On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 7:08 AM, Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:

Similarly, people asking thousands of dollars so they can get computers to test the user script in different OS environments seems like an odd use of resources. No libraries available that have both Mac and windows available (Guess there's a lot of libs that only have windows computers). Even still, is multiple OS's really necessary to do browser testing? Almost all modern browsers are cross platform. Even IE can be run in wine on linux afaik.

If only a browser is needed, there are cloud solutions like Sauce Labs[1]. If the entire operating system is needed, Linux should not be a problem to install (in a virtual machine, if dedicated machine is not available). Windows virtual machines are also available[2]. Not sure if Mac OS is available for testing purposes.

Željko -- 1: https://saucelabs.com/ 2: https://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools#downloads

On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 10:28 AM, Daniel Friesen <daniel@nadir-seen-fire.com

wrote:

OS X isn't available legally as a VM on anything but an OS X machine IIRC.

Correct. I have forgot to mention that. What I meant is that I am not sure one can download already prepared Mac OS VMs.

Mac OS X 10.6-8 are $19.99 each, 10.9 is free.

However that ultimately means that if you absolutely need to buy new hardware to test every OS the only thing you need to buy is one Mac, which can then cover every OS.

Correct. MacBook Air starts at $899, Mac mini at $599.

Željko

Brian, I just want to say Thank You for the time you took going through the proposals and writing this insightful email. CCing Siko because, even if you particular comments about certain proposals are interesting, they can be taken as samples, and what really matters are your meta observations.

On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 7:08 AM, Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:

On 10/10/14, Patrick Earley pearley@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

*(cross-posted to wikimedia-l)*

Hello all,

For our second round of Individual Engagement Grant applications in 2014, we have a great crop of ideas. Wikimedians have dropped by to offer feedback, support, or expertise to some of the proposals, but many proposals have not been reviewed by community members. Over half of

these

...

proposals involve new tools, new uses of our databases, or have other technical elements. Some will be hosted on Labs if approved.

Members of this list may have key insights for our proposers. If there

is

...

an open proposal that interests you, that you have concerns about, or

that

...

involves an area where you have experience or expertise, please drop by

the

...

proposal page to share your views. This will help the proposers better hone their strategies, and will assist the IEG Committee in evaluating

some

...

of these fresh new ideas to improve the Wikimedia projects. Working with an IEG proposal may even inspire you to serve as a project advisor, or to propose one of your own for the next cycle! Comments are requested until October 20th.

Tools IEG proposals:

• IEG/Semi-automatically generate Categories for some small-scale &

medium-scale Wikis

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Semi-automatically_generate_Categ...

...

• IEG/WikiBrainTools

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/WikiBrainTools

• IEG/Dedicated Programming Compiler

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Dedicated_Programming_Compiler%3E

...

• IEG/Gamified Microcontributions

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Gamified_Microcontributions%3E

...

• IEG/Enhance Proofreading for Dutch

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Enhance_Proofreading_for_Dutch%3E

...

• IEG/Tamil OCR to recognize content from printed books

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Tamil_OCR_to_recognize_content_fr...

...

• IEG/Easy Micro Contributions for Wiki Source

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Easy_Micro_Contributions_for_Wiki...

...

• IEG/Citation data acquisition framework

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Citation_data_acquisition_framewo...

...

• IEG/Global Watchlist

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Global_Watchlist

• IEG/Automated Notability Detection

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Automated_Notability_Detection%3E

...

• IEG/Piłsudski Institute of America GLAM-Wiki Scalable Archive

Project

...

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Pi%C5%82sudski_Institute_of_Ameri...

...

• IEG/Revision scoring as a service

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Revision_scoring_as_a_service%3E

...

Full list:

• IEG Grants/Review

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG#ieg-reviewing

Regards,

wikitech-l@wikipedia.org

-- Patrick Earley Community Advocate Wikimedia Foundation pearley@wikimedia.org _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

A lot of these proposals seem poorly written from the perspective of a technical proposal. Many appear to be more like sales pitches intended for a non-technical audience (Which I suppose kind of makes sense, the people who get lots of wikimedians to endorse them, "win").

I'm generalizing here, as it seems there's a lot of variation, but there's a lot of "what I am going to fix", not "how am I going to do it". They mostly don't have mock-up screenshots for the one's who propose new user facing things, there is largely no schedule of milestones, or even concrete minimum viable product specifications. If they were GSOC proposals, they would largely be rejected gsoc proposals.

For example [[meta:Grants:IEG/Tamil_OCR_to_recognize_content_from_printed_books]] you can't even tell that they intend to create a website instead of a desktop app, unless you read the talk page.

Second, its hard to comment on the appropriateness of scope, since there's not really any set criteria (That I've seen). In particular its unclear what is considered an appropriate asking amount for a given amount of work. For example, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Global_Watchlist asks for $7000, which seems excessive to essentially make a user script that has a for loop to get the user's watchlist on various wikis. That's the sort of thing which I would expect to take about a week. A very experienced developer might be able to pull it off in a day provided the interface elements were minimalist. (Although that proposal has a small little note about being able to mute/unmute (non-flow) threads on a per thread basis, which depending where you go with that, could be the hardest aspect of the project).

Similarly, people asking thousands of dollars so they can get computers to test the user script in different OS environments seems like an odd use of resources. No libraries available that have both Mac and windows available (Guess there's a lot of libs that only have windows computers). Even still, is multiple OS's really necessary to do browser testing? Almost all modern browsers are cross platform. Even IE can be run in wine on linux afaik.

Then there's proposals like https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Dedicated_Programming_Compiler, where it appears the grant requester isn't entirely familiar with the meaning of the technical jargon that is in use in the proposal. Which should raise instant red flags.

Now that I've complained a lot, I should say its not all bad. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Revision_scoring_as_a_service for example is a fairly well written proposal.

Hmm, not entirely sure where I was going with all this. Looking at all the proposals takes time. Maybe there should be some sort of minimum quality standard (e.g. Having a roadmap) to advance to the next step of proposal selection, and only ask the larger Wikimedia community to review those proposals that were sanity checked to have at least enough information on them that one could reasonably evaluate the proposal.

--bawolff

---

Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Hi Siko, are you planning to copy the relevant comments to the grant application pages? The Committee will likely want to read them.

Pine

On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 10:04 AM, Siko Bouterse sbouterse@wikimedia.org wrote:

Echoing Quim's thanks to you, bawolff! And I really appreciate the comments you've made directly on proposals in past weeks, which does help them improve.

Good proposals take time to develop, and I expect that incubating them longer in places like IdeaLab, where they can get more advice to help them mature, is one way to ensure they contain all info needed for assessing them as a grant proposal. I'm not sure this is something we could ever do well without the community.

I'm seeing more and more proposals for technical projects in IEG each round (for the first time, nearly half of the open proposals are for tools). As there seems to be increasing interest in using IEG to build tools, I agree that we'll want to start thinking about better guidelines for this type of proposal in particular. Will keep your suggestions in mind for this, and happy to hear more as we work on improving systems each round.

Siko

On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 5:56 AM, Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

Brian, I just want to say Thank You for the time you took going through the proposals and writing this insightful email. CCing Siko because, even if you particular comments about certain proposals are interesting, they can be taken as samples, and what really matters are your meta

observations.

...

On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 7:08 AM, Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:

...

On 10/10/14, Patrick Earley pearley@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

*(cross-posted to wikimedia-l)*

Hello all,

For our second round of Individual Engagement Grant applications in

2014,

...

we have a great crop of ideas. Wikimedians have dropped by to offer feedback, support, or expertise to some of the proposals, but many proposals have not been reviewed by community members. Over half of

these

...

proposals involve new tools, new uses of our databases, or have other technical elements. Some will be hosted on Labs if approved.

Members of this list may have key insights for our proposers. If

there

...

...

is

...

an open proposal that interests you, that you have concerns about, or

that

...

involves an area where you have experience or expertise, please drop

by

...

...

the

...

proposal page to share your views. This will help the proposers

better

...

...

...

hone their strategies, and will assist the IEG Committee in evaluating

some

...

of these fresh new ideas to improve the Wikimedia projects. Working

with

...

an IEG proposal may even inspire you to serve as a project advisor, or

to

...

propose one of your own for the next cycle! Comments are requested

until

...

October 20th.

Tools IEG proposals:

• IEG/Semi-automatically generate Categories for some small-scale &

medium-scale Wikis

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Semi-automatically_generate_Categ...

...

...

...

• IEG/WikiBrainTools

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/WikiBrainTools

• IEG/Dedicated Programming Compiler

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Dedicated_Programming_Compiler

...

...

...

• IEG/Gamified Microcontributions

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Gamified_Microcontributions%3E

...

• IEG/Enhance Proofreading for Dutch

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Enhance_Proofreading_for_Dutch

...

...

...

• IEG/Tamil OCR to recognize content from printed books

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Tamil_OCR_to_recognize_content_fr...

...

...

...

• IEG/Easy Micro Contributions for Wiki Source

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Easy_Micro_Contributions_for_Wiki...

...

...

...

• IEG/Citation data acquisition framework

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Citation_data_acquisition_framewo...

...

...

...

• IEG/Global Watchlist

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Global_Watchlist

• IEG/Automated Notability Detection

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Automated_Notability_Detection

...

...

...

• IEG/Piłsudski Institute of America GLAM-Wiki Scalable Archive

Project

...

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Pi%C5%82sudski_Institute_of_Ameri...

...

...

...

• IEG/Revision scoring as a service

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Revision_scoring_as_a_service%3E

...

...

...

Full list:

• IEG Grants/Review

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG#ieg-reviewing

Regards,

wikitech-l@wikipedia.org

-- Patrick Earley Community Advocate Wikimedia Foundation pearley@wikimedia.org _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

A lot of these proposals seem poorly written from the perspective of a technical proposal. Many appear to be more like sales pitches intended for a non-technical audience (Which I suppose kind of makes sense, the people who get lots of wikimedians to endorse them, "win").

I'm generalizing here, as it seems there's a lot of variation, but there's a lot of "what I am going to fix", not "how am I going to do it". They mostly don't have mock-up screenshots for the one's who propose new user facing things, there is largely no schedule of milestones, or even concrete minimum viable product specifications. If they were GSOC proposals, they would largely be rejected gsoc proposals.

For example [[meta:Grants:IEG/Tamil_OCR_to_recognize_content_from_printed_books]] you can't even tell that they intend to create a website instead of a desktop app, unless you read the talk page.

Second, its hard to comment on the appropriateness of scope, since there's not really any set criteria (That I've seen). In particular its unclear what is considered an appropriate asking amount for a given amount of work. For example, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Global_Watchlist asks for $7000, which seems excessive to essentially make a user script that has a for loop to get the user's watchlist on various wikis. That's the sort of thing which I would expect to take about a week. A very experienced developer might be able to pull it off in a day provided the interface elements were minimalist. (Although that proposal has a small little note about being able to mute/unmute (non-flow) threads on a per thread basis, which depending where you go with that, could be the hardest aspect of the project).

Similarly, people asking thousands of dollars so they can get computers to test the user script in different OS environments seems like an odd use of resources. No libraries available that have both Mac and windows available (Guess there's a lot of libs that only have windows computers). Even still, is multiple OS's really necessary to do browser testing? Almost all modern browsers are cross platform. Even IE can be run in wine on linux afaik.

Then there's proposals like

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Dedicated_Programming_Compiler

...

...

, where it appears the grant requester isn't entirely familiar with the meaning of the technical jargon that is in use in the proposal. Which should raise instant red flags.

Now that I've complained a lot, I should say its not all bad.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Revision_scoring_as_a_service

...

...

for example is a fairly well written proposal.

Hmm, not entirely sure where I was going with all this. Looking at all the proposals takes time. Maybe there should be some sort of minimum quality standard (e.g. Having a roadmap) to advance to the next step of proposal selection, and only ask the larger Wikimedia community to review those proposals that were sanity checked to have at least enough information on them that one could reasonably evaluate the proposal.

--bawolff

---

Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

-- Quim Gil Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

-- Siko Bouterse Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

sbouterse@wikimedia.org

*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. * *Donate https://donate.wikimedia.org or click the "edit" button today, and help us make it a reality!* _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

OK thanks.

Pine

On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 1:36 PM, Siko Bouterse sbouterse@wikimedia.org wrote:

I don't think that copying comments made on a mailing list over to a proposer's page is exactly the right strategy here, Pine - there's a difference between talking *to* and *about* people and I see that bawolff has done a lovely job of doing some of each, using both channels.

But if your question is really will this feedback from the mailing list get fed back to the scoring committee: Yes, it will be, along with all perspectives we gather from various threads and conversations all over the place.

On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 1:12 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:

...

Hi Siko, are you planning to copy the relevant comments to the grant application pages? The Committee will likely want to read them.

Pine

On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 10:04 AM, Siko Bouterse sbouterse@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

Echoing Quim's thanks to you, bawolff! And I really appreciate the comments you've made directly on proposals in past weeks, which does help them improve.

Good proposals take time to develop, and I expect that incubating them longer in places like IdeaLab, where they can get more advice to help them mature, is one way to ensure they contain all info needed for assessing them as a grant proposal. I'm not sure this is something we could ever do well without the community.

I'm seeing more and more proposals for technical projects in IEG each round (for the first time, nearly half of the open proposals are for tools). As there seems to be increasing interest in using IEG to build tools, I agree that we'll want to start thinking about better guidelines for this type of proposal in particular. Will keep your suggestions in mind for this, and happy to hear more as we work on improving systems each round.

Siko

On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 5:56 AM, Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

Brian, I just want to say Thank You for the time you took going through the proposals and writing this insightful email. CCing Siko because,

even

...

if you particular comments about certain proposals are interesting,

they

...

can be taken as samples, and what really matters are your meta

observations.

...

On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 7:08 AM, Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com

wrote:

...

...

On 10/10/14, Patrick Earley pearley@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

*(cross-posted to wikimedia-l)*

Hello all,

For our second round of Individual Engagement Grant applications in

2014,

...

we have a great crop of ideas. Wikimedians have dropped by to offer feedback, support, or expertise to some of the proposals, but many proposals have not been reviewed by community members. Over half of

these

...

proposals involve new tools, new uses of our databases, or have

other

...

...

...

technical elements. Some will be hosted on Labs if approved.

Members of this list may have key insights for our proposers. If

there

...

...

is

...

an open proposal that interests you, that you have concerns about,

or

...

...

that

...

involves an area where you have experience or expertise, please

drop by

...

...

the

...

proposal page to share your views. This will help the proposers

better

...

...

...

hone their strategies, and will assist the IEG Committee in

evaluating

...

...

some

...

of these fresh new ideas to improve the Wikimedia projects. Working

with

...

an IEG proposal may even inspire you to serve as a project advisor,

or

...

...

to

...

propose one of your own for the next cycle! Comments are requested

until

...

October 20th.

Tools IEG proposals:

• IEG/Semi-automatically generate Categories for some

small-scale &

...

...

...

medium-scale Wikis

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Semi-automatically_generate_Categ...

...

...

...

• IEG/WikiBrainTools

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/WikiBrainTools

• IEG/Dedicated Programming Compiler

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Dedicated_Programming_Compiler

...

...

...

• IEG/Gamified Microcontributions

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Gamified_Microcontributions%3E

...

...

...

• IEG/Enhance Proofreading for Dutch

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Enhance_Proofreading_for_Dutch

...

...

...

• IEG/Tamil OCR to recognize content from printed books

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Tamil_OCR_to_recognize_content_fr...

...

...

...

• IEG/Easy Micro Contributions for Wiki Source

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Easy_Micro_Contributions_for_Wiki...

...

...

...

• IEG/Citation data acquisition framework

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Citation_data_acquisition_framewo...

...

...

...

• IEG/Global Watchlist

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Global_Watchlist

• IEG/Automated Notability Detection

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Automated_Notability_Detection

...

...

...

• IEG/Piłsudski Institute of America GLAM-Wiki Scalable Archive

Project

...

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Pi%C5%82sudski_Institute_of_Ameri...

...

...

...

• IEG/Revision scoring as a service

<

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Revision_scoring_as_a_service

...

...

...

Full list:

• IEG Grants/Review

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG#ieg-reviewing

Regards,

wikitech-l@wikipedia.org

-- Patrick Earley Community Advocate Wikimedia Foundation pearley@wikimedia.org _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

A lot of these proposals seem poorly written from the perspective of a technical proposal. Many appear to be more like sales pitches intended for a non-technical audience (Which I suppose kind of makes sense, the people who get lots of wikimedians to endorse them, "win").

I'm generalizing here, as it seems there's a lot of variation, but there's a lot of "what I am going to fix", not "how am I going to do it". They mostly don't have mock-up screenshots for the one's who propose new user facing things, there is largely no schedule of milestones, or even concrete minimum viable product specifications. If they were GSOC proposals, they would largely be rejected gsoc proposals.

For example [[meta:Grants:IEG/Tamil_OCR_to_recognize_content_from_printed_books]] you can't even tell that they intend to create a website instead of a desktop app, unless you read the talk page.

Second, its hard to comment on the appropriateness of scope, since there's not really any set criteria (That I've seen). In particular its unclear what is considered an appropriate asking amount for a given amount of work. For example, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Global_Watchlist asks for $7000, which seems excessive to essentially make a user script that has a for loop to get the user's watchlist on various wikis. That's the sort of thing which I would expect to take about a week. A very experienced developer might be able to pull it off in a day provided the interface elements were minimalist. (Although that proposal has a small little note about being able to mute/unmute (non-flow) threads on a per thread basis, which depending where you go with that, could be the hardest aspect of the project).

Similarly, people asking thousands of dollars so they can get computers to test the user script in different OS environments seems like an odd use of resources. No libraries available that have both Mac and windows available (Guess there's a lot of libs that only have windows computers). Even still, is multiple OS's really necessary to do browser testing? Almost all modern browsers are cross platform. Even IE can be run in wine on linux afaik.

Then there's proposals like

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Dedicated_Programming_Compiler

...

...

, where it appears the grant requester isn't entirely familiar with the meaning of the technical jargon that is in use in the proposal. Which should raise instant red flags.

Now that I've complained a lot, I should say its not all bad.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Revision_scoring_as_a_service

...

...

for example is a fairly well written proposal.

Hmm, not entirely sure where I was going with all this. Looking at all the proposals takes time. Maybe there should be some sort of minimum quality standard (e.g. Having a roadmap) to advance to the next step of proposal selection, and only ask the larger Wikimedia community to review those proposals that were sanity checked to have at least enough information on them that one could reasonably evaluate the proposal.

--bawolff

---

Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

-- Quim Gil Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

-- Siko Bouterse Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

sbouterse@wikimedia.org

*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. * *Donate https://donate.wikimedia.org or click the "edit" button today, and help us make it a reality!* _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

-- Siko Bouterse Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

sbouterse@wikimedia.org

*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. * *Donate https://donate.wikimedia.org or click the "edit" button today, and help us make it a reality!*