Re: [Wikimedia-l] compromise?
Hi all, Considering that at this point it is James vs. the world, and has been for quite some time ... have we flogged this dead horse enough yet? [1] --Ed [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:HORSEMEAT On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 9:00 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: Thomas Morton wrote: If you know nothing about surveys or statistics it is probably a good idea not to describe a properly calculated metric (yes, I sat down and did the math) as absurd I stand by my statement that trying to pin down donor opinion on whether they approve of meeting or exceeding market pay to a 1% margin of error with a 99% confidence interval is completely unnecessary. If a survey with a few hundred respondents turns out to be ambiguous, additional donors could be surveyed later. I have been trying to discuss this with Tom off-list. Pine wrote: I'm a little confounded as to why you're still looking to Glassdoor as your primary source of information on employee satisfaction after Gayle indicated that she has much more comprehensive data on this subject from the employee survey Please have a look at the slides from that survey at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5m5AHoGnot=60m -- Particular questions I have about the employee engagement survey so far include: (1) Is a survey of 84 respondents which asks age, marital status, ethnicity, gender, department, tenure, and organizational level an anonymous survey, or would nearly all of such responses be personally identifiable? Glassdoor offers much stronger anonymity, (2) In general, were there any questions pertaining to whether employees are satisfied with their pay? I can see none on any of the report slides. I do see questions pertaining to recognition which are repeatedly identified as problem areas. Pay is by far the largest complaint on Glassdoor from both satisfied and unsatisfied employees, but it does not appear to have been measured on the Foundation's survey. At 1:12:30 it is said that the slide deck will be made public. I hope we get to see the list of questions too. (3) The slide at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5m5AHoGnot=65m is astounding. What does it mean that all three of the executive respondents completely agreed with the statements that we treat everyone with dignity and respect and we consistently hire strong talent and recognize strong performers but only 54% and 52% of the twenty-four managers responding agreed, respectively? (4) The top two questions at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5m5AHoGnot=65m45s indicate that those who have been working for the Foundation for more than two years have very profoundly different assessments of both recognition (which, again, seems to be the closest thing to pay that the survey asked about) and the competence of people in key positions compared to newer employees. Do we want to trust employees opinion in proportion to their experience with the organization? (5) At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5m5AHoGnot=68m attracting skilled individuals for hiring is identified as a specific improvement need. How is it being addressed? David Gerard wrote: Anyone in IT knows that there's such a thing as charity scale, where you get paid less because you're working for a nonprofit in exchange for less stress and/or doing actual good in the world. The slide at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5m5AHoGnot=62m10s indicates that in comparison against 120 corporations and 7 non-profits who have participated in similar surveys over the past seven years, the Foundation scored in the 76th percentile on this survey. I am not sure that reflects very well, given the state of the economy over that time period. I do believe paying people more does lower their stress and attract and retain more talent. Although there is apparently no shortage of opinion to the contrary, I have yet to see any data in agreement with those opinions. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Rationale for fundraising record?
Zack Exley wrote: In past years, the campaign has dragged on for weeks with us only making $150,000 per day. We wanted to avoid that this year, and so we did everything we could to get the money in fast, so that we weren't littering the sites with banners for little return. Thank you for the very detailed reply. I'm highlighting just this paragraph to say thank you to the fundraising team again for all of its work to reduce the time the banners spend on the site. This is fantastic. :-) In previous discussions, there were questions about trade-offs and I think you mentioned that the Wikimedia community would have to make some choices about certain implementation details (e.g., stickiness of banners) after evaluating the cost of these features (annoyance to readers and editors) versus their benefit (increase in donations, decrease in fundraising banner time, etc.). I realize it's January and that the next annual fundraiser is many months away, but do you have any idea when this year you'll be having a discussion about these trade-offs and where? MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Rationale for fundraising record?
On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 1:59 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Zack Exley wrote: In past years, the campaign has dragged on for weeks with us only making $150,000 per day. We wanted to avoid that this year, and so we did everything we could to get the money in fast, so that we weren't littering the sites with banners for little return. Thank you for the very detailed reply. I'm highlighting just this paragraph to say thank you to the fundraising team again for all of its work to reduce the time the banners spend on the site. This is fantastic. :-) In previous discussions, there were questions about trade-offs and I think you mentioned that the Wikimedia community would have to make some choices about certain implementation details (e.g., stickiness of banners) after evaluating the cost of these features (annoyance to readers and editors) versus their benefit (increase in donations, decrease in fundraising banner time, etc.). I realize it's January and that the next annual fundraiser is many months away, but do you have any idea when this year you'll be having a discussion about these trade-offs and where? Any suggestions about how that might best be done? There are so few people who participate on this list that I would say this isn't a good place to measure the feelings of either WM contributions or readers. There's also the problem of people not necessarily knowing what actually annoys them or interferes with their experience the most when it's being discussed in the abstract. And surveys of course have their problems. Moreover, what are the important questions? What do some editors find objectionable from an aesthetic point of view? (Even though we are now sparing logged in users completely.) What gets in the way of readers' use of the site? Or other more nuanced questions about readers' reactions? For example, do some choices cause readers to perceive banners as ads, cause confusion or possibly reduce readership? Any thoughts? MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Zack Exley Chief Revenue Officer Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Argentina Monthly Report, December 2012
On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 1:33 PM, Emmanuel Engelhart emman...@engelhart.org wrote: Hope this can help. Yes indeed! I'll forward this message to our mailing list. Thanks! Patricio ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Chapter reports WMNL
I don't see a reason for this tone, and I think that everyone who is interested in the reports will easily find them. Kind regards Ziko 2013/1/6 Maarten Dammers maar...@mdammers.nl: Dear Ziko, Op 5-1-2013 17:19, Ziko van Dijk schreef: Hello, See the chapter reports from the Netherlands (November and December 2012) here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports/Wikimedia_Nederland#Wikimedia_Nederland Thanks for writing the report. Please always include the chapter report in your email and not just a link. Lodewijk already asked this countless times. Why do you insist on just sending links? Maarten ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht --- ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Chapter reports WMNL
On Jan 6, 2013 11:06 PM, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nl wrote: I don't see a reason for this tone, and I think that everyone who is interested in the reports will easily find them. The problem is, it's hard to know if you are interested in the report without having any idea what it contains. A short summary, or at least a list of contents, helps you decide whether to click on the link or not. (If the report is already a fairly short summary, just include the whole thing.) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Chapter reports WMNL
I agree with Thomas, I have to admit :) Having a brief in summary of what links comprise of is common practice and would be fabulous! Every second counts in this world of mass stimulation and information. :) Sarah Sent from my iPhone On Jan 6, 2013, at 3:08 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: On Jan 6, 2013 11:06 PM, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nl wrote: I don't see a reason for this tone, and I think that everyone who is interested in the reports will easily find them. The problem is, it's hard to know if you are interested in the report without having any idea what it contains. A short summary, or at least a list of contents, helps you decide whether to click on the link or not. (If the report is already a fairly short summary, just include the whole thing.) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Chapter reports WMNL
I agree as well. At least at short list of the main topics would help a lot. Regards, Cornelius Cornelius Kibelka @jaancornelius +49-1520-7226062 On 7 January 2013 00:30, Sarah Stierch sarah.stie...@gmail.com wrote: I agree with Thomas, I have to admit :) Having a brief in summary of what links comprise of is common practice and would be fabulous! Every second counts in this world of mass stimulation and information. :) Sarah Sent from my iPhone On Jan 6, 2013, at 3:08 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: On Jan 6, 2013 11:06 PM, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nl wrote: I don't see a reason for this tone, and I think that everyone who is interested in the reports will easily find them. The problem is, it's hard to know if you are interested in the report without having any idea what it contains. A short summary, or at least a list of contents, helps you decide whether to click on the link or not. (If the report is already a fairly short summary, just include the whole thing.) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Chapter reports WMNL
(just for the record: I also asked this offlist to Ziko, and did not coordinate this with others) I of course agree with Maarten (and while direct, his tone is imho not inappropriate). A summary would be fine too, although I suspect that just copypasting is actually less work than typing a summary. My main reason for asking to put it in the email, is that I quite often save this kind of reports until a time that I'm a train etc. Then there is no way I can go to meta. It is a little effort (if any), and you make it easier for a number of people. By the way, I must say I like the short style and consistent pace of the Dutch reports - a compliment should be made where appropriate! Best, Lodewijk 2013/1/7 Cornelius Kibelka jckibe...@gmail.com I agree as well. At least at short list of the main topics would help a lot. Regards, Cornelius Cornelius Kibelka @jaancornelius +49-1520-7226062 On 7 January 2013 00:30, Sarah Stierch sarah.stie...@gmail.com wrote: I agree with Thomas, I have to admit :) Having a brief in summary of what links comprise of is common practice and would be fabulous! Every second counts in this world of mass stimulation and information. :) Sarah Sent from my iPhone On Jan 6, 2013, at 3:08 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: On Jan 6, 2013 11:06 PM, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nl wrote: I don't see a reason for this tone, and I think that everyone who is interested in the reports will easily find them. The problem is, it's hard to know if you are interested in the report without having any idea what it contains. A short summary, or at least a list of contents, helps you decide whether to click on the link or not. (If the report is already a fairly short summary, just include the whole thing.) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Chapter reports WMNL
Hello, Rather the other way round, I'd question the sending of reports to lists, with regard to the information overload we get. If someone really is interested in the activities of a chapter, he or she can go to the chapter reports on Meta, and has a list of reports there. A short summary of the report would even create more work for the chapter. I really don't see the problem here. Kind regards Ziko 2013/1/7 Cornelius Kibelka jckibe...@gmail.com: I agree as well. At least at short list of the main topics would help a lot. Regards, Cornelius Cornelius Kibelka @jaancornelius +49-1520-7226062 On 7 January 2013 00:30, Sarah Stierch sarah.stie...@gmail.com wrote: I agree with Thomas, I have to admit :) Having a brief in summary of what links comprise of is common practice and would be fabulous! Every second counts in this world of mass stimulation and information. :) Sarah Sent from my iPhone On Jan 6, 2013, at 3:08 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: On Jan 6, 2013 11:06 PM, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nl wrote: I don't see a reason for this tone, and I think that everyone who is interested in the reports will easily find them. The problem is, it's hard to know if you are interested in the report without having any idea what it contains. A short summary, or at least a list of contents, helps you decide whether to click on the link or not. (If the report is already a fairly short summary, just include the whole thing.) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht --- ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Chapter reports WMNL
On 6 January 2013 23:52, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nl wrote: Hello, Rather the other way round, I'd question the sending of reports to lists, with regard to the information overload we get. If someone really is interested in the activities of a chapter, he or she can go to the chapter reports on Meta, and has a list of reports there. A short summary of the report would even create more work for the chapter. I really don't see the problem here. Kind regards Ziko You should also consider that people like to read on the go, that is on a mobile device and whilst Meta has the mobile site enabled, email often works best for many people. Think of it this way: if someone is going to make the effort to open an email to read its contents after looking at the subject line, then they'd presumably want to know more information - even if just a snippet as suggested previously - *in that email* rather than having to go elsewhere to find it. -- Thehelpfulone http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Thehelpfulone ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Rationale for fundraising record?
On Jan 7, 2013 2:08 AM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: We do know that this year the decay of fundraising from day to day was steeper than in past years, confirming that we were eating into out existing donor pool faster than before. On the contrary, December 3rd was a stronger day than December 2nd, with a much smaller maximum donation. One outlier does not disprove anything. There are far too many factors involved to be able to expect everything to follow some perfect pattern. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] compromise?
Pine wrote: ... I think Erik addressed your question about pay in a way that is very reasonable and I would ask you to re-read his comments Thank you very much for asking me to do this. I overlooked the video mentioned in Erik's comments and I see now that it may be the root of the problems with neglecting pay. Erik Moeller wrote: ... But the main thing, to keep people motivated, in my experience is not money This video summarizing some of the related research is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc That video reports on two studies that found higher incentives led to worse performance, and claims that, this has been replicated over and over and over again. That is very misleading at best. The following peer reviewed sources (the first of which are WP:SECONDARY literature reviews) all indicate that while a few such studies appeared in some popular press books, the vast bulk of the scientific research does not agree with those isolated conclusions. In fact, higher pay is almost always found to be a stronger motivator except in those few anomalous studies highlighted in that video: Fang, M.; Gerhart, B. (2011) Does pay for performance diminish intrinsic interest? International Journal of Human Resource Management: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09585192.2011.561227 Reitman, D. (1998) The real and imagined harmful effects of rewards: implications for clinical practice Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 29(2):101-13 PMID 9762587: http://carmine.se.edu/cvonbergen/The_real_and_imagined_harmful%20effects%20of%20rewards.pdf (Note this is a WP:MEDRS secondary source.) Cameron, J.; Pierce, W.D. (1994) Reinforcement, Reward, and Intrinsic Motivation: A Meta-Analysis Review of Educational Research 64(3):363-423: http://rer.sagepub.com/content/64/3/363.short (WP:SECONDARY meta-analysis of 96 experimental studies.) Eisenberger, R. et al. (1999) Does pay for performance increase or decrease perceived self-determination and intrinsic motivation? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77(5):1026-40: http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuyid=1999-01257-010 Fiorillo, D. (2011) Do monetary rewards crowd out intrinsic motivations of volunteers? Some empirical evidence for Italian volunteers Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics Economics 82(2):139-65: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10./j.1467-8292.2011.00434.x/abstract Thompson, G.D., et al. (2010) Does Paying Referees Expedite Reviews? Results of a Natural Experiment Economic Journal 76(3):678-92: http://journal.southerneconomic.org/doi/abs/10.4284/sej.2010.76.3.678 Pine wrote: ... I suggest that the IRC meeting may be a better forum than this mailing list for you to ask further questions. I promised Gayle when she agreed to hold an office hour that I would submit my questions weeks in advance so that there would be no surprises, and I have done so. I don't want to reiterate any of them until then, but if people continue to post what I believe are mathematical or similar mistakes, I will certainly address those. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] No access to the Uzbek Wikipedia in Uzbekistan
On 24/12/12 20:23, Anonymous User wrote: I don't know how much effort each of these two measures would be. If you'd ask me, I would suggest to be very serious, but we are not under a deadline (the situation has been like this for more than a year now), and setting the rel=caonical would already be really, really helpful. This is done now. It would be good if Google could crawl uz.wikipedia.org to update the canonical URLs. In case anyone is wondering, I don't think this would be a good thing to do on zh.wikipedia.org. The Chinese government would happily block *.wikipedia.org port 443 if it became popular. At least the current situation provides a way to work around keyword filtering for people who are sufficiently motivated -- if HTTPS was blocked, it would be much less useful. -- Tim Starling ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Compromise?
James, Is there evidence that WMF has a worrisome talent retention problem? Gayle seems to think that the answer is generally no. If there is evidence to the contrary that has more weight than anecdotal Glassdoor reviews, I would be interested in seeing that evidence. I would distinguish between motivation and performance. Highly motivated people may perform poorly and/or perform in ways that are inconsistent with the organization's interests. Consider the cases of financial professionals who were so highly motivated that they were willing to risk criminal prosecutions and serious harm or outright demise of their organizations. I get emails every week from the SEC and almost all of them seem to include announcements of legal actions brought by the SEC against people who were highly motivated and made decisions that are questionable at best. Also consider the case of someone who may be highly financially motivated to get a degree in engineering but lacks the math skills to do so. Very highly motivated people may be unable to achieve their performance objectives or may take significant, potentially illegal and unethical risks to achieve those objectives. Looking mainly at the abstracts, I think the final study that you linked is the most relevant of the set to the discussion here. In that case a financial incentive was added in addition to whatever other incentives already existed for the reviewers to complete their work. But I would argue that doing the same work faster is more analogous to the rule-based work, rather than the creative work, discussed in the video that Erik linked. I am not opposed to WMF offering performance bonuses - money, recognition, PTO, greater discretion, conferences, training, desirable assignments - but in general I think you seem to be overstating the nature of WMF's issues with retaining personnel. Also, I would distinguish between incentives to perform and incentives to remain with the organization. On the accountability side, I do think that there's room for improvement, and the employee survey data seem to agree with that. I support the consideration of making personnel changes if important targets are not met or issues do not receive adequate responses. (I am currently concerned about the Board, as I have mentioned elsewhere). But that's a different issue than the alleged talent retention problem for paid staff. Pine ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
