Grants talk:Simple/Applications/Whose Knowledge/2020

SAPG Committee Review

Questions from User: Rohini

• Will the two research studies be peer reviewed?
• For the research project entitled “Wikipedia Deletion Study”: What was the process to select the two partner researchers?

• How does Whose Knowledge plan to tackle opposition that stems from certain sections of the community towards diversity and inclusion work, especially edit-a-thons?

• Will the edit-a-thons be preceded by training or workshops for the participants in case the participants are new editors?

• Does WK have a decision-making process to determine which requests from marginalised communities WK would support or not support?

• What communities are being targeted via the goal stated as “Build awareness of gaps and opportunities in the Wikimedia projects for marginalized communities to contribute”?

• Re staffing plan: For hiring contractors, what are the recruitment criteria and processes that will be applied from the PoV of the open knowledge/ Wikimedia movement? (This question does not imply an expectation that contractors be necessarily hired from the open knowledge/ Wikimedia movement. It is only an attempt to understand if contractors would already understand or would be interested in learning about the Wikimedia universe and its nuts and bolts.)

-- Rohini (talk) 05:11, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Hi Rohini,

Thanks for these questions! Answers are below in the same order you’ve asked them:

• Peer review: We plan to publish the deletion study via standard academic conference proceedings (we’ve been considering options for submission like CSCW), which does involve a regular research peer review process. The Report on State of the Internet’s Languages is action research rather than academic research, however, and will be published by Whose Knowledge? under an open license, so that version of peer review looks rather different from what academics may be used to in other review processes. For this report, “peers” include the various researchers we work with from both institutions, as well as our networks of marginalized communities who are most affected by the issues being discussed in this report, all of whom will be asked to review early drafts and help improve (including all our participants at the Decolonising the Internet’s Languages 2019 convening, who have already agreed to review the report). And because that work is being produced under open license, it will allow for further review and improvement over time (including by Wikimedians).
• Deletion Study Researchers: The process involved using our networks to ask around for volunteers who had both access to the Wikipedia data we need and expertise in the kind of qualitative coding and statistical analysis that’s required. One researcher led us to another. It’s not easy to find folks who have this particular combination of expertise, access, and interest/time to spend on such a project, so there wasn’t a huge pool of people to whittle down in a formal sourcing/selection process - we feel quite lucky to have pulled together a team with the right skills and interest!
• Edit-a-thons, opposition and training: We don’t run a lot of edit-a-thons ourselves these days, instead we partner with other Wikimedian groups who are running events like this already. For e.g. with #VisibleWikiWomen, so many orgs around the world have great experience running edit-a-thons in their own contexts, we don’t think we need to do something separate, instead we simply ask these partner organizers to include a focus on images in their events and we provide resources to help with that as-needed. For the 1 edit-a-thon that we’re thinking about in Kenya, we’d be using a model that’s worked well for Whose Knowledge? in the past, which is to pair experienced Wikipedia/media editors with newbies from marginalized communities who have subject-matter expertise. As for opposition to diversity work, we deal with it as best we can, just like the rest of the movement working for diversity does - we arm ourselves with the facts, bring a strong coalition of allies and experts so no one is alone, have safety and security protocols in place especially designed with and for marginalized communities, make sure we’re investing in good practices of physical/mental/emotional care of ourselves and others when times are hard, and persevere as best we can.
• Decision-making for marginalized community support: When deciding where to lend support to marginalized communities, we are first led by the interest, needs, and commitment of the community itself. If that’s there (and we don’t take that for granted, given how many communities are under physical fire these days; as you know online knowledge work can be understandably re-prioritized when a community needs to focus on simply surviving day-to-day), then we also look at how this fits with our mission, and finally at our own capacity - do we have the time, resources, and expertise that best places us to support a community in the way they want or need? If we don’t, we often point/route to other groups who might be better placed to support, or elongate timelines and adjust scope to make the puzzle pieces fit for all parties.
• Build awareness goal: Overall marginalized communities that we speak to and write for include women, people of color, LGBTQIA folks, indigenous communities and people from the Global South, and we particularly focus on communities at the intersections of these forms of marginalization. These are big gaps and there’s so much to be done that we’ll likely be giving the big picture 101 talks and writing about this in various contexts for a long time to come. What’s new this year though is our focus on language gaps/opportunities, and that will be guided by our Research Report, which is likely to lead us to a new set of focus communities or intersections as well.
• Staffing: All of our contract positions are already filled for the year. 4 of 6 are long-time Wikimedians, as well as many other things :) Of the 2 remaining who didn’t have Wikimedia backgrounds, one contractor is Communications and the other is Operations. Our communications person was hired with a scope of work and selection process that prioritized a combination of stellar comms skills + strong open source/knowledge values. She was not already a Wikimedian, but has great knowledge of open licenses, open source software, and open feminist practices, and now uploads regularly to Commons, etc. Our operations person was hired with a scope of work and selection process that prioritized looking for non-profit operations and financial expertise. Though we always ask new people to be open to learning about the open knowledge world, this isn’t key to her particular work and so was not something we needed her to have expertise in, and we haven’t prioritized her few hours a week with us to focus on this aspect in particular.

Hope this helps address your questions! Thanks for your thoughtful review. Best wishes, Siko (talk) 22:03, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate your response. -- Rohini (talk) 03:43, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Simple APG Committee recommendation

We recommend that Whose Knowledge receive $107,775 USD for nine months. This is a very timely proposal that is important for closing gaps in our community and aligned with Wikimedia’s strategic direction. We look forward to seeing your work unfold in the coming 9 months.

We want to acknowledge that this award is atypical for a first-time SAPG applicant, both because the award is higher than usual for a first-time applicant in this program, and because it includes more staff support. We are electing to support your request in this round because of your thought leadership in the knowledge equity space and your unique position to take on this work.

As you begin your work, we ask that you take the committee’s feedback in the following area: Because one of our main objectives in funding you is to harvest the value of your thought leadership in the knowledge equity space, we would like to work with you at the start of your grant to develop an evaluation framework to help the value of the work be more visible and tangible.

Thank you for your contributions to the Wikimedia movement.

For the committee, Islahaddow (talk) 17:04, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Dear Islahaddow and committee,

Thank you, we are very grateful for all of your support and trust in us! Looking forward to hearing more about what the committee and WMF grants team has in mind regarding evaluation as this grant kicks off - please keep us posted, we're happy to keep learning and share learning with you all.

Best wishes from all the Whose Knowledge? team, Siko (talk) 00:06, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Whose Knowledge?’s grant is approved in the amount of 107,775 USD for 9 months

Congratulations! This grant is approved in the amount of 107,775 USD, with the grant term starting on April 1, 2020 and ending on December 31, 2020.

Whose Knowledge? is a veteran of the Project Grants program, though a new applicant to the Simple Annual Plan Grant program. Noteworthy about this applicant is their highly developed thought leadership in the knowledge equity space, as represented, for example, by their publication in prestigious journals, distinguished keynote addresses, convenings of other thought leaders to expand the boundaries of the conversations about inclusion in digital spaces, and more. On the programmatic front, they have both conducted research and acted on the research to better serve marginalized communities. While their programs work to close key content gaps, their impact goes much deeper than straightforward content creation on Wikimedia sites. They seek to excavate, articulate and transform the underlying assumptions and biases in knowledge creation, representation and dissemination that work against the movement’s capacity to achieve its [vision of knowledge equity]. We believe their unusually well developed capacity for leadership in this arena is critical at this stage of the movement’s development.

In this annual plan, Whose Knowledge? is proposing to work in four different programming areas: VisibleWikiWomen campaign, Research on marginalization and knowledge gaps, Decolonizing the internet and Outreach, awareness and support of marginalized communities. Through the VisibleWikiWomen campaign the group has already worked with over 25 partners around the world and collected over 3700 images that have been added on Commons. In their annual plan they are both striving to increase the number of photos and the percentage of usage in the different projects. The two research projects they have proposed will look at the state of the internet’s languages and how likely marginalized communities contributions are to be deleted. While the funding from the Simple Annual Plan Grant will not cover direct expenses for their Decolonizing the Internet work, it is great to see that they are planning to develop a reusable CC-by SA toolkit that will amplify the work through communities that might want to take this up on their own. Lastly, their outreach, awareness and support of marginalized communities will greatly contribute to the movement’s strategic direction of knowledge equity.

The staffing plan Whose Knowledge? has proposed makes up the majority of the budget they are requesting in their annual plan. While they are doing programming that will cost more money than they have asked from our program they plan to cover the cost of that with other funding sources. It is difficult to quantify the work this group is doing and measure the results we are expecting from their work. Aligned with the Committee recommendation we hope to develop an evaluation framework with Whose Knowledge? that’s going to allow us to better understand their work. We hope to work together to be able to elevate stories that demonstrate the transformational value of their work.

We understand that your organization is not completely funded at the point of this proposal and that raises concern around financial sustainability. We would like to work with you to make sure that the activities funded by this proposal are reasonably secure in light of your overall funding plan for this year.

Lastly, on March 12, 2020, the grants team shared a message from Katherine Maher, our Executive Director, regarding grant-funded programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. As you know we’ve asked all grantees to cancel or postpone all offline (in-person) public events funded by WMF. We will reach out in the next few weeks to discuss what adjustments will be necessary to move forward without offline activities. We appreciate your hard work during this especially challenging time.

We are excited to welcome Whose Knowledge? to the Simple Annual Plan Grant program in 2020. We look forward to working together. Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 20:13, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks, WJifar (WMF). Whose Knowledge? is looking forward to working with you on all of this as well! And yes, we are right there with you regarding Covid-19, no one is going anywhere for quite some time. Hope everyone is keeping safe and well, meanwhile.

Best wishes from all of the WK team, Siko (talk) 00:12, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Midterm Report Accepted

Hello Anasuyas, Aadele, and Whose Knowledge Colleagues, thanks for submitting your midpoint report. We have reviewed the metrics, budget, and report and marked them as accepted. Thank you for your work for the Wikimedia Movement! Best regards, DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 15:46, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Hello DSaroyan (WMF), thank you so much for reviewing and approving our midpoint report! Best regards, Aadele (talk) with Anasuyas and the Whose Knowledge? team

Request for Underspent Reallocation

Dear I JethroBT (WMF) and SAPG colleagues, we are submitting a request to reallocate the underspend amount from the SAPG April - Dec 2020 Grant. The amount of underspend we have is $752.87. We would like to reallocate this amount towards our State of the Internet’s Languages Report research and publication. Let us know if you have any questions. Thank you for your support and trust in Whose Knowledge?'s work. Regards, Ashbhardwaz (talk)

@Ashbhardwaz: Yes, this reallocation is toward the research and publication of this report is approved. Thanks! I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 22:21, 17 December 2020 (UTC)