Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2014-2015 round2/Wikimédia France/Proposal form

Thank you for this proposal form

Hello, Schiste.Thank you for submitting this complete proposal form on time. If we have any urgent needs for clarification, we'll contact you right away. Otherwise, you can expect questions from FDC staff in the next week or so. Note that we had to update the number format in your proposal. In the future, it would be helpful if you could honor the number format requested, as it makes analysis of the financial details in your proposal a bit easier. We hope you are OK with that minor change, but let us know if you have any concerns.

We noticed that Question #1 in the "Revenues" section was left blank ("1. Does your organization plan to draw on its operating reserves during the upcoming funding period to support its expenses? If so, please provide the amount you intend to draw from your reserves here. This should not be included as revenue in the table below."). Can you confirm that you are not planning to draw on any funds from your reserves during this round? This is what we are understanding from your other responses. If you would add a yes or no response to that question to clarify, that change to the proposal form is approved in advance.

Finally, as usual, we ask that you do not make any changes to the proposal form now that the deadline has passed, without first contacting FDC staff. If a change is needed, you can put in a request here on this discussion page.

Best, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 01:29, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Winifred, sorry for the mistake. We'll make sure to fix that for our next reports. We've fixed the forgotten "no" too. Hope you'll enjoy reading our short proposal. Best, Schiste (talk) 16:45, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Innovative approach

You already last year delivered a very sound proposal and the same goes, as I see it, for this year. And I want to give my credits for a well worked through proposal. I have two areas I want to discuss and would like to have some clarifications, which I give under separatea headings.

While I beleive you last year presneted som innovative program lite your edithanons for cheese, I wonder how far you have investigated any further innovative programs.

• Community support. In general and compared to other entities I feel you have a low profile here. I find no tecnical support reosurces in order to give techical assistence to the community, I see no program to lend equipemet to enable contributers to easier produce material, like good photos. Have you looked into what other chapters do in this area? What have been your considerations not to do more in this area and/or like having an technical expert (complex template (modules), Wikidata, programming, WMF rollout program/support) among yoru staff?
• partners. You have many godd programs for different partners, but there are many potential partners you do not mention, like the media world. Have you looked into partners other chapter have program for? What have been your considerations not to extend to more type of partners? Anders Wennersten (talk) 09:06, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Anders, thanks for the compliments, they are much appreciated. Last year, we went for a detailed presentation of our programs. We had feedback from many people, that though it gave a clear picture of what we wanted to do, its length and details made it harder to grasp our strategy. So this year, we tried to made the strategy clear, and focus on specific programs.

We are dedicated to community support. We’re running, for a few years now, a micro grant program open to all French Wikimedia projects volunteers. We’re funding many things through that program from books to lenses, but also travels and specific projects. We detailed these actions in our proposal form : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round2/Wikim%C3%A9dia_France/Proposal_form#Making_resources_more_accessible . We’ve been running, for many years as well, photo equipment loans to make it easier for our volunteering photographers to take great pictures. More than 25 000 pictures have been supported by WMFr so far, there are also 2 photo week-ends per year, open to any actor of WMFr as well as regular photo tours organised locally in several regions where local Wikimedians are active.

On top of that, a part of our offices are dedicated to volunteers. There they can come, enjoy the delightful company of Wikimedia France employees, wonderful coffee but also borrow books we’ve bought or received as gifted, use our mini-studio or our book scanner. WMFR’s office is also host to any events - such as Wikicheese nights - organized by volunteers.

In general, the rule is that staff primary role is to support volunteer work and allow them to do more than they could alone. Sylvain Boissel’s role is not only about being WMFR’s technical manager but as every staff member, he fully supports and facilitates working groups and lists (such as photos / tech) in order to make it easy for everyone to get involved and overcome any technical difficulties. He’s also a key expert in outreach regarding Wikidata to a number of partners interested in this new project emerging. Last but not least Sylvain, as well as other staff members of WMFR is involved in preparing the 2015 Hackathon in Lyon.

Regarding partnerships, there are several types of partners we reach out to. Most partnerships are contents partnerships and aim at embarking cultural partners, for example. But we also have several funding partners. As for the media, it’s another type of relationship that we are seeking. We address this point in the proposal as well (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round2/Wikim%C3%A9dia_France/Proposal_form#Diversifying_our_audiences ) where we mentioned the press coverage we’ve had since the beginning of the campaign.

There are tons of partners we don’t address. That’s by design. Like we explained last year, we’ve decided few strategic orientation that we will work on for 2 years. One is consolidating what we already have : if an opportunity arises, we consider it and depending on what it would bring to the movement, and the resources we have, we would decide to do it, or not. We meet new partners every week and it’s our mission to prioritize, by taking our community’s wishes and interests into account.

Next year, our 2 years of consolidation will be over. Then we will set our focus for the next years, and perhaps will decide to explore new partnerships. That’s not our focus for now.

I hope this answer your questions, if you have any follow-up we would gladly answer them. Schiste (talk) 17:21, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I have no complaints or problems as such with your program, I believe you are doing a great job. But while I considered your program to be in the fronstline among the chapters a year ago (=innovative) I have since then seen evolvement in other chapters which means I do not consider your program to be in the frontline any longer. Doing the same, even if great, means you in a dynamic world can fall behind others (=no longer be seen as innovative). In the community support area I know think you can learn by talking with wmit and wmse, at the same time you can share some of your succeful and innovat activeies you have run, with others. In the partnering area I can not directly point you to other being much further. But after we all have eben successful in cooperating with educational och Glam instititutions I think we need to look further. The whole mediaworld is in turmoil - can we be a player in this area, media more reusing our material, media uppdating our poroject (when they close down their internal factresearch departments).Anders Wennersten (talk) 14:04, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Staff

The second question from above. I can not understand the rationale for having two staff working with financing/accounting, 0,5-1 FTE would be more reasonable. Neither do I understand the system & network administator, does he only support you in the group? I also get confused by the layout of the organisationchart where Nathalie Martin is put "above the rest" does it mean she is not involved in the program but just administrates the other staff (which from my viewpoit would be highly inefficient as your staff is below 10). And does the personell assistent only assisent Nathalie, not the others? If I, as I hope, have interpreted the chart wrong I would suggest you make the layout of the organsiation in another way, not so hiearchical.Anders Wennersten (talk) 09:06, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Anders, there might be a misunderstanding on our organizational chart. This is both a description of the hierarchy and of the main roles. Nadia is working with everyone, she's no PA to Nathalie but rather an executive assistant meaning that she has her own scope which encompasses HR policies and global organization.

The chart doesn't provide any information on the FTE and the type of contract. Both of our accountants are part time employees, and both are “working students”. In order to graduate, they must work part-time in an organization. Ania is almost done with her diploma (her contract is ending in July 2015) and Jonathan joined the team in February 2015 for 2 years to get a masters degree. There is an overlap, which is good for the transition.

As for Nathalie, she supervises the staff team, she is WMFR’s executive director. Wikimedia France’s board delegated to her managing the team, work with the board and handle WMFR’s daily work and any emergency that arise. She has a role of decision over each of WMFR’s actions which necessarily implies that she’s fully aware and involved in whatever action is set in place. On top of that, she also goes to some meeting with partners, when there's a need for official representation.

The only hierarchical link in our chart is between Nathalie and the rest of the team. The rest of the organization is flat by design. Schiste (talk) 17:21, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks I am happy with the clarification you have don~e related to the role of Nadia and acounants. And I am glad to see only one level of authority. But I would have expected Natahalie to use a substantial part of her time to work in your projects, at least 30%. This not only as an efficiency issue but also for all employee to see her doing the same tasks and effort as all others even if she also at times needs to do "Boss" work.Anders Wennersten (talk) 14:04, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

I also appreciated the clarification. As to the average remuneration it does sound too high, even factoring in that each person may be doing work that two inefficient staff do - I like the fact there is a Board and Executive to keep you all performing at such a high level but am not convinced that the wages of wikimedia are what could be considered charitable. Perhaps this is a lament directed to the entire charitable sector, who if they gave 50% of their salaries to their causes physical resources and solutions would find many of those causes solved overnight. Adam37 (talk) 08:03, 16 April 2015 (UTC) Or in the instance of education, paid 5% as a consultancy fee to each consultant who gave the remaining 95% of their time at fully sustainable cost by being paid by government. Therefore by the generated goodwill Wikimédia would be likely to spread knowledge of its tools within government-mandated programmes and literature and so you would do far better. In short you could instead retain/consult with 200 consultants all on a small consultancy fee and some of those would go on voluntarily to do many times more engagement with their mainstream educational organisations, an idea which could be gradually phased in, isn't it? And yes this goes for all other countries' proposals, much of which work could and should be done largely voluntarily. Adam37 (talk) 08:26, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Questions from FDC staff

Thank you for submitting this annual plan grant proposal to the FDC. We appreciate the effort you all have put into creating it. To help build our understanding of your proposal, we are following up with some questions. We hope these answers will provide more information so that we, the FDC, and the movement, can better understand your work and context. Best regards, KLove (WMF) (talk) 04:43, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Optimizing partnerships

• We would like to better understand why optimizing partnerships is important to you, and the link between your partnerships work and online impact. For example, do you see this work as primarily increasing the number of new contributors, or increasing the amount and quality of content, or fulfilling specific gaps? We seek to better understand your focus in terms of impact.

We believe that offline partnerships are an early step which are necessary to have an online impact.

We believe that the relation's quality, the hearing of our partner and its objectives, the fact of preferring motivated partners who wish to include "Wikimedia" in their strategy are all long term sustainability and durability pledges, and therefore impact pledges on the medium term.

For instance, the partnership linked with the project "Women in Science", without regular exchanges, evaluations, debriefings and a strategic partners position, we couldn't have more and more edit-a-thons attendees, neither could we deploy it in some other countries, neither could we think of how deploy it locally in regions.

Indeed, this action targeted women as contributors but the impact is also seen in the contents that are improved.

This will allow us to increase the number of contributors, for example touching communities still too distant from the contribution (such as social economy in the medium and long term, or more recently the public present at the edit-a-thon Art + Feminism which now contribute on cheeses via Wikicheese).

This will allow us to have to focus on the missing content (such as content related to the ESS, women-related content - as explained above with the example of Science Women).

In terms of quality content, partnerships allow to start a real discussion with institutions and rather than being in a logic of releasing a large amount of content, it helps in many cases to target corpus or of smaller, but better, funds. Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• Please explain the link between your partnership work and increasing content related to the global south.

We decided, as part of the redesign of Afripédia project, to turn to organizations already working in or with the so-called global South. These organizations have access to a network of identified institutions and actors that would have taken us months to map or identify. It is for us a powerful tool to accelerate the implementation of projects that aim to enrich the content related to the South and to increase the number of contributors in that country.

We have at this stage been in contact with the International Organization of Francophonie: the main asset of this partnership is the networking with Southern actors including Francophone Africa that can in the end become contributors. For example, we are signing an agreement with the Independent Publishers International Alliance.

Another of our current contacts is Libraries without Borders through which we can have a connection with the animators of Ideas Box, media libraries in kit deployed in refugee camps in Burundi. These facilitators will soon be sensitized to lead projects around the Wikimedia projects, and thus will inform all users of Ideas Box. Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• Please tell us more about your plans with the training of trainers. Why is it a priority and what is the strategy? Is there a link between training of trainers and content? To what extent have the materials been adapted? What kind of support do you provide after the TTT?

First, we will identify among the members those who are already trainers and those who are not but wish to become and those who are not and do not want to. The objective is therefore to train people who are not but wish to become trainers. Among them , we know that there are people who primarily need to increase their skills (especially the Advanced Wikipedia Contribution).

To capitalize on these trainings we intend to conduct synthetic factsheets. Our goal is to increase the number of identified trainers. A meeting of trainers will be held and a list will be created to share best practices and plan areas for improvement.

During the contribution days we organize, we systematically settle training periods that seem incompressible. However, facing the allotted time, usually 15min to 1hr, we can't put participants in a situation of independent contributors. This requires that the upstream trainings provided to be as fair as possible. It is therefore imperative that volunteers define educational objectives and training plan regardless of the time before each event including training time. If our goal is to train participants to the independent contribution, we hope that once the event is over they continue to contribute and enrich the Wikimedia's projects. We wish to keep a "playful" and "user friendly" appearance during edit-a-thons but the goal is to encourage participants to continue to contribute. And this requires adequate training by volunteer trainers.Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• Please offer some additional context for the demands for training that you describe. For example, how many requests for training have you received in the past year, and what do the organizations requesting training seek to achieve?

In all edit-a-thons, we implement incompressible training time either when the day starts or even before. Our partners regularly use Wikimedia France to set up training workshops on contributing to Wikipedia or on the use of Wikipedia in classrooms. :These structures are seeking an awareness of their target audiences to Wikipedia's good use or a training to the contribution on Wikipedia. Taking into account the edit-a-thons and direct requests of our partners, we can identify some fifteen training requests. A training catalog currently being finalized will structure our training offer both for volunteers and partners.Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• We understand that you are planning to engage new types of partners, including partners in the sport, gastronomy and the social and solidarity economy (SSE) sectors. Would you please explain how working with these new types of partners will help you achieve your program goals?

These are communities already established around similar interests, which makes activation easier.

Considering the social and solidarity economy (SSE) it's a set of actors who are innovative, who love Wikimedia movement's ideals and moreover, they already have their own network to mobilize to become contributors and partners. It is a way to save time but also to bring to these interest groups some ways to promote their field and disseminate widely all knowledge that exist and they love it.

Wikimedia projects should be of interest of the public. The GLAM themes may seem inaccessible to some among the general public. These new themes are designed to touch people with other centers of interest and allows the involvement through photo, which is sometimes more accessible than the written form.Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Developing international links

• Please describe how you will determine what kind of support you will provide other francophone chapters.

We will at first prepare a compendium of needs: if some similar needs exist in Francophone organizations, respond it will be the priority. For this, we want to take all possible times to meet IRL (visits chapters, Wikimedia conference, Wikimania, dedicated events) and strengthen contacts between chapters. To date, we send the existing documentation in French that can be used by other Wikimedia organizations (eg in Burkina Faso but also more recently in Algeria), we receive Wikimedians of WikiFranca visiting us and try to be in touch with them regularly, we coordinate a number of actions to facilitate the development of the Francophone contribution month, etc.Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• Please provide some additional context for why you are continuing your partnership work in Africa, despite previous challenges.

We don't work with the same partners anymore: the challenges we have faced in the past are very much related to the partners themselves, so there is no reason not to continue to work on this strategic area for us and the mouvement. Our objectives are to raise awareness of civil society; train target groups by supporting the creation of digital commons and increasing access to the contribution; support communities in Francophone Africa, especially the Wikimedia organizations on spot and then try to improve technical solutions to enable the contribution in off-line.Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• You explain that you need local partners because “Wikimédia France does not have expertise in the African continent, project management in these countries, the local context or the appropriation of new technologies and free culture”. Would you please tell us more about what Wikimédia France brings to these partnerships?

An expertise related to the contribution and knowledge of Wikimedia projects (that our partners don't have). This is of course to facilitate the expertise transfer (learning the contribution to Wikimedia's projects, awareness regarding Open Source, intellectual property issues on projects, etc.) and also in connection with the implementation of the actions already existing within the movement, or even new ideas for action (eg WikiLoves Women, which is a project of great interest to partners).Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• Do you have more details to share about your planned work with the African diaspora in France? Are you building relationships with any specific partners?

It is an intention: Today we are in a institutions identification phase with which we could perform actions with. Again, the network of partners already approached will be a great help. As explained above, the main one is the International Organization of the Francophonie, which is likely to put us in touch with actors of civil society sensitive to the problems of digital commons. We also met with the Secretary of State for Development and Francophonie.Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• Last year, Francophone Contribution Month had few contributors. How will your program this year build on the challenges you experienced in the past?

This echoes the first question on this axis: we will collect chapters' needs on this specific action (an assessment has already been done and a survey has been sent). We won't launch any new action but we focus on this one. A civic volunteer will join the team to help coordinate some of this action and we will delay to a more convenient time to obtain external support (around the International Day of Francophonie).Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• WMFR notes the importance of linking the “place and role of women in the communities, particularly rural, of the countries of the South” in the Francophonie work. Please explain.

Again, this is a reference to the project with great potential Wiki Loves Women: we see it as an action that has real meaning. In Africa, in many countries, women play a key role in rural communities. Thus, value these aspects through Wikimedia projects would highlight a very tangible reality. (See in this regard the FAO study: http://www.fao.org/gender/infographic/fr/ or in English: http://www.fao.org/gender/infographic/en/) If the action Wiki Loves Women takes place, we will try to activate this dimension, including involving the project networks such as WiLDAF (http://www.wildaf-ao.org/) and CAWTAR (http://www.cawtar.org/) whi are OIF's partners.Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Making resources more accessible

• Can you please explain what outcomes you hope to achieve in the work you are planning with prisoners?

Prison is a place where one sentence a punishment, but it is also a time to consider a new future. Access to culture can be seen as a special interest. However, prison is a place which, for security reasons, requires isolation from the outside and that is incompatible with the use of internet. So we thought to use the offline tools originally developed for Afripédia.

We will of course build our program based on Wikimedia Switzerland experience on the topic.

Links are already established with a Department concerned and some relevant associations on spot (in prison). The main objective is to ensure that a pilot institution will equip and will produce a return of use on which we can base our action to expend it.Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• Please provide more details about what work you intend to do with the Francophone OTRS operators.

We organized a two days training session with OTRS operators in November 2014. The first day was open both to those who work with OTRS' association queues, to those of OTRS' Francophone action's files. This was designed to allow everyone to improve their OTRS use and good practices. The second day, only operators of OTRS' Francophone actions' files were present, so they can talk in confidence to solve some complex tickets.

The next workshop is being planned right now ; prospective schedule includes working on answer templates and help pages, discuss complicated cases and processing all waiting tickets.Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• Can you explain more of the efforts directed at your community of developers and tech stakeholders? What technical problems are you referring to?

Our efforts aim to extend this Francophone tech community and help it to form. A prime example is the Lua workshop held on 18 April in Paris, which will be followed by others: we already have requests to participate to the next workshop. "Needs" is probably a better word than "problems", but we use many free tools: a private deployment of MediaWiki (the Wikimembres), a donations platform under CiviCRM, a Wordpress website ... If we have to develop a feature, or if we fix a bug, we will also publish the product source code under a free license.Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Diversifying our audiences

• We see many activities listed under this program and don’t yet understand the strategic links. Can you explain in a bit more detail the strategic linkages between the contests (Wiki Loves Earth), advocacy work (Free Knowledge Advocacy Group), membership campaigns, and awareness raising at national shows/events?

We plan to sensitize different levels of actors, politicians and the general public. According to the audience met at our events, we want to go beyond awareness, conducting our public to become members or contributors of Wikipedia, but also by supporting politicians to improve the legislative environment regarding our needs.Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• What is WMFR’s role in the FKAG-EU beyond funding the post in Brussels?

Wikimedia France is in direct and regular contact with Wikimedians in Brussels and conducts from time to time some actions derived from the work done at the European level. Negotiations conducted by Wikimedia France at the moment with copyright companies can be used to improve France's work on specific issues. If France is evolving in its position, it can also have an impact at European level. Wikimedia France also relays messages or campaigns offered by Wikimedians in Brussels.

This is a task that is mainly done by volunteers. Staff only gets involved in a “whip” manner, to make sure what the volunteers planned to do is done and to aggregate informations. This is an action in which we don’t spend money. Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• Please share more about your plans to build relationships with journalists and the media more broadly.

Media relations aren't a strategic priority for the association, because they already relay our communication. 3 actions can be highlighted: - We wish rather equip association's members to enable local actions that can be seen more easily (a media relationships kit is being finalized), and secondly - we wish to qualify better our journalist contacts list to identify media that might relay our cause and that we don't touch today. - We want to develop online content (especially via the blog) to reach influencers and not necessarily journalists.

Wikimedia France doesn't have yet the resources (human and financial) to go beyond.Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

More responsible image

• Can you provide an overview of the activities that links the fundraising/communication/strategy streams of work?

A first element of answer lies in the crowdfunding operations and community management that these activities imply. Indeed, during the campaigns we are led to develop a powerful and sustained communication plan, in order to generate and maintain public interest for our projects. For example, we found that the wikicheese fundraising campaign reached his first goal (by collecting the required funds), but was mostly generated massive interest from the press and bring new contributors.

A second part of the answer comes from the observation that communication developed for our donors (especially our major donors) had an interesting impact on the general public, when we spread these communication tools during events.Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• You note your interest in printing and circulating materials on a larger scale. What is the extent of this scale, and what will be the financial investment?

Based on two observations we wanted to print and distribute communication tools on a larger scale. The first is the demand expressed by our donors receive a quarterly newsletter on paper rather than a PDF format, which is less readable. The second is the desire of our members to distribute more widely communication tools during the events. In the end, expenses will raise by slightly less than 30% but our studies showed that a paper version is on average five times more read than a pdf version.Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Many thanks, colleagues, for your responses! Please let us know if anything is unclear. Warm regards, KLove (WMF) (talk) 04:43, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, we've just answered your questions inline. If you, or anyone reading them, needs further explainations or if anything is unclear, please feel free to follow-up. All the best Schiste (talk) 10:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Question from a volunteer editor (not member of Wikimedia France)

Hi !

Here are a few questions after reading your proposal.

Hi, I answer inline for each of your questions. ShreCk (talk) 14:29, 9 May 2015 (UTC).

Local groups

• What is the actual number of active local groups related to Wikimedia France ?

We currently have 13 active local groups related to Wikimedia France.

• What is the organisational status of the local groups ? (autonomous associations, sub-parts of Wikimedia France, nothing...)

Local Groups are actually informal user groups. They gather contributors who are members or not of the association. Still, they benefit from all of Wikimedia France support in their activities both through staff support or financial support. They don't have a legal existence.

• What is the typical place where they meet ?

They either meet in Third Places, coworking spaces or cafes. The goal is for each group to have a fixed and well identified place, to give more visibility and simplicity to contribute.

We are currently in negotiations with the Department of Digital Life to participate in the development of digital public spaces that would be entirely appropriate places due to an already supplied equipment.

• What is the common help they ask from Wikimedia France ?

There can be several kind of help asked from Wikimedia France:

Reply to logistics or communication needs, for example relay event, write a press release, provide a communication kit.

Respond to financial needs: reimbursement of expenses or finance access to a collaborative workspace.

Support in institutional relations by setting up a partnership with local authorities.

Formalize their desires and action plans, which mean bring an operational support.

Local languages

• What is the planed support from Wikimedia France to non french local languages projects ? (als ; br ; ca ; co ; eu ; frp ; nrm ; oc ; pcd ; rmy ; ty ; wa)

We provide exactly the same support to non French projects as french projects. We mostly support breton, because several current and former board members are from Britanny and the local group is active in this field.

Once again, it is an under construction action. The goal is to train members of local groups and representative of linguistic communities to become trainers for them to animate local actions in connection with their own themes. (Linguists and speakers)

• Is there any strong relationships between local groups and local languages projects ?

It really depends on the interests of local groups' members. In Rennes, they work tremendously in drafting Wikipedia in Breton. At Lyon, there are many Wiktionary administrators who works on long-term to develop Franco-Provençal and local language named “Parler Lyonnais”.

In Strasbourg, a theme wikipermanence was organized with local institutions (Alsatian Language Defense Institutions)

Do not hesitate to contact Pierre-Antoine Lepage (pierreantoineDOTlepageATwikimediaDOTfr) to learn more about our regional languages policy if this interest you. It will be a real challenge for us this year.

Staff & members

• The staff organogram only include the paid staff. Can you describe more the voluntary elected staff and their hierarchical power ? (president, vice-president, treasurer, secretary...)

The board of trustees is the decision structure in charge of governance and strategy, members are elected by the AGM. The Board delegated its employer and daily management tasks to the Executive Director. The board office (president, vice-president, treasurer, vice-treasurer, secretary) has not more weight in the decision than the other board members. All the board is also organized into working groups of 2/3 people.

You can find some extra informations following these links:

The "Board handbook" we did last year : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimédia_France/Guide_du_conseil_d%27administration (only in french, but we wrote a Learning Patterns in English related to this document).

Some informations we provided in our last FDC proposal about our governance structure: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/Wikimédia_France/Proposal_form/Organisational_structure

• How many of the paid staff are also active volunteer editors in their part time ? Particularly, did some of them have special status ? (administrators, bureaucrats, etc...)

One staff member is an admin of Wikidata and French-language Wikipedia, another one is contributor to Commons but has no special status. These are the only two known members in the team.

• How do you plan to increase your members apart from presence at national shows ?

Our strategy is quite simple. The best recruiters we could imagine having are our own members.

Giving more visibility to local groups in each city is our best way of increasing our members. They build local networking actions, and are able to connect with potential members on a personal level, and show them that they too can be part of our global movement, even though they live in Lille/Rennes/Toulouse/…

They also can reassure people by onboarding them in the movement more gently than it would have happened online through local shows they would participate in or even organize.

Local shows/fairs also provide local groups the opportunity to spread their message. To adapt it to where they are and what they do. And thus having a much more efficient message.

In the end, it's mainly our local actions that will help us increase our members, and that is a permanent objective for us.

That being said, national shows also helps increasing the global awareness about our missions and what we do, thus giving more leverage to local groups. We use them to spread information and features about Wikimedia France and the local groups.

As we raise the public awareness about our mission, we capitalize on that and hold a membership campaign at the same time.

• If you where to try to convince me to become a member of Wikimedia France what would you tell me in few phrases ?

First of all, we're more interested in you becoming a contributor to the projects than being a member of Wikimedia France.

But as you're awesome people, we'd also love to have you within Wikimedia France (btw here is the form to join us :).

First of all, we're friendly, we'd have that talk with some Apfelwein.

Being a member means, mostly, that you would have access to even more resources and support than we provide to members.

Being a member, we could pay your train to Orléans so you could bicycle on the Loire banks and take pictures of your trip. We could even rent, or buy if other members needs it, a specific lense so you could make great pictures.

And even though you're a great photographer, we would invite you, before your trip, to one of our workshop to make better pictures.

And, it happens that we had prior contacts with some castle. As a member we would trust you to talk with them to have special access to specific parts of the castle.

When you're back from your trip, you'd be so glad that you would love to find a way to help other volunteers to make great content and help us with that. Luckily you're a member, which means you could join our micro grant program and work with volunteers that have project ideas and help them make them true.

In the end, you'd love to be part of an organisation that one goal is to help people do great free knowledge content.

Action plan

• If you where to sacrifice one of the actions, witch one would it be and why ?

We have chosen this year to propose strategies for each axis and not an action catalog. We believe that each axis has its place in accordance with the plan of action that was decided by our volunteer members.

That being said, we believe you're asking that question in case we wouldn't get 100% of our grant request. Depending on how much less we'd have, we would see how to manage that.

Is the sum is a little less, meaning that by finding one sponsor, or rearranging one project we could do it with allocated sum, well we would redesing one or more programs.

If it's a larger sum, we would have to redesign our whole plan for the coming month, and that needs in depth work and discussion internally.

• What are the relatives priority of the planed actions ?

Each axis of this demand explains different priorities. If you have a specific question about a particular axis, we will answer you with pleasure.

• And particularly, why promoting Wikimedia in Africa seems apparently more important than developing local groups ?

It's not more important and it's very different. Actions in Africa and France are not the same. We have an entire axis devoted to the emergence and consolidation of local groups.

Wikimedia France is part of WikiFranca network which is the international network of Francophones Wikimedia Chapters.

As such, we support the Francophone organizations of the movement, especially in Africa. On the other hand historically France has an important link with Africa and this gives us a role to play in relation to a global challenge of the movement that is improving content from the Southern Countries increase the number of contributors.

Moreover, almost all Francophones associations are headquartered in Paris, their is then a geographical proximity that helps us develop or facilitate actions. ShreCk (talk) 14:29, 9 May 2015 (UTC).

Miniwark (talk) 16:00, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

New staff member and costs

Thank you very much Wikimédia France for your detailed and thoughtful proposal. I would like to ask you regarding your proposal to include a new staff member for the Networks team. What is the rationale behind this new hiring? What position will it have? What axis or activity proposals it will focus on? I also see that there is an increase of nearly 20% in the salaries amount. At first glance, it is a significant increase even with the addition of a new member. Is this increase explained only because of this new incorporation or are there other reasons behind it? I would like to understand this considering the budget is not really clear about the composition of the salaries (which is the largest part of your budget). Merci! --Osmar Valdebenito, B1mbo (talk) 04:24, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, and thanks for asking.

The development of local groups is a priority for Wikimédia France. One year after launching this territorial development action, we concluded that a single employee would not be able to support all of this activity by himself. This assessment joined another necessity: ensure a more important transversality between clusters. This is why two special adviser positions were created (by transforming two existing positions). The one dedicated to funding and participation must enable groups to discover fundraising activities likely to be a lever for action, such as the crowdfunding campaign around Wikicheese. This position includes, in addition, the tasks of the post in charge of fundraising, which was previously occupied by Sébastien Baijard, who left the structure. This is not a new job creation but an evolution of an existing position.

Wikimedia France depends on the animation collective agreement that frames wage developments. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_agreement).

In addition to the wage developments planned in this context and according to the classification of each item, the recruitment of a researcher CIFRE and hosting civic volunteers can explain this increase.

Given the development of our chapter's activity, it seemed important to us to consolidate the paid staff, while remaining within the limits of 6% increase of our budget that we had set. ShreCk (talk) 14:47, 9 May 2015 (UTC).