Hello,
I am writing to request comments on a grant request made by a Wikipedia group at a university in the United States.
The Wikipedia Connection is a student group at Ohio State University which has been organizing Wikipedia meetups since 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Connection
This group is requesting about $1800 to fund meetup supplies through 2016. See their grant request to the Wikimedia Foundation at < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Wikipedia_Connection/Semester_Fun...
The grant organizers are established Wikipedia contributors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SuperHamster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AddisWang AddisWang is also active on Chinese Wikipedia - https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AddisWang
Other good Wikipedia contributors support these organizers both online and at their university. I appreciate them doing the work to both draft this grant request and actually organize Wikipedia events at their school. Here are some of my personal perspectives on this proposal:
- This group, the Wikipedia Connection, has more than a year of experience organizing meetups on campus - The organizers have managed instances of the Wikipedia Education Program, and are one of the few successful examples of a university student group Wikipedia meetup. This is a model to encourage. - AddisWang and SuperHamster are both super-Wikimedians. They know Wikipedia's rule sets and Wikimedia community culture. They are proper Wikipedia contributors who are fit to be public representatives of the Wikimedia community. - The amount of money they are requesting is modest considering the projects they propose to do. - The project as proposed is likely to succeed, and aside from that, is unlikely to go wrong in any way. This is conservative Wikipedia outreach thoughtfully matched and made locally relevant to the tastes of students at this university.
If anyone would, please endorse, comment, or criticize this proposal at < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Wikipedia_Connection/Semester_Fun...
I am very happy to see this proposal made and I think encouraging more of these proposals will only lead to better relationships with more universities and grassroots student communities.
yours,