Editing Talk:Mika/Temp/WikiFCD (section)

=response to the committee=

Thank you so much for reviewing our proposal! We wanted to respond to the three major lines of criticism raised in our proposal.

1. Relationships with existing initiatives

The most important issue raised by reviewers were concerns that our project overlapped with existing initiatives, [https://world.openfoodfacts.org/ Open Food Facts] (OFF) in particular. This issue was raised on the [[Talk:FIXME|talk page for our proposal]] during the discussion face but reviewers felt that our response there was not convincing.

We have made major changes to the text our proposal to try to explain in more detail how this project and OFF are complementary and to try to explain the difference between nutrition-label data (OFF's domain) and food composition data (WikiFCD's). Although they are related, they are different data with different sources, different audiences, different challenges, and different uses. Food composition dat is best understood as a "downstream" source of granular data for projects like OFF as well for Wikibase instances like Wikidata. 

We have spoken in depth with Stéphane Gigandet (the founder and leader of OFF) who has in turn spoken about our project with the OFF board. Gigandet is excited about our project and, with support of the OFF board, and has graciously added his name to the list of advisors for our proposal. Part of the reason Gigandet is excited about proposal is that OFF has previously attempted to incorporate some fruit and vegetable FCD from [[:wikipedia:USDA|USDA]] and [[:wikipedia:CIQUAL|CIQUAL]]. After running into some of the issues our team discusses in this proposal, like extremely granular data and divergent and shifting formats, OFF decided ''not'' to move forward with supporting the types of FCD our proposal targets. With Gigandet's advice, we will work closely with OFF to ensure that WikiFCD not only does not compete or duplicate effort with OFF but that it provides a useful resource that they can draw from.

Although it was not raised in the reviews, a new Wikibase instance like WikiFCD will reduce the burden for other communities such as Wikidata as well so that they can focus on their main project aims. We have updated our proposal to make it clear that we will work closely with Gigandet to integrate our work with OFF as a way of demonstrating how other Wikibase instances can incorporate data from WikiFCDs. 

2. Community engagement   

A number of reviewers raised concerns about our ability to build an engage a community. Although we agree that this reflects the biggest challenge and risk for this project, we believe that, with a WMF grant, we will have the resources we need to succeed.

If our project has less in the way of existing community support than some other grant proposals, it is because our goal is to engage ''new'' groups of experts in the WMF ecosystem rather than calling upon already overtaxed Wikimedia volunteers. The type of outreach we are proposing will involvement building partnerships which could lead to expansion and diversification of Wikimedia contributors. Our approach is to provide domain experts experiences with Wikimedia systems and tooling  that they find valuable. This strategy for engaging domain experts is consistent with the findings and recommendations of the [https://tools.wmflabs.org/scholia/topic/Q5531528 GeneWiki program of work].

[[User:Hackfish]] is an established academic expert in global health and nutrition. She is currently working at both [[:wikipedia:San Francisco State University|San Francisco State University]] and [[:wikipedia:Harvard School of Public Health|Harvard School of Public Health]] and will be starting as an Assistant Professor at the [[:wikipedia:Johns Hopkins University|Johns Hopkins University]] in September 2020. [[User:Hackfish]] is well positioned to user her deep connections in the academic nutrition community to help this project succeed and this engagement project will be the large part of what the intern will work on. We have already garnered strong interest in this project among the nutritionists at both Harvard and Johns Hopkins and will be working with teams at both places to contribute to WikiFCD and to engage broader communities.

3. Budget Question

There was a lack of clarity in our proposal about what the intern would be doing for 8 hours each week. We have edited the proposal to clarify that the intern will be working with the project manager to create online learning tools and seminars to develop and deliver curriculum focused on teaching nutrition professionals to use and contribute to WikiFCD as well as about peer production, WM projects, and ways to contribute to Wiki-based projects in general. We aim to employ a student who is interested in working with online communities who can support us one day a week for two semesters so as not to create burden on their workload and interfere with their academic work. We are confident that we will be able to identify such an individual.

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Integrate into the proposal:

Based on the in-depth discussion both with various WM members and nutrition researchers over the past year, we decided that it would be most useful to '''diverse communities''' with '''diverse needs''' if we build a comprehensive Wikibase instance for all existing FCDs from around the world. While some communities may be only interested in the most common nutrient information (e.g. total fat, trans fat, calories, sugar), other communities may want more specific information (e.g. Phytic acid (by HPLC/HPAE) : Zinc ratio) or other information related to the food item (e.g. scientific names, varieties of fruits, geo-locations). 

WikiFCD can make significant contributions to various WM communities with interests in nutritional data. The Wikibase we are creating will be an expert-curated data set that is mapped to Wikidata. The Wikidata community as well as any other wikibase community will be able to reuse entity schemas or entity data (or both!) from our system. Data will flow back into Wikidata if desired. We strongly believe that WikiFCD will make a positive impact on WM and other communities by accommodating their varying needs and bringing more equitable access to an easily usable database. This Wikibase instance is a new and innovative approach that addresses problems that need to be, and yet have not been, solved. 




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Comments from reviewers

1. Relationships with existing initiatives
* I am encouraged to see this project proposal suggesting looking into another aspect of knowledge gaps. I am concerned there are already existing initiatives and wondering why the proposers have chosen to not to align with those.
* It does fit with Wikimedia's strategic priorities. However, it looks like a competitor to "Open Food Facts", another free software and open data but the concept of both projects is different.
* I do not find this project to be critical to the current state of knowledge. There are existing resources they could join to do this work.
* It does fit with Wikimedia's strategic priorities and the budget is reasonable but not enough community engagement. There is a need for a wider or major community discussion to ascertain whether this could be hosted on Wikidata or not. However, it looks like a competitor to "Open Food Facts", another free software and open data but the concept of both projects is different (from the proposal & answers to questions on the proposal talk page). 
* A lot of concerns about the creation of another instance. The answers in the discussion page don't convince me.

2. Community engagement   
* A new instance of Wikibase? Without a community?
* It does fit with Wikimedia's strategic priorities and the budget is reasonable but not enough community engagement. There is a need for a wider or major community discussion to ascertain whether this could be hosted on Wikidata or not. However, it looks like a competitor to "Open Food 
* Interesting concept but some concerns about the methodology.
* They really need to become more involved since they were not able to get any endorsements.
* The proposal has very little community engagement with current Wikipedia communities.

*    This seems iterative, but minimally so.