[Foundation-l] [ANNOUNCEMENT] Greenspun illustration project

[Cary Bass]

Forgive my misspelling in the announcement.   Subst "a" for "u".

Cary Bass wrote:
> Cross posting to Commons-l and Foundation-l (forgive the duplication):
>
> The Greenspun Illustration Project
>
>
>     What is it?
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation has received a donation from Philip Greenspun 
> for the purpose of creating and improving illustrations on Wikimedia. 
> The Board has decided to accept his donation of $US20,000 for this 
> special purpose.
>
> This is the first time the Foundation has been directly involved in 
> funded content creation, although the German chapter's experience in 
> winning a government grant to write articles on sustainable development 
> has helped pave the way. The Foundation wants a "hands-off" minimal 
> administration role with the bulk of the work of organizing the project 
> and creating the content to be completed by members of our community.
>
> Since this is the first time we've done this, we're not sure how it will 
> go. This is a bit experimental and we ask for your patience and 
> enthusiasm to help make it a success.
>
> Brianna Laugher (<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise>) 
> will be coordinating the project, with my help as the Foundation's 
> Volunteer Coordinator.
>
>
>     How will it run?
>
> Since Philip's kind donation is a lot of money and we're planning to pay 
> around US$40 per illustration (with some lower and higher amounts, see 
> details to follow), we want to progress the project in stages. Starting 
> out with a small number of 50 requested illustrations, we'll look at our 
> results and modify and improve it for successive stages.
>
> The project will flow along as follows:
>
>     * Create list of requested illustrations.
>     * Open illustration requests on issue tracking software
>     * Users will self-assign requests, signaling his or her intent to
>       create that illustration.
>     * On creation and approval, the user is paid the amount as set in
>       the original request.
>
> Things to note:
>
>     * The list of requests will be approved by Brianna, in order that
>       balance exists among "things any decent reference work needs";
>       "things the Wikimedia community requests"; and "things we nearly
>       have, or have poor versions of".
>     * Approval: a review group will be formed in order to provide
>       assessment of submitted images. The main checks will be 1)
>       editor's original work and acceptable license, 2) correct
>       rendering on MediaWiki and 3) how well the image depicts the
>       requested item. No image will be accepted that do not pass all
>       three of these checks.
>     * Other checks will be recommended (e.g. language-neutral version).
>     * The payment system is not yet finalized.
>
>
>     How you can help
>
> If you are interested in suggesting illustrations to be created, you 
> don't have long to wait: soon there will be some pages on Meta where you 
> can get involved. We will write to foundation-l when the pages are ready 
> for your input.
>
> If you are interested in being part of the review group, please email 
> Brianna as follows:
>
> brianna.laugher AT gmail DOT com
>
>
>     The benefits
>
> This project can have two good outcomes. One, we get illustrations we 
> wouldn't otherwise have, or wouldn't otherwise have had so quickly. 
> Another benefit is that we can use this project as a way to encourage 
> and launch new people into the "illustrator community".
>
> Creating high-quality SVGs is not a skill a lot of people have 
> immediately, but may be developed fairly quickly. While many people 
> might be vaguely interested in it but no more, a monetary incentive 
> might be enough to push them to act, and learn, and create. Some of the 
> image requests will be for smaller amounts (US$15) for relatively 
> simpler illustrations—these will be specifically targeted to newcomers 
> to encourage them to get involved. At the end of this project we might 
> have $20,000 worth of illustrations, but the value of the content 
> creating community will potentially be a lot higher. We expect a side 
> benefit to this project will be the creation/finding and maintenance of 
> good documentation for specific tasks using tools like Inkscape.
>
>
>     More details
>
> See the project specifications at:
>
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/5/51/WMF_Greenspun_Illustration_Project_Proposal.pdf
>
>   


-- 
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator

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E-Mail: cbass at wikimedia.org