Вибори Фонду Вікімедіа/Вибори до КРК/2015/Запитання/1
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Темпи зростання
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На Вашу думку, КРК має визначати, чи є запропоновані темпи зростання розумними чи ні? Як би Ви визначили розумний темп зростання? — NickK (talk) 22:12, 1 May 2015 (UTC) |
- Background of the grant-seeking entity; whether the affiliate is in a suitable state of condition to maintain the growth rate.
- Capability and capacity of the affiliate. Does the affiliate have sufficient capacity in terms of organizational aspects and manpower or volunteer base to execute the proposal? Won't it be a burden for the affiliate? Is the growth rate contextual with the affiliate's state of movement? Furthermore, the affiliate's experience in carrying out budget and executing programs should also be considered.
- Impact of the the affiliate's proposed programs and events or other aspects of expenditure. Are all those aligned with the mission of Wikimedia movement? How much do the proposed events are supposed to make impact?
- What are the particular factors in the budget that contributed to the growth rate? A detailed analysis of the budget (with reasoning from the grant-seeking entity) would clarify the rationality of the growth rate.
A simple, yet comprehensive, three-part approach, ranging from quantitative measures to qualitative one, can efficiently help determine a reasonable growth rate:
- Metrics - Applicants must be able to demonstrate a quantifiable growth in their impact. They must be able to measure their progress towards reaching goals throughout their annual lifecycle. To accomplish this, a set of metrics must be reported to the FDC that compare baseline numbers to actual growth from previous years. One set includes the global metrics. And, grantees should also report on the outcomes of their own specific, measurable targets that they set out from previous years.
- Capacity - Applicants must be able to show they have, or will have, the capacity necessary to accommodate their proposed rate of change. This includes leadership capacity (to motivate and see the mission/vision through), management capacity (necessary talent to drive planning and operations), and resource capacity (sufficient people and tools to deliver results).
- Impact - It must be evident that the funds-seeking entity would outperform its impact given an increase in funding. That is, the impact of its program must be able to scale with the proposed request. They must be able to prove that their request would enable the applicant to be better aligned with the Foundation’s mission, vision, and strategy plan than they were previously.
Good question! It depends on the maturity of the organisation, and how much they are proposing to grow. Determining factors should include the level of quality and cohesiveness of their strategy, annual plan, and application; whether they have a past history of good work and the capacity to do what they're proposing; and whether they are responsive to questions and give good answers. Plus, of course, whether their growth offers good value and benefits the movement. There's also the knowledge of what happened to other entities when they were at a similar stage of evolution/growth.
There's no single reasonable growth rate. A small organisation may have a high growth rate by hiring a single addition employee; a large organisation likewise if they are embarking on a significant project. On the other hand, zero growth may be appropriate where organisations have gone through difficult times and need a period of stability, and negative growth may be appropriate where an organisation is refocusing its efforts. What constitutes a reasonable growth rate all depends on the organisation and its plans. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:56, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
Averages, of course, are sometimes misleading. The individual organizations might consider the following factors that will likely effect how the FDC allocates the growth:
- Size of the organization:
- Smaller organizations can have higher growth without taking much growth from other organizations, but
- Larger organizations often have the people and processes in place to grow more rapidly (over the short term)
- Geographic diversity
- The movement's goals are not limited to specific geographic areas, but cover the entire globe
- Centrality to the movement's mission
- For example if one organization will grow the number of editors worldwide, it will likely grow faster than another organization that only increases the number of photos in a small area.
- Maturity of the project (example Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM))
- Projects have different growth phases. Five years ago WLM was a new, fairly risky idea, but it took off with explosive growth. At that time the funding for WLM could also have explosive growth. The growth of the project started to level off after a few years, so the growth of its funding should also start to level off. Now it's in a mature phase and funding probably shouldn't grow much, after a few years (when all the monuments have been photographed!) funding should decline.
- Readiness of the organization. This is the most important factor, and the one that's hardest to judge.
- Are there people who can effectively implement the project and are there processes and other support for these people?
- Is the organization's environment (e.g. country) ready for growth of Wiki-projects? One example of not being ready is for a county where foreign foundations aren't allowed to distribute funds.
- A growth rate may only be determined as reasonable or reasonably interpreted when a detailed investigation is conducted on the applicant's budget (Annual Plan Grant) to reveal what may have constituted to the growth. Just merely analyzing the growth rate without any proper investigation could mean a lot of things (ambiguous). Many factors such as changes in prices, addition of new staff, other economics factors that may directly affect operational cost, increase in number of activities, etc. could be a contributing factor. Now the growth rate will be reasonable if the rate of growth of the factors or constituents are in line or grows proportional to the rate of growth of the budget (APG).
- My definition of a reasonable growth rate is "it is the rate of growth that constitutes all the factors that marginally cause a difference (increase) in the budget (APG) of an applicant in which there is a correlation between these constituents and the rate of growth" Flixtey (talk) 12:57, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
- I don't believe a one-size-fits-all rule should be applied to all applicants, regardless of their current size/location/experience, and
- I would like to support an iterative application process - giving applicants the chance to submit a draft, receive feedback from the community and the FDC, and then complete/adjust their work. This would allow applicants to develop a mutually agreed proposal with the FDC and not waste (often volunteer's) time.
The two most important kinds of "context" that I mentioned in the first paragraph are:
- Historical context: The larger the growth that is implied by the proposed budget, the more thorough explanation and justification needs to be submitted. For an organisation to apply to grow rapidly then it needs to have both a detailed explanation of what the applicant will do with the money, but also a demonstration of the need that will be fulfilled/problem that will be solved with this growth. Growth for growth's sake is not a sufficient argument - especially for rapid growth. The flip-side to this point is that rapid growth from a small base should be treated differently from rapid growth in an applicant that is already relatively large: going from 1 to 2 employees in 2015 should not be considered the same as 20 to 40 employees in the same period, even though they are both "100% growth in staff".
- Cultural context: The relative value - the purchasing power - of the money in the country being applied for should be taken in to consideration. The budget that is being requested should not only be compared against the organisation's own history (see previous point) but also compared to other applicants' effectiveness with the same amounts, taking into account the purchasing power in their countries. Yes, this places a burden of justification on the applicants coming from countries that are more expensive to show their programs are efficient. But, it also ensures that applicants from countries that are cheaper cannot use favourable exchange-rates to justify faster growth.
To be more specific, there are two different growth rates here:
- the growth of the organization's budget;
- the growth of the FDC grant.
Whether the growth of your budget is reasonable depends on:
- the programs you are planning. Money is meant to make programs possible; the question here is: do additional funds increase your impact?
- your ability to manage the additional funds and activities. If the growth is too fast you will not be able to cope. You risk burnouts and not being able to reach your targets (which means that an higher target on growth can actually bring smaller results). The question here is: is your structure (both on the volunteer side and the staff side) strong enough?
- your size. In proportion, small organizations may have a big growth just because they are small: simply hiring a new employee can result in a two-figures percent growth.
- financial: of a total budget or APG funding (see Glossary), in total income or spendings;
- others used by FDC:
- cost items like FTEs,
- outcome like images uploaded,
- efficiacy.
There is no golden set of growth rates. Every APG participant and their situation are different and FDC needs to consider them on individual basis, although using benchmarks and common sense to process the requests timely. The reasonable grow needs to be in line with grantee's capability (volunteers, skillset, structure, management...), proposed programmes, environment, possible outcomes, metrics of effectiveness&efficiacy, total APG budget. Targets should be realistic but not too cautious. History of applicants and perceived opportunities are important.
Hard fact is, that FDC needs to look for a path of grow for the whole Movement. Your programme might be good but you will be asked to tighten your budget if there are more promising ones. Fortunately, it is not an entirely zero-sum game: Affiliates can co-operate, good practices & competence centres across the globe can reduce costs or improve output, global capacity can be built. FDC can be asked for their opinions to find some solutions expanding the envelope; however that would mean even more work for already hard-working people and IMVHO it would be need to be done before the funding requests - so be careful.
Finally, while examining budget proposals, everything should be made as simple as possible. But not simpler. I agree with present FDC that some detail (e.g. see activities, then dedicate resources) is better than e.g. throw at everyone 103-105% (or 98%?) of the money they had last year. While neither FDC nor affiliates have time to go into overly big details and a lot of benchmarks and general assumptions need to be make and it is fine - some detail is more fair, flexible and capacity building - everywhere). Therefore, a budget growth rate would be one of the last metrics to check, mostly to see if there are any disruptions coming due to a significant cut or increase of the budget. Both circumstanses may demand an extra care.
One thing is sure: the budget growth or utilizing 100% of the budget should not be our ultimate goals. Some warn that every organization has a tendency to grow for the growth itself. Thus, it is great to expand capacity to propagate more great content and values but it is also great to stand back, saying "we can do it cheaper" or "we cancel", and not be punished.
Чи більше зібрано коштів, тим менше проблем з їх розподілом?
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Привіт всім! Мені цікаві думки з наступного припущення:
Був би вдячний, якби би при відповіді Ви наводили приклади з вікі-всесвіту за останні декілька років. Дякую та щасти! → «« Man77 »» [de] 08:46, 3 May 2015 (UTC) |
I would like to refer to FDC recommendations for CIS in 2013-2014 round 2. We know that there has been much debate about CIS's activity and involvement with Wikimedia movement in India. And Wikimedians have reacted negatively with this issue. So what the concern is for? It is not obviously with availability of funding; money was available to fund what CIS proposed, but the issues that have been created due to operations and activities of CIS are the concerns to consider.
Though it is technically possible to fully fund proposals if WMF has raised enough money, but that doesn't make sense in assuring mission-aligned process to empower affiliates or furthering the movement. Funding should certainly depend on the level of impact the grant-seeking entity is going to make and its capacity to carry out budget along with accountability and transparency in this process.Більший бюджет дозволить більший масштаб програми, що дозволить іншим проектам та заявниками можливість зробити вплив. Тому питання не повинні зникати. Ось є добра цитата Джека Ма (засновника Alibaba), яка підсумовує підхід КРК:
Якщо маєте один млн. доларів, Ви щасливчик. Коли маєте 10 млн. доларів, у Вас проблеми, багато головного болю. Коли маєте більше мільярда доларів або сотень мільйонів, це Ваша відповідальність — це віра людей у Вас, оскільки люди вірять, що Ви можете витратити гроші краще, ніж інші.
From the point of view of the requesting organizations, it's much simpler to spend 100 $ well than to spend 100.000 $ well; and as the funds increase, the FDC has to put more effort in assessing the proposals and their results, and mistakes can have a larger effect.
The Wikimedia movement has now much more money than in its first years (by orders of magnitude), but things are not easier. Everything is much more complex. We are able to do more, to better support free knowledge, but we don't have less problems than in the past.Firstly, supply creates demand. With more money, proposals grow in their number and size - which is generally great but requires more attention and scrutiny as more programmes need to be controlled and one expects different standards from $10,000 allocation and $1,000,000 allocation. More fund flows need to be controlled, evaluated and compared.
Moreover, there is a hazard of lowering the bar too low (the volunteer time does not grow with the money, and there can be a pressure to spend and do things). Saying no in the volunteer-driven organization is a difficult task - see CIS - but sometimes a denial or recovery plan are required. In the same time, you are getting more and more into spotlight and, perceived as a mature organization, you are less and less allowed to make missteps. And there is an inevitable professionalization issue: more money with fixed volunteer base means more and more FTEs (which need to be evaluated), including FTEs for internal operations like reporting. In the end, you can achieve much more and fund your volunteers but you need to watch out to keep our grassroot spirit and not end up as a FIFA-like entity. Navigating a healthy grow is a gentle task.
Finally, big money mean big responsibility: not only in terms of financial audit but also in strategic planning. The more funds you have, the more strategic goals you can address and recommend to WMF and the Movement: put more stress on software development (and advocate particular targets, places to establish IT competence centres like for Wikidata, etc.), think big in Education or Global South programmes, support strategic partners, build endowment, you name it.
Therefore, more money = more responsibility and more work for FDC.
Кількісний вимір
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Hi! In the past the FDC criticized that projects in annual plan lack quantitive metrics refering to the global metrics developed by the WMF Grantmaking team. But the greater problems of the movement are around diversity of contributors, growth in the "south" and at least stability in the "north", and winning and motivating volunteers is not likely to be measured in quantitive metrics. You can hardly tell, if a specific project oder activity produces contributors or content (in the aftermath). So the favored more quantitive metrics seem to lead to a bias towards more technical projects and less community oriented projects, at least done by larger grantees. What is your opinion on that issue? Do you think the metrics are suitable for all grantees, how will you assure that not only quantity, but also quality counts? --Don-kun (talk) 17:13, 3 May 2015 (UTC) |
I believe the organization is aware of the stigma you brought up – a bias towards technical projects – but that should not be the case. The overview of the Global Metrics attempts to illustrate that “they are not an end in themselves.” It also goes on to say, the Global Metrics:
- Are not the only numbers to be reported
- Are not the best measures of success for most projects
- Are not to be considered in isolation
While the application stresses that projects do not need to fit the global metrics framework, I understand your discontent with the measures. I do believe the FDC and the community benefit greatly from having access to a set of metrics spanning all projects; however, it still needs refinement be the best driver for reporting and growth.
When it comes to metrics suitable for all grantees, metrics that would encourage all types of programs – especially those trying to tackle the problems you mentioned – I believe the FDC must adopt a holistic review of applicants. I mentioned this in my response to the first question: I believe the review must capture the spectrum of measures, from quantitative to qualitative. For example, if a grantee is tackling a qualitative issue where numbers alone cannot express impact, then the FDC must adapt and be aware that a qualitative review is better suited.
Every applicant is unique and the Global Metrics system is merely a step towards finding a balance. It should be supplemented by a number of other tools utilized by the FDC to measure the impact and success of a grantee’s mission.If you can't measure how well you're doing something, then you can't tell/justify whether it's being effective or not. Growth, background and diversity of contributors can be measured, as can the amount of content created and the number of contributors who are still involved a given time after the activity (or are repeat attendees of activities). You just need to define suitable metrics and goals before the activity, making sure that you measure them during the activity, and report on them afterwards to the community/members/trustees/funding bodies. That said, not everything can be measured qualitatively, so qualitative outcomes of an activity should also be recorded and reported, particularly unexpected outcomes. E.g., if an event attendee has a good experience or story to share, write it down and share it along with the event numbers. And, if an activity runs into problems, then it's important to qualitatively report those too! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:08, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
However, metrics, and quantitative metrics, are essential. You can't improve if you don't understand how well you did; and it's difficult to understand that unless you have some way to measure your results. Therefore, it's important to be able to measure the outcomes of your work. Metrics are important also for the FDC and other people looking at your work from outside, in order to understand it and assess it; however, I want to stress that they are important to you in the first place.
Ви маєте знайти правильний вимір для Ваших проектів, вимір, який може бути узгоджений з Вашими цілями та може бути виміряний. Шість глобальних вимірів можуть бути не підходящими, або лише деякі з них будуть до речі, але все одно важливо, щоб Ви знайшли той вимір, який працює у Вашому випадку.Firstly, I am with FDC while asking for quantified metrics as general, as their job is to somehow evaluate and compare. In many less technical activities you can still use metrics: number of visitors, readers, editors and their retention, images uploaded etc. - and if you need some assistance, WMF Learning & Evaluation Team can show you some tricks. :)
Certainly, quantification is not everything. Some things are difficult to quantify: PR and lobbying, or your community happiness, internal split and trust. Moreover understanding metrics requires caution and background information - every good statistician / data analyst knows that and rightfully it is explicitly put in the global metrics guidelines. Therefore, it is even more important to provide FDC with this information.
Regarding the bias against the larger grantees: this issue came up already, at least on a WMF + GAC, FDC workshop on London Wikimania Preconference. It has been shown that according to many WMF metrics, the medium-size chapters and projects are the most efficient ones. While I agreed I also pointed out and I hold my position, that some organizations in the Movement take additional strategic goals which escape universal metrics: e.g. both WMF and Wikimedia Deutschland aim to strongly advocate for the movement and our values, or they want to share their experience with other affiliates. These efforts are not helping their general statistics like number of new articles / total budget. In my opinion, if we agree for strategic goals, we need to proceed and take them into account (of course evaluating such programmes in general terms of efficiacy, effectiveness etc.).
FDC needs to think in a global perspective (these programmes can be the most efficient, but these are a start-up for a new community and these provide some knowledge for the whole Movement...) and I believe that this opinion is generally shared among FDC and WMF. Sometimes people just forget to talk. :)Diversity
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Привіт! Різні проекти різних підрозділів та фізичних осіб було профінансовано протягом останніх кількох років. Я хотів би запитати вас про вашу думку про їх різноманітності.
Спасибі. Gryllida 04:04, 4 May 2015 (UTC) |
- The key problem in distribution of funding I think is overcoming the bureaucratic issues and adhering to the mission goals of the movement. The challenges are ensuring the justification of proposals from grant-seeking entities with no disparity due to ethnic or cultural bias; supporting grantees to make potential experimentation with projects. There is particular challenge in fostering the movement in less developed countries, by rationally funding with proper guidance and support they might need. Because the case with developed countries and less developed ones are not the same, the less developed and smaller chapters have intrinsic challenges and problems that need to be address according to their context. So furthering the movement through empowering smaller and potential affiliates is critical.
What would you say about the past and current projects language diversity?
- Wikimedia projects show great diversity in terms of languages. But smaller language projects lack in volunteers ans capacity to develop. Therefore focus should be given to enhance such capacity and make the smaller communities sustainable so what the smaller language projects continue to grow not only in quantitatively but also qualitatively.
Would you say that smaller wikis are adequately funded?
- Funding is not the only way for developing smaller wikis. Smaller wikis need more volunteers base and capacity enhancement, for which facilitation of wiki interface or technical alterations, community growth, educating volunteers and managing programs need to be focused. Fund is necessary for smaller wikis, but that should be in line with their areas of need and potentials. Over-funding would create burdens for them as more funding demands more reporting tasks and ensuring more accountability. So we have to pragmatically look what the smaller wikis' demands are for growth, and then accordingly fund them.
What is your impression on these projects breadth of impact (as opposed to depth, seeing every project complete)?
- Impact varies according to programs and projects as well as the organizers. I have seen many projects aimed at increasing the number instead of focusing on quality enhancement. This, I think, particularly relates to the notion that such projects' outcome are easier to show in metrics. We did also find projects like GLAMs and building academic partnerships which possess much potentials in terms of longer benefit, and such projects should be encouraged. Affiliates need to focus more on long term as well as quality driven projects.
What do you think about funding of work on the wiki software? Would it be better to decentralise the wiki software development and do it with active participation of Chapters and individuals instead of being centralised around the WMF Engineering Team, or would such change make it worse?
- This is of course, more aligned with the movement mission that software development should be decentralized rather than keeping its supervision within WMF. But for decentralization, it is necessary to ensure capacity building of chapters and to make available of technological expertise. We see that a great number of Wikimedians who take part in hackathons are developing great tools and have potentials to create successful projects. Though creating great projects offer great challenges and need better facilities, but we need to work for that.
Які на Вашу думку ключові проблеми чи виклики у розподілі коштів?
Одна з найбільших проблем, що стоять перед рухом, це склад керівництва КРК. Незважаючи на дуже прозорий процес і неймовірний вклад спільноти, в КРК переважають лідери підрозділів. Це було зазначено як підстава для серйозного занепокоєння два роки тому.
The majority of FDC members were board members of a chapter which naturally led to a chapter-centric bias. The movement realized this and stressed the importance of electing a diverse FDC body. The call for candidates asked for either experience outside the Wikimedia movement or a background in diverse roles within the movement (not just chapter board members).
I believe I would bring that diversity to the FDC with extensive program management and experience outside the movement. Having a background leading a chapter definitely great, but the movement is hindered when everyone on the FDC ultimately comes from the same background.
Яка Ваша думка про мовну різноманітність минулих та поточних проектів?
The answer is fairly straightforward: Language diversity should be one of the movement’s top priorities. The emerging regions are poorly represented in funding, but should be some of the most crucial areas of focus when it comes to promoting the Foundation’s mission. The Global South received less than 5% of our total global grantmaking in dollars (!). The movement should work to identify a set of risks and challenges that are preventing the emerging communities and languages from becoming as active as the Anglo/European communities.
На Вашу думку менші за розміром вікі адекватно фінансуються?
Representation and attention are clearly lacking among the smaller wikis. I believe the problem has less to do with funding and more to do with capacity building. The smaller wikis are lacking the people power, skills, and energy that the larger projects have. A focus on improving long-term stability and capacity among the smaller wikis would lead to an improved impact rather than over-allocating funding to them.
Proper funding of the right projects would greatly aid our movement’s plan and elevate the smaller communities than blindly allocating funds.
Які Ваші враження щодо ширини впливу цих проектів (на відміну від глибини, забезпечення завершення кожного проекту)?
I think the first guidance principle set out for the FDC serves as a wonderful guideline when thinking of breadth versus depth. That is, “we should support projects as directly and as effectively as possible, in editors’ and contributors’ pursuit of the mission.” We need to couple both breadth and depth in order to create an effective movement. While a number of frameworks were created to ensure depth (I.e., project completion), there was little to ensure a breadth across projects that would cover all aspects of the movement’s mission. The current impact is focused on supporting outreach and partnerships instead of directly supporting on-wiki activity.
What do you think about funding of work on the wiki software? Would it be better to decentralise the wiki software development and do it with active participation of Chapters and individuals instead of being centralised around the WMF Engineering Team, or would such change make it worse?
It would be difficult to say whether or not it decentralization would be better or worse for the technical platform. A step towards deciding that change would require extensive research on the impact of shifting the work away from the platform’s core team. External consultancy would likely be required to identify all the potential challenges and change management requirements that would come out of a change that large.I'll start from the end, as this issue related to the last email I just wrote internally - We can look on most of the big companies, that decided to open R&D centers around the world. It much more easy and make sense to centralised, but the reality show different, managing micro-project (and WikiData is great example) can work better when the projects are decentralise. Of course we need to work together, and see how it combine with the WMF's roadmap and how they can support and coordinate, train and support the projects, thing that I understood less happened with WikiData.
Regarding others projects, as I said in my statement, I think some of the problem with the current funding is little bit less connection and cooperate between the chapters, what result two chapters asking for different funding to build the same infrastructure. Lot of time without even knowing the others chapters working on the same things. We should support more feedback as the people and the staff who see and know all (or at least most) the chapters activities.
I less support allocated lot of resources to very small wikis. Most of the people speaking the language have secondary spoken language with big(er) Wikipedia. We have enough work on most to be done of the others Wikis rather spending big resources on Wikis used by few peoples. I think user:Ijon summarize it well at WMCon two years ago --Itzike (talk) 15:14, 4 May 2015 (UTC)- A big issue for the distribution of funding through the FDC is the distribution of eligible organisations: they are rather heavily weighted towards developed countries. The only thing that the FDC can really do to change this, though, is to (indirectly) encourage the growth of communities and organisations in other countries so that they become eligible for FDC funding, and make sure that there's support available for new organisations that are applying to the FDC for the first time. It can also encourage the larger organisations to work more in other countries, but that can lead to a sense of colonialism if it's not done properly, and it's much better to develop active local communities/organisations (which is mostly the role of AffCom and Project and Event grants, not really the FDC!).
What would you say about the past and current projects language diversity?
- I think there has been a good mix of language diversity, you just need to look at the list of successful FDC applications to see this. Of course, it could be better if the FDC supported organisations in more countries.
Would you say that smaller wikis are adequately funded?
- That depends on what you mean by 'smaller wikis'. I would love to see projects such as Wikisource, Commons, and so forth supported a lot more with technical development than they currently are, and much more tightly integrated with Wikipedia. I'm less sure whether smaller language wikis need to be better supported or not - I think that language projects are better supported technologically (e.g., visual editor working in multiple languages by design), but I'm sure that they could do with more outreach support and increased number of editors.
What is your impression on these projects breadth of impact (as opposed to depth, seeing every project complete)?
- The projects will never be complete, in the same way that science/technology/arts/culture will never be complete. That said, most of the projects I've seen have focused more on breadth than they have depth: they work on creating more articles, particularly on underrepresented areas, or uploading photos of things that we don't already have photos of, rather than being aimed at creating articles or images of 'Featured' quality.
What do you think about funding of work on the wiki software? Would it be better to decentralise the wiki software development and do it with active participation of Chapters and individuals instead of being centralised around the WMF Engineering Team, or would such change make it worse?
- It would definitely be good to see more decentralised wikimedia software development, and I think it's something that has general support (including from the WMF). The challenge is developing the chapters so that they have the capacity to lead technology projects, and finding the right individuals/other external groups to be involved. Wikidata has been a really good example of a well-managed and thought-through wiki software development that has taken place outside of the WMF, and it would be great to see more chapters doing the same.
У нас дуже серйозна проблема з географічним різноманіттям у щорічних програмних грантах. При перегляді останніх двох завершених раундів запитів на фінансування, я отримую
- 88% фінансування отримали 11 груп у Європі
- всього 4 групи у північно-західній Європі (Німеччина, Франція, Англія, Нідерланди) отримали 56% всього фінансування
- 12% отримали 3 групи поза Європою (AR,IL,Centre for Internet and Society)
- Так, хтось має перевірити ці розрахунки - вони досі мене дивують, хоча я за цим питанням слідкую вже деякий час.
I certainly don't blame the groups that applied for funds, or the FDC itself, but it's obvious this is a problem. It's a problem because the Wikimedia movement is broadly international at its core, because the Board has always declared that funding global south organizations is a priority. I doubt that the majority of active editors are based in Europe, or that the majority of readers, donors, or donations come from Europe, yet 88% of FDC funding goes to Europe. If this continues, it is likely that most editors and donors will begin to see the FDC as irrelevant to their interests. If the problem is not fixed soon, I predict that the Board's allocations via the FDC will stay flat for awhile and then decrease until - perhaps in 10 years - a board member might say "this is just of historical interest, let's just drop the whole thing."
The only solution that I have for this problem is that everybody interested in keeping alive the FDC and the programs it funds, needs to engage in outreach to global south and other non-European groups to try to bring them in to apply for funds and help them plan and implement their programs.
Як я вже сказав, це проблема, яка може знищити КРК. Я б особисто просив всіх кандидатів відповісти на це питання з усією серйозністю. Smallbones (talk) 20:43, 4 May 2015 (UTC)- In as much as we always try to ensure transparency in our grant dissemination process, some level of bias may trifle in from time to time. Various kinds of bias are eminent in grant making. Success bias makes its way when a particular grantee has always shown high success rates on projects funded, it is likely for that grantee to receive a grant leaving other new and sometimes very innovative ideas hanging or not funded. Bias may also occur when a member of the grantor has some sort of affiliation with the grantee ( it may be subtle as controls like conflict of interest policies are put in place but may still exist)
- Comfort with some particular grantees and individual preference may also pose problems in grant decisions, if the grantors are conversant with a particular grantee they may tend to favor him more than someone they don't know. Individual choices may also reflect grant decisions. Other problems such as timing, income leakages, inadequate documentation and (or) genuineness of information or documentations provided.
- The language diversity of the projects funded by the FDC will definitely represent the various languages of interest of organisations that seek funding. I think it is necessary that grants are diversified to cover the various languages that exist and even for ones that wish to spring up, but i am also strongly of the view that our concentration be based on the dominantly used language(s) to ensure growth while we gradually build other languages on the side.
- This question is difficult to answer from a distance and relative, a bigger organisation may deem a grant of about $2000 inadequate to their operations where as a smaller may see that as a great grant for exploits. Judging grants by the amount from a distance may not be wise as you have to analyze the project at hand and the capacity of the (smaller) organisation to execute the details stipulated in that grant.
- Majority of funded projects in my opinion cover mostly breadth rather than depth. I oppose this very much as i believe we should stand for quality (depth) more than quantity (breadth). In our search for breadth we end up creating redundancy or not very useful information. The depth of the projects is very necessary and must be clearly scrutinized in projects.
- Decentralizing Wiki Software development to me is not very necessary, what really matters is opening up the development to include the community and gaining their active participation on such projects. A well structured body at the WMF may oversee this to avoid vandalism and other uncivil actions by some members. So the key thing to note here may not necessarily be decentralization but active community involvement in the development of software. Flixtey (talk) 08:40, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
This can and probably should be a recommendation of the FDC to alter and improve the system itself, but within the scope of the FDC's actual task it is not possible to direct funding to a particular language-wiki, sister-project, software-development, or outreach task. As was shown quite clearly in the FDC's recommendation to the last Wikimedia-Deutschland application, it is not possible for the FDC to selectively fund activities - only recommend that the prefer some activities over others.
So yes, I would like to see greater structural support (not only money) for sister-projects, smaller language-wikis, less-developed nations, but the answer to that question that sits with the WMF as a strategic decision. The FDC can only respond to the applications that are submitted to it.2. Language diversity and 3. Funding to smaller wikis. The language diversity of the projects funded by the FDC reflects the language diversity of the entities that request funds; but, of course, the most active chapters speaks the languages of the most active wikipedias. This is not the case of all funded entities - for instance, the CIS proposal currenty under review plans to support a few language that have a significant number of native speakers but quite small wikipedias - but it is the most common situation. The situation for smaller wikis is similar.
This is tautological, but most people work on the most active projects - therefore there are more programs on the most active projects. Unfortunately, the problem of diversity goes deeper that simply funding, and it will not be funding alone to solve it.
4. Breadth of impact of smaller wikis. As Itzik already recalled, there has been an interesting discussion about this a couple of years ago. While I'd like to see every Wikimedia project flourishing, it may not be a sensible idea to put too much money and effort into it. We have to balance the support to the different projects on the basis of their impact.
5. Software funding. Funding of software development by chapters is not something new: for instance, Kiwix was funded by Wikimedia CH and Wikimedia Italia; and, of course, Wikimedia Germany developed Wikidata. Even though centralized development has some practical advantages, I believe that it would be great if more chapters started working on software development, because that is likely to make the development more responsive to the users' needs. However, it is not something that should be forced, and in the short and medium term it's unlikely to involve more than a few among the bigger chapters.Firstly: there is no single way to evaluate if small wikis are properly funded or a language diversity (should we compare it to the number of readers? editors? donations? local competition? global strategic goals? - it could be an interesting workshop) and it is much more of the Board's job. Secondly, we are volunteers-driven and FDC is an evaluation body for programmes run and proposed by Movement members. Of course you can just flood people with money or set up a superficial capacity like with CIS but I am not a fan of such methods. Personally I prefer building on existing capacities and an organic growth within the movement.
Here I need to comment on the response by Smallbones: as I like his approach of numebers, I must disagree with a big picture.
For starters, if we consider the Movement to be global, and not some franchise headquartered in One City, United States - these numbers are very different. Total WMF expenses proposed in 2014-2015 annual plan make $58.5M: $50.3M spent directly by WMF and grants making $8.2M max (as this position has not been fully utilized). Even if we add locally raised money and create some budget of the total movement, the truth is that the vast majority of resources is operated in United States. Certainly, these funds are used for the good of the whole movement, but one can argue that WMF could be decentralized, with budget distributed to the competence centres across the globe, like in terms of Wikidata.
Secondly, FDC is targeted at the lawfully organized actors in the Movement - affiliates. At the moment, the most developed structures and programmes are easier to find in so-called highly developed countries and grants programmes need to respond to this fact. The situation is at least partially understandable: editing Wikimedia is a hobby, requiring a luxury of having free time, possibly education, tech skills and a so-called social capital. Running an organization is an even more time&money consuming work, basing heavily on social capital/structures like the eagerness to affiliate in your culture, trust, willingness to donate, law, citizen rights etc. Reasons are plentiful (many still wonder who are Japanese or Vietnamese Wikimedians and why they don't gather in legal structures) but the end result is: we have many fairly established chapters in HDR like Western Europe, many medium and small affiliates in so-called emerging markets and a lot of weak/blank spots. And we cannot hire a consulting agency to "establish" an affiliate and flood it with money. Or we can, but we should not.
The problem has been recognized, at least partially, and many actions have been taken, including European chapters. Certainly, we need to further work to improve in this area: support the expertise transfer and regional co-operations like Iberocoop and WMCEE, work on programme franchises easy to implement, channel funds to seed start-ups, bring good people in Wikimanias - but it needs to remain organic; beyond some point, money will not bring good results.
The bigger problem I see elsewhere: the benchmarks in efficiacy and costs, the size and level of professionalization are very different among chapters. You can easily find many good arguments both pro and contra big spending in HDRs and we do not have a place for that here. I will just mention that both spending in HDR, and in emerging markets actually increases diversity, comparing to the San Francisco based organization.
Certainly, this topic brings a lot of tension: between matured affiliates and WMF, among affiliates, and between affiliated and non-affiliated stakeholders. I think we need a lot of talk and openness here.
- Regarding the diversity on the operational and technical side like software development: in my opinion off-shoring and building on our global resources should be investigated as opportunities. MediaWiki and related tools development has always been done with a great participation of hackers and testers everywhere: from bots and tools to LaTeX implementation. Moreover, WMF encouraged the affiliates already to take on some pieces of software development. However one must note, that the majority of affiliates lack both FTEs and expertise in running a software house and when they can provide cheaper local programmers or good understanding of local needs, they would need some proper assistance and funding to go. Summing up, IMHO it is a nice idea to submit to FDC.
Funding priority to women projects to equalize gender gap
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Our WP is planning for equalizing gender gap in view of 80:20 male/female ratio. As a member of FDC/OMBUDSMAN, how would you justify more funding to women’s projects in the established context that large population deserves much more funding. Nannadeem (talk) 19:16, 5 May 2015 (UTC) |
Only 1 out of 10 contributors on Wikipedia is a female, so one of our top priorities should be improving that number. Any project aimed at increasing the number of women contributors would align with the movement’s mission and since the FDC must support the mission and community, it should be the responsibility of the FDC to ensure those projects be funded as long as they are effective and well-designed.
While the projects themselves must be put forth by the community, the FDC must make it clear that projects supporting underrepresented groups will be funded. The FDC can also assist the movement by ensuring those programs have the capacity and leadership to lead them to success. Chsh (talk) 02:56, 6 May 2015 (UTC)- We shouldn't forget the Inspire initiative that just funded (by my quick count) about $120,000 in Gender gap related projects. See here. That funding is roughly the size of a medium-large chapter. So we should give the WMF kudos for that. The question remains, however, is that performance repeatable? Is the "rush" aspect of the campaign the best way to fund these projects? The more I think about it the more I like the thematic organization idea I mentioned above as Option 2, but that is not for me to pursue. Those interested need to pursue it themselves.
At the moment, the gaps hurt our readers and project - but simple pouring the money can be ineffective. Actions aimed at gaps, while noble, still need to be efficient and well-thought, preferably basing on our past experience in this field. It would be splendid to have some proven "franchise" aimed at this problem, like Wiki Loves Monuments which in my country is great to attract non-editing photographers.
Regarding your quotas: I prefer to judge on efficiacy and goals as quotas are questionable (should be consider some programmes male oriented? are we talking about some strict quotas, or maybe a fair funding per - whom - reader? editor? activist?).FDC process for smaller affiliates
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Some smaller affiliates choose to remain with GAC funding instead of FDC funding because the GAC process is more flexible and less burdensome. How do you think that the FDC process could be improved to be more user-friendly for small affiliates? --Pine✉ 02:08, 6 May 2015 (UTC) |
The FDC process right now resembles a comprehensive business plan that gives the community an amazing level of detail into the operations of applicants. Of course, the process isn’t perfect. If there are applicants who could drive the mission of the Wikimedia, but are otherwise discouraged by an arduous application process, then steps must be taken to modify the FDC funding process.
While the FDC should not be the driving force in changing the process (which would be a conflict of interest) the FDC can offer insight into which parts of process could be streamlined. Another group, such as the advisory committee, recommendations from the FDC chair, or the WMF board may prompt an investigation into whether or not the fund-seeking process can be made better.
The issue, of course, is to both make the process better while still being thorough and accountable to the movement. Some first steps taken include:
- Compile surveys and opinions from previous grant recipients
- Also compile surveys from individuals or groups who wanted to apply for FDC funding, but decided against it.
- Investigate possible pain points in the application process
- Reduce obvious redundancies
- Evaluate the impact of changes to the application process with all relevant stakeholders
- Pilot changes and compare the effectiveness of new vs. old application process.
Also approving huge grants requires very stern guidelines and processes to ensure the programs churned really deserve the grant. In lending a similar mechanism is used, this is called adverse selection, it’s a way to deter those who don’t meet the criteria, those not willing to go through the process for what they deem deserving and to those who are not sure of the viability of their plans. A stern process shouldn’t discourage a group that believes in its strategies and plans, they should be ready to go through thick and thin just to stand for what they believe in. It is the only way one can display his believe in what works. These processes are there to guide the foundations spending and to ensure efficient use of resources.
This doesn’t also mean that when I am granted the opportunity to serve at the FDC, I won’t look out to streamline problematic and usually cumbersome processes to open up to all. Flixtey (talk) 17:21, 9 May 2015 (UTC)Innovation and risk
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To what extent do you think the FDC should support innovative programs for FDC recipients that may have higher risk but also potential for good impact? --Pine✉ 02:08, 6 May 2015 (UTC) |
- The level of impact that a project is expected to have when implemented.
- Compatibility with the goals of the Wikimedia movement.
- The value and quality of output.
- Implementation process.
The movement must be forward thinking and should absolutely support innovative programs, but the FDC must use its best judgement to ensure the safety the programs it recommends. If an innovative program aligns with the mission, vision, and strategy of the movement, the FDC should support requests that are designed in a way to account for their inherent risk.
For example, an innovative, but risky program should be designed in such a way to test out the idea. A pilot program would be one elegant solution that could help assess whether a larger grant be approved for the applicant. From there it should be evident what can be changed, if anything, to make the project better. As long as the appropriate measures are taken to account for risk, creative and clever programs should be considered by the FDC.
Success does not come without risk. Chsh (talk) 04:07, 6 May 2015 (UTC)- We not only need people to take risks, we need people who will fail, and who will fail spectacularly doing new and totally crazy projects.
- If nobody is failing we are not taking enough risks. Some folks seem to think that you can avoid total failure and still take risks and maybe you sometimes can, but if enough people are taking big enough risks somebody is going to fall flat on their faces right in front of everybody. We should just say "Bravo!" and help pick them up to start again on another project.
- This type of failure is *not going to cost us money*!!!
- Rather, new risky projects will tend to have low funding, so that if 20% of our projects fail it might only account for 5-10% of the budget.
- That 5-10% will be returned to us in several ways. 1st by avoiding doing similar projects with larger budgets, or via "lessons learned" designing similar projects better. 2nd by helping to avoid doing the same old big boring projects after their useful lives have gone. 3rd by inspiring potential donors who will say (after one of the risky projects succeeds) "How did you every think doing something that crazy? And it worked!!!
- We need new projects just to keep up with the rest of the world
- Our projects now tend to include edit-a-thons, Wiki Loves photo events, conferences and unconferences (with pizza and beer afterwards), a bit of software development, GLAM projects and other cooperation with outside groups. Those were great ideas 5 years ago (with kudos to @Wittylama: for the crazy GLAM idea), but there are some questions now on the effectiveness of some of these ideas. Ten years from now, those ideas will still be incorporated into some of what we do, but the majority of our projects will be in areas we haven't even thought of yet.
- Everybody has crazy ideas about projects that we could fund. Off the top of my head, I think we should do projects with video, oral history, fully on-line conferences (if the technology improves), university wiki-clubs, cooperating with journalists. Sure there are dumb ideas there, but you (yes, you, the person reading this right now) have some better ideas. Let's see them and see what we can do. Smallbones (talk) 17:08, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
- Declared as such. It's fine to have a project be higher-risk then fail, but not to simply point to less-successful projects as 'higher risk' retroactively.
- A small portion of the total budget. Things that are higher-risk/higher-reward need to be allocated a maximum proportion of the budget to avoid re-allocating more money halfway through if the risk isn't working (i.e. "putting good money after bad").
- With clear metrics. Along with declaring it a risky idea, you need to know how to decide if it was successful or not afterwards. While there needs to be scope for reporting on unexpected outcomes, it is also important to report against the same metrics that were identified at the start of the project.
- risks that are limited to a single project (i.e., the risk of not succeding);
- risks that extend beyond the single project.
- Check your risks: are they limited (e.g. to the level of the investment) or can be greater (like a risk of losing your reputation, legal risks, some unexpected losses etc.)?
- Try to quantify: your potential losses, (ideally) their probability and potential gains. As we are still evolving, a real quantification of probability is practically impossible, but you can use benchmarks, e.g. is it more failure prone that our wikicamp last year? and use it in your thinking.
- Prioritize, that is necessary stuff and big and easy proven wins first.
- Have a diverse portfolio: maybe let's not gamble a half of our budget on a risky move; on the other hand, it is widely accepted to make a novel attempt at some gap (e.g. gender gap), even when we know it is unproven and these approaches rarely have great results. This thing is important to us and can bring great gains, so we keep some limited subbudgets for such areas and go for it.
I believe the affiliates are in the best position to evaluate these risks (and they do it already, albeit not always in a written or trained manner). FDC can make a reality check and see if there are some strong inbalances in the "portfolio". And when I do not want to give more work to affiliates, gathering these stories and learning from our risks taken can be highly benefitial for the whole Movement.
On the more quantifiable side, maybe we could run a workshop some day and, basing on model budgets, create guidelines for a well-diversified portfolio. For now, it is a future.Predictability of funding
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For small organizations, even modest changes in their income from year to year can have significant destabilizing effects on the organization's effectiveness, programs and goals. Are there ways that the FDC can better work with grant applicants so that FDC recommendations are more predictable and so grantees can have an easier time with forecasting their likely funding from round to round? --Pine✉ 02:08, 6 May 2015 (UTC) |
- Grant seeking entities should know well about the funding principles of FDC, criteria which are considered by FDC for funding recommendations. This would help organizations exclude irrelevant projects in their budget during planning stage as well as enable them to predict realistically what could be funded.
- FDC might ask for an initial and brief draft of the budget that the grant-seeking entities are going to submit finally. This initial draft would include the key projects and expenditures that the organizations are planning.
- Effective communication between FDC and grant-seeking entities is needed. This will definitely help the entities to prepare realistic budget and make them know why and what could be funded/not funded.
Capacity - Applicants must be able to show they have, or will have, the capacity necessary to accommodate their proposed rate of change. This includes leadership capacity (to motivate and see the mission/vision through), management capacity (necessary talent to drive planning and operations), and resource capacity (sufficient people and tools to deliver results).
To clarify, it’s often the role of the grant committee to judge and assess the capacity an organization has to carry a project out to completion. Thus, the members of the FDC must have significant background and expertise running effective organizations and managing programs. The FDC must be able to recognize while applicants must be able to demonstrate that they have sufficient capacity.
If an organization doesn’t have the necessary capacity, if instability seems apparent, the FDC should be able to recommend possible changes that would enable that organization to scale according to their request. That is, if the organization is trying to do something that fits the movement’s cause, then the FDC should be an enabling factor.
It should be the FDC’s last resort to significantly underfund an organization because it does not have the capacity to function. Of course, it will happen (as it did to a few requests in the past), but the FDC should first recommend a set of changes an organization make in order to mitigate the potential risks that could arise (although it should not be the FDC’s responsibility to implement capacity building).
That being said, the Advisory Group made a recommendation that the “WMF should actively support capacities of new and existing organizations to increase their effectiveness.” A first step for the FDC to aid this includes making the capacity assessment as transparent as possible. The FDC should leverage tools used by consultants and other grantmaking entities that rate an organization’s capacity. By doing so, applicants can self-review while creating a grant proposal to see where challenges may stem from if they were to significantly grow.
Chsh (talk) 03:43, 6 May 2015 (UTC)- An iterative approach to annual-plan development. So the applicant can (if they want) submit a "draft" version of their plans to get feedback while it is still being built - as opposed to doing all the work and only then discovering that the FDC and the Affiliate are working from different underlying principles.
- Greater attention to the context of the applicant's experience, scale, capacity to deliver on their plan, and whether their plan includes lessons learned from other relevant previous projects (i.e. not re-inventing the wheel).
The second point is to increase communication between the requesting organizations, the FDC, and the community, to reduce the possibilities of misunderstanding and make it possible to improve the plan before making the actual FDC proposal. Many entities post their proposal on Meta just before the deadline; if they were able to post at least a draft of it in advance, it would be possible for the community and the FDC to help them improve it.
I'd like to point out however that small organization are not the ones that are usually more concerned by modest (percentual) changes in their income:
- when you are small, usually, flexibility is more important than predictability. For a chapter that is transitioning from GAC/PEG to FDC/APG there is already a considerable increase of predictability, at the expense of flexibility.
- smaller organizations usually have shorter planning; the more basic approach to increase predictability is to make funding decisions earlier (e.g., the multi-year funding that has been proposed), but that would make things worse for them.
- the main source of inflexibility in an annual budget is usually staff costs and fixed costs; but usually this has more weight in larger organizations.
Big budget affiliates are much more based on fixed costs, related to their office, FTEs, long-term programmes and plans - ofc they should have reserves but e.g. a 10% cut can mean a visible cut in their FTEs/programme portfolio. Smaller orgs are more near-term and project oriented and run by bursts of activity of their volunteers, if they receive grants money usually these are PEG allocations.
If we consider mid-size affiliates using FDC: in their FDC applications you can see a lot of dynamics, e.g. WMNO applying for a 209% (216%) budget growth and receiving 58% increase in 2013-14 r2, so one can argue that flexibility was preferred over stability.
Certainly, when the longer plans are made, it would be nicer for any org to have secured funding for programmes taking years. I am not sure the FDC should give their fixed funding for over a year: neither a total budget nor for particular programmes - as they still need to be reviewed and adjusted - but some long-term framework could be considered in future, especially in huge projects like Wikidata. For now, more affiliate-FDC communication could help spread information and reduce uncertainty.Community, culture and Idealabs
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As we can see on Research:Spring 2015 Inspire campaign and Research:Spring 2015 Inspire campaign/Survey the result of previous Idealabs are bad, and arguably it can be considered as failure, the part on research page on Inspire Campaign fail to notice oppose !votes is a hint for something, the fact that WMF fail to notice the opposer comments such noting on diversity (not gender but rather a cultural problems), like ignoring local culture and comments that explain why this idealabs may not fit with local Wikimedia communities culture may raise some concern to some, this means WMF and some of its communities fail to notice different point of view. What will you do to fix this problem? What will you do to improve similar grants idealabs in the future? Will you in the future simply ignore the opposing comments on grants in the future if you get elected? --AldNonymousBicara? 18:17, 7 May 2015 (UTC) |
- But the main problem with me endorsing your idea here is that Idealabs has almost nothing to do with what the FDC is called upon to do. The FDC simply does not approve, disapprove, recommend or whatever with grants going through Idealab.
- That is something that runs through many questions asked here. The questioners are asking the candidates to endorse a position that has nothing to do with what the FDC actually does. The FDC only reviews and makes recommendation on fairly large annual plan grants (APGs) for about 17 "chapters".
- I want to encourage everybody to get involved with funding from the WMF, so I've probably said "yes" to many questions in a way that's misleading. If it's not part of an APG the FDC can't say yes or no. But if you're asking "should I get involved?" the answer is definitely "yes, go for it!"
- There will be a time when members of the FDC have to say "no, you can't have the money." That's the responsibility that I'm applying for in this election. And I expect that I will fulfill that responsibility if elected. But hopefully it will be more along the lines of "85% of the funds requested in this APG, yes, 15% no"
- Aldo, you're asking me to endorse a position that says "no, don't apply for those funds in a non-FDC program."
- No, I can't do that. Smallbones (talk) 20:18, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
I am no expert in IdeaLabs:Inspire and FDC does not evaluate it directly so far, so I won't neither. At the first glance I see a good-hearted attempt to win more women and spread more funding in a friendly manner, additionally learning something and asking volunteers: which is a brilliant idea except for one, bad, side: it is a circumvention of an existing grants process already utilizing volunteers - Movement experts - that is GAC/PEG - and a yet-another strategic push coming rather from WMF than from the grassroots. As such, it can leave some people feeling ignored, albeit the project has been supported by other volunteers (which could be the reasons of success in many metrics: like disseminated funds in this time frame).
The case with volunteers is: we are very different. Even in one culture you will find strong supporters of institutional financing as such or particular cases and their opponents - and all of them can have strong arguments. Then there are cultural things - e.g. my home community does not like many initiatives funded by WMF directly or via PEG. This also means that grant making should be participatory and open to everyone, and an evaluation body consisting of supporters can be very different from the general community. Better practice would be to have constant evaluators like FDC and GAC, than rotate them to disseminate funds. I know some people are frustrated with evaluators seen as "overly scrupulous" while others feel cheated with "paying people for a sheer folly". As we are community-based, my guess we need to talk more to make our stands closer.
Finally, any person familiar with PEG could see projects funded despite strong opposition/concerns from GAC volunteers which was a bit disheartening and left me candidating here.