Grant Proposal: One Time Enhancement to Zcash Wikipedia page

Enhance The Zcash Wikipedia Page

Building in Zcash content on the World’s most popular decentralized encyclopedia

Background

The current Zcash wikipedia page is extremely sparse in its presentation of Zcash the protocol, its evolution, its future, and the ecosystems that surround it.

Motivation

This is a straight-forward project that involves technical writing, editing, and peer review. The end objective is to deliver a robust, informative, and accurate Zcash wikipedia page.

Approach

Over the course of 1-3 months, I will be contributing additions and edits to the current Zcash wikipedia page, and I will solicit community peer review along the way. My time will be spent aggregating current and past Zcash content available on other sites and blogs, then abbreviating or copying/ referencing it to the Zcash wikipedia page. Peer review participation will be ad-hoc, voluntary, and not compensated as a part of this proposal.

Execution Risks

The execution risk is limited to my personal availabilty, community participation with feedback at-discretion, and potential unknown risks related to setup & use of a new Wikipedia contributor account.

Downsides

Fundamentally: None Identified.
Economically: This project may cost more than it is worth over time.

Evaluation Plan

The proposal involves 4 quarters, represented as 5 hours each (delivered over 2 week sprint time-frames). Evaluation at the end of each quarter should be conducted, at which point the ZCG can continue or halt the proposal.

I will be generally taking framework for content practices from the wikipedia pages for Dogecoin, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Monero

Tasks & Schedule

Quarter 1 - Getting Up-To-Par

  • Setup/ access Wikipedia contributor account (If anyone here has one, with existing clout please speak up)
  • Conduct general evaluation of current site, determine generic framework for improvement
  • The first sprint’s focus will be to spend 5-6 hours (as approx $300 value) getting the Zcash page into a state where “we can live with it”

Quarter 2 - Cleaning, Referencing, Elaborating

  • This quarter will involve community peer review feedback and action items
  • Content reference material will be built into Quarter 1 contributions
  • Elaboration of existing content will begin

Quarter 3 - Building out Advanced Sub-Sections

  • This quarter will build in subject matter expert level content for topics such as the shielded pool progression, Halo/ Halo 2
  • Other sub-sections of focus Wallets, Markets, Ecosystem, Legacy, and Future Initiatives

Quarter 4 - The Long Arc of Progress

  • This quarter will focus on creation of a forward-looking narrative for Zcash, and for its Privacy-First focus
  • Content related to the Posterity Fund, and Proof of Stake will be built
  • Open-ended and community driven content creation will be delivered
  • Finalization of all prior content contributed/ work to completion for any previously unanticipated issues

Maintenance

There is no maintenance work in the scope of this proposal

Proposal Cost

$1,200 overall, paid incrementally as $300 at the end of each quarter

13 Likes

Fast, rapid, quick yes. I support this grant.

About time.

1 Like

I support this :100:

Please note that you must disclose, employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation.

More info: Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure - Wikipedia

2 Likes

I didnt know this, tbh. I am sure everyone abids by the rules… sure… Only ‘unpaid’ activitsts change things on wikipedia

3 Likes

I’ve spent a fair amount of time freely contributing to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. I expect others to abide by the Wikipedia terms. The vast majority of contributors are not compensated for their work. Are there paid shills or others working to insert their own bias or misinformation into Wikipedia? Sure. Thankfully the community is quite strong and doesn’t tolerate too much bullshit.

That said, there is a very low barrier to entry to gainfully participate with Wikipedia.

4 Likes

Given nobody has updated the Wikipedia page to date I’d be happy to see @noamchom compensated for writing some “open sourced” information about Zcash. If he can’t contribute that to Wikipedia because of this compensation maybe somebody else who isn’t paid can submit the edit?

2 Likes

If he works on it, and gets compensated, I’m happy to submit it for free.

When people search for Zcash, the Z.cash site and wiki are the first things that pop up. Updating the wiki is therefore of utmost importance.

1 Like

TBH I’m surprised ZF (or ECC) haven’t arranged for something like this. Seems like very some obvious low fruit either that should have been picked a long time ago.

Finally, love to see someone step up for this, good luck. No idea if it’s viable for a grant w wikipedia policy but like, seems fair to disclose and try anyway

3 Likes

I don’t see any reason why OP couldn’t get paid to work on the Zcash entry. Simply disclosure that in the preferred manner.

The current entry is flagged as having some issues. One of which is that the “article relies too much on references to primary sources.” “Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources.”

I would also suggest that @noamchom read through the talk page for existing discussions on the topic and ideas for moving the entry forward.

Thanks all for the feedback. I think that as Winfred mentioned, the worst case scenario would be that I operate as an aggregator, researcher, content creator, but not the direct publisher to Wikipedia.

As @kowalabearhugs has provided, with the appropriate disclosure that risk may be trivial anyhow.

5 Likes

All,

I’m not going to be continuing with this proposal any further. If any of you have the skill, time, and interest in taking it over from here, Please feel free to. (I would be very happy to see somebody carry the torch)

To my understanding, the grants committee has reviewed and are tentatively in support of funding this proposal or something like it.

-Noam

Hello @noamchom & Zcash Community, the @ZcashGrants unanimously voted to approve this grant at the most recent meeting. However, since you have decided not to continue, we will withdraw the proposal from the grants platform and leave this thread open in case someone wants to submit a proposal to take over this project.

Future applicants should be aware of, and consider, Wikipedia’s conflict of interest policy and required disclosures. For more information, please see: Wikipedia:Conflict of interest - Wikipedia

3 Likes

Extremely-online, Ivory Tower People might not like Wikipedia, but common people regularly use it on the assumption that it is the internet’s #1 most honest & accurate reference library.