Grants talk:Project/WM ZA/Joburgpedia Digitization 2016

Hi Thuvack. Thanks for submitting this grant proposal. It's exciting to learn that Gille de Vlieg is willing to release 300 of her photos into the public domain and that there is a community of people, including university students and SAHA, who are enthusiastic about using the materials. From the budget, it looks like the main cost is the actual digitization of material. Unfortunately, we cannot pay for someone to do the digitization work directly. Considering the relatively small number of photos, are there volunteers with WMZA or SAHA who could do this part of the project? We are happy to support expenses in support of organizing activities for training and integration. Additionally, since this is a new proposal, it should be submitted either to the Rapid Grants program (under 2,000 USD) or to the Project Grants program (over 2,000 USD), which is accepting proposals until October 11th for the current round. I'm going to change the status to draft since we are closing out the PEG program. If you'd like me to move it over to Rapid or Project I am happy to do so. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 03:29, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi there Alex Wang (WMF). Thanks for this feedback. Indeed the digitization is a main feature for this project. The images are of day to day life in black townships during the roughest times in the history of our nation and are very hard to come by. Unfortunately the images are in negatives format/film and thus cannot be easily developed, hence the digital scanning. The scanning will follow the following process:

1) - Gille will pick 300 of the pics still in scann-able shape (The negatives that is). The negatives were either black & white Kodak Tri-X film or Ilford HP5, from a Canon A1 or Canon T70 Camera.

2) - These are then sent to a digitizing shop which is able to read the negatives fairly and to convert these into digital format.

3) - Gille will then have to retouch these and make them presentable for uploading.

We at WMZA have neither the necessary scanner (Of film negatives) nor volunteers with the skills to conduct this scan/digitization work. This is why we have presented the grant request in the format we have.

Please move the grant request to the Project Grants program for us, as this is still a bit confusing for me. Thanks for the response and the assistance. --Thuvack (talk) 08:58, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Thuvack. Thanks for the additional details and context. Since the deadline for Project Grant proposals for round 2 is today, I've moved your proposal over so it has been submitted. We still would like to learn more about the community engagement aspect. Please note the schedule for Project Grants [Grants:Project|here]]. Alternatively, Rapid Grants are considered on a rolling basis for projects under $2,000. Best, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 00:06, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Not yet eligible, round 2 2016

Please note your proposal is not yet eligible for funding because WMZA has two overdue grant reports. These reports must be complete and submitted (with documentation of expenses) by October 28th in order to be eligible for committee review.

Questions? Contact us.

Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 19:56, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2016

This Project Grants proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 2016 review. Please feel free to ask questions and make changes to this proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 2 2016 begins on 2 November 2016, and grants will be announced in December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 20:06, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for WM_ZA/Joburgpedia_Digitization_2016

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?	6.8
(B) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support?	6.3
(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?	7.4
(D) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	6.0
Additional comments from the Committee: This project could have a large impact in the South Africa community, but I don't see how the other Wikipedias could use the content in a easy way. I am not aware of documentation from past versions of this project being promoted so other communities can replicate the project or utilize the content developed. Fits with strategic priorities to increase participation/reach in the Global South and improve quality of coverage, particularly for Africa, where coverage is quite weak. It’s not clear how this work will be sustained though, and I’d like more details on the benefits of developing a partnership with SAHA--for example: Are there future opportunities for collaboration? Have SAHA staff expressed interest in contributing to WMF projects? etc. If the main aim is to acquire images, then this does not seem sustainable in the long term because the project team does not have the necessary expertise or equipment to do digitization. This project has the potential to be continued or sustained. Its impact might very useful to the growing community of editors in South Africa. Paid work is a drawback, but prior projects show involvement of new editors in global south. This project is in accordance with Wikimedia's strategy. My sole concern is that the learning process for our community associated with this one-shot activity is unclear. After all, how does this activity further the wiki culture in SA? Documenting apartheid-related photos is commendable. The proposal comes from an emerging country which is usually underrepresented in Wikipedia. It can be a good model to convince photographers to release legacy content. There are clear metrics to be measured, well defined and not ambitious. The applicant has identified a risk. I don't know if there is someone in the project team with the skills to make the digitalization (not every person has the skills to develop it, and some institutions wants an accreditation before accepting it). There is little risk. Specific measures in terms of participants and content are provided. More discussion is needed about Project Grants and the funding of digitization projects. SMART goals provided This project will definitely provide us with great quality images, and I am very excited about the social justice aspect of it, but learning potential seems low at this point. Success metrics are clear. No major perceivable risk, though the lack of community engagement is glaring. Fits into GLAM practices (iterates on movement work in this area) As a new edition, I see the sufficient skills to develop the project: the applicants has the experience to make the editathons, but I don't see the evidence if they has an expert to make the digitalization. The budget looks fine (a side note, the incidental costs could be written up in a new budget item: in this way, we can estimate that the preliminary budget costs only 187 USD, not 476 USD; in other grant request I read them as "Reserves"). Budget looks okay, but given that the largest expense is digitization - and the project team is interested in working more with SAHA to acquire photos, I wonder if money might be better spent on purchasing digitization equipment. The team responsible for this project appears equipped to do it. Nice value for money, experienced grantee, long track record of prior experience Absolutely feasible project. Scope and budget is clear and reasonable. Demonstration of skills related to project management and digitization is not evident. But, it is compensated by the involvement of professionals for digitization. That they have achieved this partnership is a good demonstration of commitment and skills. I see a lack of support from the community. I do not see evidence of interest from the community for this specific project and would like to see this provided. There is interest from the project partner, SAHA, though. Appreciate that the project would offer support in the Global south Low level of endorsements suggests that this may be a one-shot initiative, with potential for low learning potentials and outreach capacity. Would have loved to see more community endorsements to assure enough participation in edit-a-thons. Perhaps, they didn't have enough time to mobilize support due to last minute submission for this round. Involvement of Wikimedia South Africa is good. I would really like to read the grant report from the Joburgpedia 2016 (not available at this time) to understand what was achieved and how this new proposal builds on and improves the project. Anyway, they have an idea, experience and a clear goal with a low budget. While I do not see demonstrated interest from the community in the material to be digitized, the material (historical photos documenting life in South Africa under Apartheid) seems very valuable and important, both to the Joburgpedia project and other WMF projects. The proposal does include activities to support volunteers to use the material - in this case, edit-a-thons with SAHA staff. However, the goal/desired outcome of the partnership with SAHA is unclear to me. Besides 10 new articles created, what can we expect from this partnership? Overall the cost of the project is quite low but I think it’s possible that digitization could be funded by another organization. I’m not very familiar with funding organizations in South Africa but perhaps SAHA can be a resource here? They have a list of funders on their website and likely could identify good opportunities for funding this project. In either case, I think this is a discussion to be had with the applicants if we proceed with due diligence. I support full funding. The strong social-justice component of this project is noteworthy. I hope this will be sufficiently reported as a success case, so it might inspire other important artists and photojournalists to do the same. Sole concern is to increase learning potentials and outreach, which should be more considered by proponent.

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. We recommend that you review 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 December 16.

Questions? Contact us.

Additional comments

Hi Thuvack. We've posted the aggregated feedback from the committee above and we appreciate your feedback on their remaining main points of concern. I've summarized them below, but please read the full comments above. You can respond by make changes directly to the proposal as needed. 1) As noted in our funding guidelines, we only fund digitization projects that clearly demonstrate that there is community need for and interest in using the materials being digitized. We understand that you will be organizing editathons with SAHA staff to use the material, but it would be helpful to know how the photos were chosen, by whom, and if there is a broader interest in using them on the Wikimedia projects. The "Community Notification" and "Endorsements" sections are areas in the proposal that the committee looks to for broader community support.

• Response:

Hi Alex. As Wikimedia ZA, we have been advocating for greater representation of African Content in Wikipedia, and more specifically South African Content. This project is our effort to do just that. One of the prominent content project in the english wikipedia that we have been monitoring is WikiProject South Africa. This is one project that has benefitted from previous digitization project we did as part of Joburgpedia. Although the community involvement in the actual digitization process is minimal due to the technical nature of the digitization process, there is greater community engagement during the planned editathons.

The pictures will be chosen by the Photo-Journalist, who has kept a reasonable archive of other notes related to the pictures including dates, to assist us in cross-referencing. Again we have invited the community to participate in vetting pictures that will be uploaded. During the last AGM of the chapter, active members expressed interest in the project and in the vetting process to ensure that good quality and relevant content is uploaded. There is no question about interest in using these pictures, in fact we believe that these pictures will be useful in sparking creation of new stubs/start-class articles.

I have sent a link to this grant report on our chapter mailing list and have requested community members to endorse this grant application.--Thuvack (talk) 12:49, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

2) It would be helpful to better understand the partnership with SAHA and the vision for how this partnership will develop. As commented above, "It’s not clear how this work will be sustained , and I’d like more details on the benefits of developing a partnership with SAHA--for example: Are there future opportunities for collaboration? Have SAHA staff expressed interest in contributing to WMF projects? etc. If the main aim is to acquire images, then this does not seem sustainable in the long term because the project team does not have the necessary expertise or equipment to do digitization...However, the goal/desired outcome of the partnership with SAHA is unclear to me. Besides 10 new articles created, what can we expect from this partnership?"

• Response:

SAHA would be a great partner to have as the Wikimedia ZA chapter. It is the custodian to the biggest Historical Archives about South Africa, second only to our National Archives. Our aim, as was with Johannesburg Heritage Foundation, is to build a collaborative partnership, that will make it easy for community members to access the archives, as well as make it easy for SAHA to donate images to wikipedia well into the future. The Editathons are just a beginning. We have been in contact with the outgoing manager as well as the incumbent manager about this event and both have expressed interest in working with us as a chapter.

The images belong to the Gille De Vlieg a Photo-Journalist who is an associate with SAHA. She already has a separate collection maintained by SAHA, whose description can be seen Here.

The involvement with SAHA will be on the editathon at the moment, with the aim of us working out how SAHA can contribute high value images in the future, notwithstanding the possible licensing issues. This way we will empower them to also run their own wikipedia related projects in the future.--Thuvack (talk) 13:19, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

3)Since we will not have the Joburgpedia 2016 report before making a decision on this grant, it would be helpful to have an update on those activities and how this grant is a development of the project.

• Response:

We have not been able to start on the JoburgpediA 2016 project, due to the delays in reporting and disbursement of funds, so at this moment, there is nothing much to report on this matter.--Thuvack (talk) 13:19, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Please respond to the above and/or make updates to the proposal by Friday, December 2nd. The committee will meet on December 5th and decisions will be announced on December 16th. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 20:54, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Round 2 2016 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, $2,261 USD

Comments regarding this decision:
The committee is pleased to continue supporting your partnership with South African History Archive to document an important piece of South African history. We value your efforts to engage local communities to contribute knowledge about Johannesburg and the greater region, as we recognize the need for greater representation of African content in Wikipedia.

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.

Project Timelines updated

Hi there @User:Jtud (WMF) & @Alex Wang (WMF). We have updated project timelines to suit our current pace and the logitical challanges we have had thus far. Please advise if we should apply for a time extension. --Thuvack (talk) 14:29, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Project handover

I have been in contact through a series of meet-ups with Thuvack (talk) and Gille De Vlieg and will be taking over this project as project lead since Thuvack (talk) is now WMF staff.Bobbyshabangu (talk) 03:26, 1 December 2017 (UTC)