MIskander-WMF

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Notification of potential grant fraud

As a follow up to User_talk:MIskander-WMF/Archives/2024#Potential_misappropriation_of_grant_funds to which you have not yet replied, I wanted to draw your attention to another case of potential grant fraud, which I have outlined in Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Wiki Loves Earth 2024 in Togo (ID: 22680682)/Final Report.

I am disappointed by your ongoing disinterest in this matter. Should I be reporting this directly to the IRS or a state attorney general? Bovlb (talk) 21:20, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

@Bovlb - I can see the grantee has responded to you directly after you left the message on the grants page and my talk page and also that a conversation about notability is ongoing with the grantee and other editors on their Wikidata talk page. I am asking @RWeissburg (WMF) to follow these conversations and investigate further the specifics of what you have noted, including your recommendations with the regional grants officer responsible for this grant. They will be in touch. Please direct further questions on this matter specifically on this grants page. -MIskander-WMF (talk) 15:51, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. This issue is much wider than one specific grant, as it appears to keep happening, again and again. I would like to hear your thoughts on solving the general problem. Bovlb (talk) 16:09, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

I wanted to clarify a conflation here:

My on-project conversations with editors are intended to help them by identifying editing problems, teaching them how to resolve them and also how to avoid them in future. This sort of thing happens a lot in the day-to-day life of a project, and I am proud to have pioneered several documents, template messages, and tools that assist with this process. Notwithstanding, there seems to be a never-ending flood of new editors who may be well-intentioned, but have been let down somewhere along the line, because they start in with bulk creation of new items, but don't know how to follow basic policies such as notability. This is why I try to trace the problem upstream, to see if we can stop it from happening in the first place.

My messages here on meta are concerned with improving the grants process, as I believe we should have some basic expectation that grants will improve projects, not just make extra work for volunteers. I would like to make grants conditional on the participants presenting some positive evidence that they can make productive contributions to the target projects. This is especially the case for grants that involve some element of training others, such as editathons. Unfortunately, we don't even seem to be holding grant applications to the much weaker negative conditions that are part of the stated eligibility criteria. Bovlb (talk) 16:42, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

As an example of a small change that might have a significant impact, I suggest that these questions be part of future grant applications:

• Please give details of any training undertaken or certification received by participants that relate to the target projects.
• Do any of the participants has a record of problem edits on any target project? If so, has feedback been responded to, and what reason is there to believe that these problems will not affect this application?
• I acknowledge that every project has its own policies and guidelines, in particular including local notability criteria. Participants undertake to familiarise themselves with these and will attempt to follow them.

Bovlb (talk) 17:06, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

@Bovlb Confirming here that I've responded to your concerns over on the grants page, as suggested by Maryana, above. RWeissburg (WMF) (talk) 16:18, 21 November 2024 (UTC)