Grants talk:APG/Proposals/Community/Review

Is this page/list supposed to be empty, as it is? --Nemo 20:29, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

I would only support

Giving the money back to the editors who actually provide the content. All of the proposals seem to involve giving money to others. We already overinflate the importance of people who are not part of the community that actually built Wikipedia. See the typography refresh where the designers are telling us what the people want, thus meaning their votes count more than anyone on Wikipedia.

This sort of thing is why I refuse to donate to the project. Donations should go first to keeping the website up, and then to projects started by the community, not projects elsewhere campaigning for us to pay them. We need to stop paying for projects we can't control via consensus. The more we do this, the more powerful they become, and the less power the community as a whole has. Trlkly (talk) 00:03, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree and none of these proposals do anything to improve the increasingly toxic atmosphere on the site. Reguyla (talk) 05:26, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree too. Money should be raised for keeping the website up plus some projects. In my opinion forcing VisualEditor or font changes against the community will made the basic idea of the project dubious and many experienced editors on Polish Wikipedia quitted, but no sufficiently good replacements came thanks to e.g. VisualEditor. Apart from that, I would be very conservative about hiring further employees (planned in the budget), as money raised from people in poorer countries hardly keeps up with standard rates expected by employees based in Silicon Valley. Just let do the editors do their work. Bonvol (talk) 20:38, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

I also agree that money should be spent to keep the website up, and if any left after maintenance, then those can be used in the upcoming years. In addition to that, I also think it is important to provide better support if possible. For example, the limit put on the largest file size could be raised; the time to render a customized PDF could be reduced with better hardware etc. Money should not go to any other community under Wikimedia project, and most editors are volunteers and that is also an important factor as long as Wikimedia is concerned. Therefore, editors, especially those that are doing that as volunteers, do not necessarily funded.Hyiltiz (talk) 13:53, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

No overview

I thought the whole point of WM was to make information more accessible. Available does not mean accessible.

Picture this. Occasional editor logs in to check pages editor has an interest in. There is a banner, saying please review these applications for funding from WM. Editor has a few minutes and is willing to offer them. First page I get to offers nothing about specific proposals, just what I should do. And a pretty bland set of links to applications, the most prominent feature of which is the they are *forms*. Great, go to some of them. Still no easily locatable specific information on what applicationds are *actually for* - just endless procedural stuff. Editor leaves to go and do own stuff.

Could the creators of this process perhaps stand back and view it as interested and well-meaning outsiders, and see what they are confronted with?

So perhaps something like this would have got a specific contribution out of me:

First page:

• Project to spend $XXX for this REASON proposed by THIS body (in one line)
• Project to spend $XXX for this REASON proposed by THIS body...
• Project to spend $XXX for this REASON proposed by THIS body...

2nd page: Who we are and what we propose to do with this money - overview with minimal jargon, and aboout 2-3 minutes to read.

3rd page: all the details of the proposal.

I only need to know the minutae once I have grasped the nature of the proposal and developed an interest in it. I need the opportunity to assess the likelihood of my further interest before being presented with the next layer of detail. As it is, I have gone on my way before I have any idea what the proposals are. Trev M (talk) 08:41, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Money must not be given to the editors Unless

they are the best, have worked for years as well as they have met the officers in a meeting. Also that they have very good track records especially the so called customers, friendly not be a part of quarrels or insults. They are the cream of the crop.Luisagaga (talk) 18:47, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Agree. on Israel Wikipedia the editors don't get nothing, I've created above 20 articles for free. DuduB (talk) 19:33, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Disagree. People think I am carzy and they dont know what I am spending my time of, its for them specially in my community, I care who you are but I think we need money on wiki foundations like the openstreetmap spending locating establishments improving cities and villages, the fare.

Why proposal was not sent from India ?

So many countries submitted their proposals so early, Why it was not sent from India?

See that all villages in India if not some villages in each state make use of internet for education, cultivation purposes...through wikimedia projects. Experts! please plan for such type of proposals.

Till this day, so many villages are there in India which are not connected through internet. Please thinkover about it.

thank you

I may not accomplished this, but someday, sometime that India will be mine...YEEEHAAAAAAAAAAAA...I spend this myself..I know some one from India...

Communication error?

I believe there is a huge problem with communication here. We see a great number of comments here from people who don't understand what APG or FDC is. Moreover, there is no link on this page clearly explaining what people have to comment on, the only blue links are Grants:APG/Funds Dissemination Committee and Grants:APG/Community participation, none explains how APG programme works. As for many people this figure of $6 million is the first information about donations they have ever seen, they are most likely mislead. It would be very helpful to have a clear landing page explaining that:

• These $6 million is only a fraction of the total volume of donation of $44 million that is distributed for servers and engineering, community advocacy, communications, fundraising etc. I guess hardly anyone commenting here has read wmf:Annual Report, so please explain that $6 million is NOT the total volume of donations
• APG is not the only grant programme of the foundation. Actually most of people don't know how to submit grant requests for PEG of for IEG. There are so many questions here like "Why you don't give money to India?" or "Why you don't support article contests?" or "Why you don't fund projects for Haitian Creole Wikipedia?" It would be great to put in a prominent place links to PEG and IEG (and possibly TPS) suggesting people to apply there if they have great ideas not mentionned here or endorse proposals on these pages if they are interested in discussing grants to Indian community or anything else.
• Funding for developped countries is actually coming from developped countries. So many people write that developped countries should be self-sustaining, but there is no clear explanation how donations work. There is no clear explanation that WMF is the actual payment processor for (almost?) all countries at the moment, thus people think that donations from, say, India, find activities in Germany, and they don't know that people clicking on donation campaign banner in Germany actually send their money to WMF and not to WMDE. A brief explanation of how donation system works would be more than welcome.

This APG campaign could have been a great occasion to raise public awareness about donations and grantmaking, and instead so many people are mislead just because they can't find the information! @Ijon: @KLove (WMF): I do believe a much better landing page could save the situation and prevent people from having a completely wrong vision of how WMF donations are used. It is so annoying to see that over 30 users have already expressed their misunderstanding by commenting here (and probably even more haven't expressed it), so please try to make the page clearer to people unaware of the process. Thanks! — NickK (talk) 22:56, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree. It's not too late to improve the page, and I hope FDC staff (perhaps aided by Alex) will do so. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 05:33, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

It might be, as I'm already seeing banners for another Wikipedia fundraiser... Daylon124 (talk) 12:09, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Daylon124, fundraising banners are active all year long now, see Fundraising for more information. --Nemo 11:00, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

WIKI system is used by Evil?

Wiki system started this open SNS, I think. This system has very strong and hard, nobody can't stop the activity. Now, many company use FACEBOOK, twitter,...

It can make good strong community by myself. If he doesn't have will, he will be defeated.

Now, no good community start to use this system, Many people will close their window.

Can't we make virus destroy that system? That virus may have the power to destroy wikipedia... --Muchan00 (talk) 14:54, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Information out of context

As mentioned below, we have been given information out of context. The banner we all responded to simply said, review and content and took us directly to this page. There is very little information easily accessible about APG and the grant process. There is one link below the proposals about the process, which doesn't tell us the budget, income, expenses, anything. Thus you are getting feedback from angry users who believe they have been misled about the state of Wikipedia. And they have. The APC misled them by providing information out of context, which is deceit on a par with lying by omission. You have sabotaged the process by not providing the information through which we should be viewing the proposals. The link provided is not useful, as I had to go through five different pages along the thread, just to get an answer that is less than a 1/25th of what I need to make an informed decision. -- Rev.MikMcAllister (talk) 03:07, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Redirect

I noticed that Grants:APG/Proposals/Community/Review redirects to Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015 round1/Community review. Should not that be Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015 round2/Community review ? Jean-Fred (talk) 12:06, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

You are right, Jean-Fred and that is indeed a mistake. We're fixing it now! :) KLove (WMF) (talk) 16:29, 9 April 2015 (UTC)