 24 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

Round 1 2017 decision edit

 

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, USD $9,575

Comments regarding this decision:
The committee is glad to support the strong partnership between the Noolaham Foundation and Tamil Wikimedians. We appreciated that the applicant team demonstrated so much awareness about the risks of this project, and that you have clear plans to proactively make use of your existing network of resources to address them. The project benefits from the oversight of very experienced Wikipedians and we very much look forward to seeing the results of your outreach in underrepresented areas of Sri Lanka.

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!

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Aggregated feedback from the committee for Tamil Wikimedia-Noolaham Foundation/Multimedia Documentation of Traditional Trades and Crafts of Eastern, Northern and Up-Country Sri Lanka edit

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?
6.6
(B) Community engagement
  • Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often?
  • Does it have community support?
6.5
(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?
5.6
(D) Measures of success
  • Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success?
  • Are they realistic?
  • Can they be measured?
6.8
Additional comments from the Committee:
  • Developing a framework that will allow the Wikimedia projects to incorporate under-represented, non-written sources of knowledge (including oral history, cultural crafts and practices, and so forth) is a key priority for the movement.
  • Fits with strategic priorities to increase content coverage and reach in emerging communities (in this case, in underrepresented regions of Sri Lanka). There is potential for online impact across different Tamil language projects, however the grantees could face challenges related to oral citations and collecting/documenting knowledge. In order to be sustainable, I would recommend the project start small and then scale up over time.
  • The project may not fit completely within Wikimedia's strategic priorities. Many of its goals are not directly related to Wikimedia though it has the potential for online impact. On the other hand, the sustainability is unclear. (How many new volunteers will remain with Wikimedia in the long term?)
  • Strategic community and project.
  • Very good fit with strategic priorities both in terms of reach (recruiting contributors from underrepresented topics) and quality (content about poorly covered topics). Good potential for online impact, and if successful this project can serve as a model for covering local traditions in other Global South countries.
  • The outcomes and goals of the project are clearly defined, and are appropriate for an experimental project of this scope.
  • This is an innovative approach to improving content gaps and an experiment that may yield good learning for engaging other communities with traditional/non-written forms of knowledge. Measures of success and targets are provided, however many seem ambitious and perhaps not realistic (for example, outreach to 600-1,000 individuals). Grantees recognize the risk related to organizing volunteers; in order to further mitigate risk I would recommend focusing on only one of the three regions targeted for outreach.
  • The approach is innovative but the risks are high. However the success or failure can be measured and the measures of success are provided.
  • As there was little progress in coverage of oral history on Wikimedia projects so far I would classify this project as an innovative one. Risks are rather low compared to possible impact. Measures of success are very well defined.
  • The budget is reasonable for a project of this scope, and the timeline appears to be realistic. However, it is unclear whether the participants have the necessary skills and experience to perform rigorous field work that would produce results suitable for incorporation into the Wikimedia projects; it may be beneficial to include experts with backgrounds in cultural anthropology and related fields.
  • Scope is ambitious and many different activities are proposed for the grant period. Project team seems to be composed of experienced Wikimedians but I don't think it is realistic to address all of the following activities at the same time: literature review; licensing research and digitization of reference materials; survey and identification of knowledge holders; fieldwork filming/recording and collection of knowledge; uploading and adding of content to Wikimedia projects.
  • The ability of the participants to execute the project is unclear - the project looks very ambitious. The budget is probably realistic.
  • Team is trained and prepared for the needs of the project.
  • I am not sure what Noolaham Foundation will cover with USD $1,750.
  • Grantees have a significant history of editing.
  • The team has very good experience and is well-positioned to complete the project, owing both to involvement of experienced Tamil Wikimedians and to partnership with the Noolaham Foundation. I have some concerns regarding too high per diem line but I lack local knowledge to be able to judge on this.
  • The project appears to have a significant degree of support within the Tamil Wikimedia community, and has clear implications for the diversity of the movement.
  • Relevant wiki communities have been notified with some good endorsements from individuals. A lot is demanded from volunteers (especially in field work roles) so more evidence of how the project team will provide support, training, and engagement is encouraged.
  • The project supports diversity but the community engagement is limited.
  • This project is concentrated around diversity and has lots of community support and volunteers willing to do the tasks.
  • The target community (Sri Lanka / Tamil) is very clearly defined, and applicants are in a very good position to engage this community. Applicants are experienced Tamil Wikimedians and have a high community support. This project naturally supports diversity by working with underrepresented regions in the Global South.
  • Willing to support partial funding for a proposal that is more focused and manageable (I suggest the team works with one region only to start and aims for 50 articles on trades and crafts plus supporting media).
  • This seems to be a high risk project though rather innovative and not completely within Wikimedia's strategic priorities. However I willing to give it a chance, but it may need a close supervision.
  • Ambitious project. While there are more than 5 persons involved, I am not sure if they will be able to complete the task. The budget lines are not clear.
  • Although I think the project is very well detailed and explained -- it tackles lots of important things -- but I consider that crosses two red lines: On the one hand this can be considered a full field research and Wikipedia is not a primary source, so why not do this research, publish and then share it to Wikipedia? This can be seen as the project is based on Wikibooks for the trades and crafts. One the other hand, this can also be considered paid-editing, as it is still not very clear who is going to write the 250 articles.
  • This project is well-positioned to make an impact on Tamil-language projects and on development of Sri Lanka community. This project has a clear plan and well-defined SMART goals. Support from Noolaham Foundation and from Tamil community are both significant assets. My only concern refers to potentially too high per diem line, but I lack local knowledge to judge on this.

Use free licenses edit

The text mentions that [1] is under "a" Creative Commons license, so I went and checked... sadly it's an unfree cc-by-nc-cd license. I assume anything you're going to produce here is going to be under a free license, such as CC-BY or CC-BY-SA. --Nemo 17:31, 10 June 2017 (UTC)Reply

@Nemo bis: Yes, that assumption is correct. Anything produced under this project will be under Wikimedia compatible creative commons license. That particular work is older and has complex authorship (conference proceedings), thus more restrictive. Most of the recent work created by Noolaham Foundation are released uner https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. I believe that is compatible with Wikimedia license. --Natkeeran (talk) 14:14, 11 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
Yes, it's good. --Nemo 15:02, 11 June 2017 (UTC)Reply

UNESCO guidelines edit

I was happy to see that you found helpful UNESCO guidelines to follow. It's always nice to have a partly traced path ahead. I particularly liked their advice to follow the steps yourself in order to make sure you actually understood how to produce a certain item or complete a certain task: that will be interesting! I noticed one of the points in the process is to collect samples: will those be stored by the Noolaham foundation? --Nemo 17:34, 10 June 2017 (UTC)Reply

@Nemo bis:. Thank you for the comments. The details are to be worked out. We can possibly store them at Noolaham Foundation or donate them to a local Museum/University/Research Group. We would be able to do detail photography and analysis of the collected samples. For the crafts chosen for detail documentation, we will strive to cover each step in the making, and output of each step. We are closely reviewing this example as well for the type of information that needs to be collected: http://handicrafts.nic.in/CmsUpload/01282016112820Kavaad0.pdf --Natkeeran (talk) 14:26, 11 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. Best wishes, Nemo 15:02, 11 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
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