Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/Spoken Levantine Arabic Wikipedia (ID: 23749274)

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello TheJoyfulTentmaker, I'm Chris Schilling, a program officer supporting review and decisionmaking for Rapid Funds. Thanks for this proposal supporting spoken language content on this Incubator project. Please see my comments below:

• While funding for proposed work on incubator projects can be eligible, we will not be able to fund this proposal because the community of active editors for the incubator project is too small and not sufficiently active. Historically, we have found funding to have had productive impact on projects where there is an active community, even if it is somewhat small (say, in the range of 10-20 active editors). However, most recent edits to the incubator project have been supported either by yourself or by one other editor in the last few months, and that this level of overall activity appears to have also been more or less the same earlier in 2025.
• Our general position is that movement funds are not best used to support Wikimedia projects where there is an absence of volunteer community to support it. Past efforts have shown that funding does not create volunteer communities, and funding for content-related improvements have limited impact if there isn't an established community prepared to maintain that project over time. A volunteer community should be clearly developed and established first before there are efforts to funding organized work in general for that project.
• Finally, the proposal in this case involves a small group of native language contributors who have not been clearly identified, so the potential for impact is not clear.
• To make a stronger application for funding in the future, it will be important to establish a larger and regularly active group of volunteers on this incubator project. Furthermore, more specific information should be provided around the contributors have been recruited to provide spoken language content.

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi Chris, thanks so much for the thoughtful remarks. I am a bit surprised because this was only a small effort that was hoping to mitigate the huge imbalance of funding between dialectal Arabic and standard Arabic: Requests_for_comment/The_WMF_needs_to_support_dialectal_Arabic_more_actively . Especially compared to many riskier grants that the movement accepted, I find this outcome a bit surprising to be honest... The native speakers mentioned in the proposal were among the names listed in my RfC, many of which I am already in contact, as mentioned in my email. The ultimate goal here is not only to create content, but of course, to grow he community. However, directly contributing to the Incubator is extremely hard, due to complex prefixes needed, and the dual writing system support that is still not implemented, and the interface and content languages being different. So this would be a great way to give some visibility and momentum to the project. The content itself is only one positive outcome of this effort. More importantly, the speakers we plan to involve have significant reach and influence, and our agreements would include raising awareness about the project through their social media channels. Also, as another benefit, the participating speakers are expected to get familiar with the Wikimedia Ecosystem and would later be able to involve in other directions such as giving trainings or leading edit-a-thons. Regardless, I am still very concerned about the foundation's funding imbalance. I hope there will be accepted grant proposals from other Wikimedians around dialectal Arabic within already active Wikipedia editions, as well as multi-language projects such as WikiData and Commons, which will contribute content in dialectal Arabic and grow communities contributing such content. TheJoyfulTentmaker (talk) 02:26, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

@TheJoyfulTentmaker, @TheJoyfulTentmaker, My comment isn't about funding -صe are volunteers and we do everything we can in any way possible- but about the term "small project"! We can't get a domain (apc.wikipedia.com), we can't get funding, and we can't even promote the project, all because we're a small project. How are we supposed to grow it then? Do only large projects get support? Most of those who joined the project left because of these reasons and gave up trying so hard. Except for me and TheJoyfulTentmaker, we still believe in the project!

Anyway, thanks for the clarification. I hope the project will one day receive the same level of support as larger projects! Maher Asaad Baker (talk) 08:50, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks @Maher Asaad Baker. One other thing to note is that the regional user groups representing regions where Levantine Arabic is spoken do not seem very interested in supporting this language. @I JethroBT (WMF) I was wondering if you had any suggestions for us... TheJoyfulTentmaker (talk) 14:24, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

@TheJoyfulTentmaker As I said before, as long wiki-user look at this project as No-Future project, we will keep facing the same problems, as for me I'll keep participating in this project, hoping one day Wikimedia will consider it! Maher Asaad Baker (talk) 15:18, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

It is the world's 33rd most spoken language and getting no WMF funding whatsoever. Wikipedia, WikiData Lexemes, Commons, there are many Wikimedia projects a language can be supported. I think the current situation is very unfair, unfortunately... TheJoyfulTentmaker (talk) 15:39, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

As I noted before, our observations from attempting to fund past projects like this one have demonstrated that funding does not create volunteer Wikimedia communities where they do not exist. What does happen in these cases is a very brief burst of funded activity related to articles or backend improvements, but the work is insufficient on its own to address more fundamental needs, and it does not support sustained voluntary activity beyond the length of the grant. Volunteers that join the funded project do not stick around in these cases, not because of any personal failings of the organizers or a lack of enthusiasm, but because there isn't an existing volunteer community of peers to support them, even at a small level. If you are seeking funding in the future, the way to move this initiative forward is to build and demonstrate a small community of active volunteers for this incubator project first before applying for funding. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 04:58, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi @I JethroBT (WMF), thanks for clarification. I just would like to have one more point clarified, if possible. Is your comment above only for the Incubator Wikipedia project? Because I was thinking of something around WikiData Lexemes in Levantine Arabic (maybe together with some other languages spoken in Turkey), and trying to organize an event around collecting words and idioms, having them recorded as audio files and publishing them on WikiData. Since WikiData has a well-established volunteer community, would that be eligible for a rapid fund? (This might indirectly support our recruiting efforts for the Levantine Wiki as well). CC: @Maher Asaad Baker @A455bcd9 Best, TheJoyfulTentmaker (talk) 21:12, 2 August 2026 (UTC)