subject:"Re\: \[Wikimedia\-l\] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason"

Hello Jane,

Sorry, but I think you miss the problem here.

As I said before, I am fine with more projects that improve the coverage of
so-called female topics, but not if this is damaging the projects which do
not aim for such.

I hope this campaign in this form is cancelled and witdrawn and that never
ever such situation appears again. This way of working is damaging the
trust in WMF, discouraging many volunteers, worsening projects, etc.

Having a Gendergap campaign in this form is NOT in line with the vision the
Wikimedia movement has.

 The current campaign is scheduled to be one of hopefully many, targeted
at the community in order to generate themed proposals.

If it was really targeted at the Wikimedia community, it would not have
excluded other projects.

I propose everyone to refuse to take part in this as this is a move in the
wrong direction.

And how WLM to attract more female particpation? By having a special
category for pink buildings.
Under this condition, a question as such can't be taken seriously.

Romaine














2015-01-03 14:58 GMT+01:00 Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com:

 As a member of the IEG committee I am happy to say that there is no need to
 panic. WLM is highly successful project and no one is talking about
 shutting it down, or any other project for that matter. The current
 campaign is scheduled to be one of hopefully many, targeted at the
 community in order to generate themed proposals. The current growth of
 highly diverse and inspirational proposals takes increasingly more energy
 to manage, judge, and maintain. By introducing a three-month long theme, it
 is hoped that the following will occur:
 1) Grant committee members in their voluntary role as proposal reviewers
 and community sponsors will experience less burn-out in managing proposals
 as their will be more cross pollination per cohort of proposers and their
 proposals.
 2) A targeted campaign to attract proposals will enable easier translation
 across projects if the target audience can be identified in advance
 3) A targeted campaign will attract more volunteer committee members to
 manage proposals, hopefully attracting local experts in various Wikimedia
 projects.

 The Gendergap will be the first theme. I think it's a great idea! How can
 WLM attract more female participation? Any ideas?

 On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 11:26 AM, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com
 wrote:

  Hi all,
 
  Some disturbing news entered my mailbox the past days. The grant making
  team is going to shut down the grantmaking process for Project and Event
  Grants (PEG) and Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) for three full
 months!
 
  They have decided that they want to focus only on a specific strategic
  priority: the gender gap, and that all other good projects are refused
 for
  3 months (February-April).
 
  Having more attention to a strategic priority is fine to me. Having more
  attention to the problem of the gender gap, sounds good to me as such, we
  can use much more projects and content in those areas. But that does not
  mean that many many volunteers who are organizing other projects should
  become the victim of other projects.
 
  This is a negative signal to all those volunteers who are currently
 working
  on project plans to be submitted in February, March and April. Good
  projects to be ignored, just because the WMF think those are less
  important. They say this is a positive campaign, but this sounds as a
  negative campaign to me. This discourages many volunteers in doing
  projects.
 
  And even worse: this is only to be generally announced 2 weeks before
 that
  period of shutting down starts! (this sounds like a joke, sadly it isn't)
 
  To organize a good project volunteers (yes, we are still unpaid! and
  organize these projects in our spare time!) we need the time to
 communicate
  well with all our partners and sponsors, and need the time to come up
 with
  a good project plan with a stable basis. Rushing a project in just a
 couple
  of weeks time is very unpleasant and does not help in getting a good
  quality project. And announcing it two weeks before the period indicates
  that organizers aren't taken seriously (enough).
 
  For example, we are currently planning to organize Wiki Loves Monuments
 in
  2015 again, the world wide contest to have a better documentation and
  better display of all the cultural monuments worldwide, recognised as
  largest photo contest in the world by Guinness World Records. We are
  currently working on forming a team and want to have a good stable plan
 to
  be submitted within some weeks, but now we need to rush. And yes we need
 to
  start in January/February or it will be too late to organize it properly.
 
  Also all the national teams of Wiki Loves Monuments, the international
 team
  recommend all the national teams to start in January/February, to have a
  proper organisation together with various local partners and sponsors,
 but
  now all these teams are

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

As a member of the IEG committee I am happy to say that there is no need to
panic. WLM is highly successful project and no one is talking about
shutting it down, or any other project for that matter. The current
campaign is scheduled to be one of hopefully many, targeted at the
community in order to generate themed proposals. The current growth of
highly diverse and inspirational proposals takes increasingly more energy
to manage, judge, and maintain. By introducing a three-month long theme, it
is hoped that the following will occur:
1) Grant committee members in their voluntary role as proposal reviewers
and community sponsors will experience less burn-out in managing proposals
as their will be more cross pollination per cohort of proposers and their
proposals.
2) A targeted campaign to attract proposals will enable easier translation
across projects if the target audience can be identified in advance
3) A targeted campaign will attract more volunteer committee members to
manage proposals, hopefully attracting local experts in various Wikimedia
projects.

The Gendergap will be the first theme. I think it's a great idea! How can
WLM attract more female participation? Any ideas?

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 11:26 AM, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Hi all,

 Some disturbing news entered my mailbox the past days. The grant making
 team is going to shut down the grantmaking process for Project and Event
 Grants (PEG) and Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) for three full months!

 They have decided that they want to focus only on a specific strategic
 priority: the gender gap, and that all other good projects are refused for
 3 months (February-April).

 Having more attention to a strategic priority is fine to me. Having more
 attention to the problem of the gender gap, sounds good to me as such, we
 can use much more projects and content in those areas. But that does not
 mean that many many volunteers who are organizing other projects should
 become the victim of other projects.

 This is a negative signal to all those volunteers who are currently working
 on project plans to be submitted in February, March and April. Good
 projects to be ignored, just because the WMF think those are less
 important. They say this is a positive campaign, but this sounds as a
 negative campaign to me. This discourages many volunteers in doing
 projects.

 And even worse: this is only to be generally announced 2 weeks before that
 period of shutting down starts! (this sounds like a joke, sadly it isn't)

 To organize a good project volunteers (yes, we are still unpaid! and
 organize these projects in our spare time!) we need the time to communicate
 well with all our partners and sponsors, and need the time to come up with
 a good project plan with a stable basis. Rushing a project in just a couple
 of weeks time is very unpleasant and does not help in getting a good
 quality project. And announcing it two weeks before the period indicates
 that organizers aren't taken seriously (enough).

 For example, we are currently planning to organize Wiki Loves Monuments in
 2015 again, the world wide contest to have a better documentation and
 better display of all the cultural monuments worldwide, recognised as
 largest photo contest in the world by Guinness World Records. We are
 currently working on forming a team and want to have a good stable plan to
 be submitted within some weeks, but now we need to rush. And yes we need to
 start in January/February or it will be too late to organize it properly.

 Also all the national teams of Wiki Loves Monuments, the international team
 recommend all the national teams to start in January/February, to have a
 proper organisation together with various local partners and sponsors, but
 now all these teams are delayed for three months.

 And a personal project of mine in Belgium, I am planning to organize Wiki
 Loves Art in Belgium, together with various partners and sponsors. We
 intent to start in February, but now have to rush to get such done.

 By the way: did you know there is a Belgium Gap? Belgian subjects are
 relatively less and worse described on the various Wikipedias.


 This shutting down results in:
 * Discouraging many volunteers who are planning to submit good project
 proposals.
 * Having volunteers rushed with project plans, which lowers the quality of
 the plans.
 * Having volunteers being late and delayed with projects, for no good
 reason.

 Grantmaking is intented to support the communities, not frustrating them.
 WMF: stop this negative campaign!


 And for all project teams who want to organize a gender gap project: great
 you organize this, it is very very welcome! But I like to make a
 suggestion: submit the proposal on the first day after the shutting down
 period to give a strong signal to WMF that shutting down is a bad idea.


 It is time for a new strategic priority: closing the Community Gap. That is
 the gap between WMF and the local communities

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

2015-01-03 Thread Fæ

Hi Romaine, is there a link to an on-wiki page that states this.

Based on your email, it is unfortunate that rather than stating that
PEG/IEGs would be prioritized to gendergap proposals for a time, the
choice appears to be to reject everything else.

I am not against positive discrimination where carefully managed. A
careful approach would avoid encouraging the perception that we have
to choose between gendergap and the rest of the community.

By the way, as a member of Wikimedia LGBT, my presumption is that LGBT
related proposals would be rejected in this period as they would not
be specifically about women.

Fae

On 3 January 2015 at 10:26, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi all,

 Some disturbing news entered my mailbox the past days. The grant making
 team is going to shut down the grantmaking process for Project and Event
 Grants (PEG) and Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) for three full months!

 They have decided that they want to focus only on a specific strategic
 priority: the gender gap, and that all other good projects are refused for
 3 months (February-April).

 Having more attention to a strategic priority is fine to me. Having more
 attention to the problem of the gender gap, sounds good to me as such, we
 can use much more projects and content in those areas. But that does not
 mean that many many volunteers who are organizing other projects should
 become the victim of other projects.

 This is a negative signal to all those volunteers who are currently working
 on project plans to be submitted in February, March and April. Good
 projects to be ignored, just because the WMF think those are less
 important. They say this is a positive campaign, but this sounds as a
 negative campaign to me. This discourages many volunteers in doing projects.

 And even worse: this is only to be generally announced 2 weeks before that
 period of shutting down starts! (this sounds like a joke, sadly it isn't)

 To organize a good project volunteers (yes, we are still unpaid! and
 organize these projects in our spare time!) we need the time to communicate
 well with all our partners and sponsors, and need the time to come up with
 a good project plan with a stable basis. Rushing a project in just a couple
 of weeks time is very unpleasant and does not help in getting a good
 quality project. And announcing it two weeks before the period indicates
 that organizers aren't taken seriously (enough).

 For example, we are currently planning to organize Wiki Loves Monuments in
 2015 again, the world wide contest to have a better documentation and
 better display of all the cultural monuments worldwide, recognised as
 largest photo contest in the world by Guinness World Records. We are
 currently working on forming a team and want to have a good stable plan to
 be submitted within some weeks, but now we need to rush. And yes we need to
 start in January/February or it will be too late to organize it properly.

 Also all the national teams of Wiki Loves Monuments, the international team
 recommend all the national teams to start in January/February, to have a
 proper organisation together with various local partners and sponsors, but
 now all these teams are delayed for three months.

 And a personal project of mine in Belgium, I am planning to organize Wiki
 Loves Art in Belgium, together with various partners and sponsors. We
 intent to start in February, but now have to rush to get such done.

 By the way: did you know there is a Belgium Gap? Belgian subjects are
 relatively less and worse described on the various Wikipedias.


 This shutting down results in:
 * Discouraging many volunteers who are planning to submit good project
 proposals.
 * Having volunteers rushed with project plans, which lowers the quality of
 the plans.
 * Having volunteers being late and delayed with projects, for no good
 reason.

 Grantmaking is intented to support the communities, not frustrating them.
 WMF: stop this negative campaign!


 And for all project teams who want to organize a gender gap project: great
 you organize this, it is very very welcome! But I like to make a
 suggestion: submit the proposal on the first day after the shutting down
 period to give a strong signal to WMF that shutting down is a bad idea.


 It is time for a new strategic priority: closing the Community Gap. That is
 the gap between WMF and the local communities worldwide. It is not new, it
 exists for many years already. (It resulted also in the drama of the
 situation around the Mediaviewer in 2014, the drama with the Visual Editor
 in 2013, etc. in what WMF didn't sense well the community.) (Maybe the gap
 is less between WMF and the English speaking part of the world, but the
 world is larger. We have many people around the world who are speak a
 different language. WMF is not sensing the worldwide community well
 enough.)
 Finally we should do more about this Community Gap.

 For those celebrating: I wish you a happy new year with

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

2015-01-03 Thread Mathias Damour

Le 03/01/2015 12:55, Romaine Wiki a écrit :

Hi Fae,

I haven't seen a page about this on wiki yet. It appears that various
volunteers who are working on organizing are informed about this behind the
scenes directly.

It also was mentioned in a discussion about the organisation of Wiki Loves
Monuments which raised many concerns. It was first mentioned in this mail:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007597.html
+
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007599.html

Later confirmed by Alex Wang:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007600.html
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007603.html

As I said this is not a positive campaign they intent, this is a negative
campaign as other projects are a victim here.

Yes, prioritizing is not a problem. But this does not feel good at all.
This is not good for project organizers nor for the gender gap projects,
nor for other projects.

Romaine

Thanks Romaine, that sounds terrible.
I can imagine if Wikipedia was managed that way in its first period or
anytime : We will proactively address our gap in History for the next 3
months, so please no more biology article until may (or maybe later
we'll tell you)

The fact is we can't rely or very poorly on the WMF anymore. Or just in
the same way some people may apply for some governmental
organisations/agencies subsidies and have to be skilled enough, not in
their core project but to fit in the expectations, know the tricks for
that and have the ability to deal with such hitches without being
discouraged.

User:Pi zero made a pretty good point here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:LilaTretikov_(WMF)oldid=10876939#Infrastructure
The WMF is internally structured to centrally create major software
initiatives to be designed, implemented, and imposed all from the top
down. This is the way commercial enterprises approach proprietary
software, so it's natural that people who come from that world (both
administrators and software developers) would tend to do things that
way. The approach is well suited to the purpose of creating software
that maximizes customers' dependency on the commercial enterprise. In
other words, it minimizes customers' ablity to improve, generalize,
duplicate, or even maintain the software on their own. However, this
approach is deeply inappropriate if you're trying to nurture volunteer
wikis. (...)

--
Mathias Damour
User:Astirmays

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason


This is not a good point but it always the same point of discussion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar

Nothing new.

Both models have their own strengths and their own weaknesses.

regards

On 03.01.2015 14:57, Mathias Damour wrote:



User:Pi zero made a pretty good point here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:LilaTretikov_(WMF)oldid=10876939#Infrastructure 

The WMF is internally structured to centrally create major software 
initiatives to be designed, implemented, and imposed all from the top 
down. This is the way commercial enterprises approach proprietary 
software, so it's natural that people who come from that world (both 
administrators and software developers) would tend to do things that 
way. The approach is well suited to the purpose of creating software 
that maximizes customers' dependency on the commercial enterprise. In 
other words, it minimizes customers' ablity to improve, generalize, 
duplicate, or even maintain the software on their own. However, this 
approach is deeply inappropriate if you're trying to nurture volunteer 
wikis. (...)





--
Ilario Valdelli
Wikimedia CH
Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre
Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
Tel: +41764821371
http://www.wikimedia.ch


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

2015-01-03 Thread Austin Hair

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 11:26 AM, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com wrote:
 It is time for a new strategic priority: closing the Community Gap. That is
 the gap between WMF and the local communities worldwide. It is not new, it
 exists for many years already. (It resulted also in the drama of the
 situation around the Mediaviewer in 2014, the drama with the Visual Editor
 in 2013, etc. in what WMF didn't sense well the community.) (Maybe the gap
 is less between WMF and the English speaking part of the world, but the
 world is larger. We have many people around the world who are speak a
 different language. WMF is not sensing the worldwide community well
 enough.)
 Finally we should do more about this Community Gap.

I think the gap is just as big in the English-speaking world, and that
if asked (that kind of says something, I think) a lot of people would
finger it as a priority—if nothing else, the content of traffic on
this list would appear to back that up.

Austin

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

..and I am hoping to see lots of gendergap paint

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 4:42 PM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org
wrote:

I hoped that after the discussions on the wiki loves monuments mailing
list, someone of the grant team would have proactively informed the wider
community in an earlier stage. I hope that the fact they did not do this,
means they are reconsidering the way this campaign is shaped.

As indicated before, this 'shutdown' (or focus) of Individual Engagement
Grants as well as Project and Event Grants was confirmed

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007600.html
by
Alex Wang. She referred in that email to this onwiki description

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire_Grants_%E2%80%93_Gender_gap_campaign
.
I should also emphasize that Alex indicated that they don't expect this to
impact WLM-related grants (because they expect teams to request funding
much
later in the process

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007603.html

- not before june/july, an assumption I disagree with), and she also
suggested the closing was not as hard as it sounds, as she's willing to
discuss problems (she emphasized this in her email).

I don't want to reiterate all discussions about whether gendergap is the
problem or a symptom (we have many gaps in our community, of which the
gender gap is the most visible and easiest to measure), but I do feel
uncomfortable with this campaign. I have asked around a bit in the past
week and only received negative feedback on the campaign - with people
confirming my fear that this will likely undermine the community support
(or at least support by the 'organizing community') for gendergap-related
projects in general - be it out of frustration, compensation or jealousy. I
called it a 'negative campaign' in my emails because the focus is not about
actively boosting one type of requests (which is the claim), but rather
about making it harder to do something unrelated to it in the hope that
people instead will choose for the easy way, and organize a gendergap
related event.

What I also fear, is that people will just give their request a tiny bit of
'gendergap'-paint, make up some way how they help reduce it (which is
basically true for almost any outreach event aiming at a group with less
than 90% men - i.e. almost any group aside from Wikipedia or catholic
priests). I'm confident that most of our outreach projects, including Wiki
Loves Monuments, could claim to reach relatively more women than the editor
population contains. But I am very unhappy if we start distributing grants
on such shaky grounds - those projects often are much stronger in general
editor retention, which happens to be relatively more women. The focus of
the projects would be unnaturally shifted in the grant request compared to
the actual activities.

Again, I hope that the decision makers involved here will reconsider the
way this has been shaped, and frame it more in a positive way, focusing on
supporting efforts in a thematic direction, rather than discouraging other
thematic directions. And as I have said elsewhere: I would be similarly
against this, with any other theme - I wouldn't be able to stand the idea
to focus entirely on photo-events only for three months...

Best,
Lodewijk

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 3:59 PM, Jens Best jens.b...@wikimedia.de wrote:

Hi all,

I think some clarification is needed by people who are in charge for the
grantmaking process. There is a difference between shutting down the
grantmaking process (PEG) and (IEG) for three full months and adding a
voluntary gendergap theme to a project to get better funding chances.

So I really would like to see some clarifications about these leaked
plans
before having a propably heated debate about it.

Needless to say that adding ideologically driven must-haves to a general
grantmaking process which only purpose is to serve the voluntary work on
a
supposed-to-be-free encyclopedia would leave a disturbing impression on
many people.

best regards

Jens Best

2015-01-03 15:46 GMT+01:00 Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com:

There are multiple ways in how to define the Gendergap, in this case it
is
about female participation.

I do think it is a problem that the number of female participants is
dramatically lower than those of male contributors, but still this does
not
give any good reason to exclude good projects who are not particular
aiming
for female contributors.

WMF wants to solve the Gendergap by excluding good other projects. That
is
a very bad situation.

Trying to solve the Gendergap by enlarging the Community Gap.

Bad idea.

Romaine

2015-01-03 15:33 GMT+01:00 Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com:

Nope. Gendergap is about the gap in female participation, not in
female-related topics.

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

2015-01-03 Thread Lodewijk

As indicated before, this 'shutdown' (or focus) of Individual Engagement
Grants as well as Project and Event Grants was confirmed
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007600.htmlby
Alex Wang. She referred in that email to this onwiki description
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire_Grants_%E2%80%93_Gender_gap_campaign.
I should also emphasize that Alex indicated that they don't expect this to
impact WLM-related grants (because they expect teams to request funding much
later in the process
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007603.html
- not before june/july, an assumption I disagree with), and she also
suggested the closing was not as hard as it sounds, as she's willing to
discuss problems (she emphasized this in her email).

Best,
Lodewijk

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 3:59 PM, Jens Best jens.b...@wikimedia.de wrote:

Hi all,

So I really would like to see some clarifications about these leaked plans
before having a propably heated debate about it.

Needless to say that adding ideologically driven must-haves to a general
grantmaking process which only purpose is to serve the voluntary work on a
supposed-to-be-free encyclopedia would leave a disturbing impression on
many people.

best regards

Jens Best

2015-01-03 15:46 GMT+01:00 Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com:

There are multiple ways in how to define the Gendergap, in this case it
is
about female participation.

WMF wants to solve the Gendergap by excluding good other projects. That
is
a very bad situation.

Trying to solve the Gendergap by enlarging the Community Gap.

Bad idea.

Romaine

2015-01-03 15:33 GMT+01:00 Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com:

Nope. Gendergap is about the gap in female participation, not in
female-related topics. The Dutch Wikipedia has a severe gap with only
6%
female participation. I would say this is a pretty urgent problem for
the
Dutch and Flemish community, so I was very glad to see this as a main
theme
for the coming three months.

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

2015-01-03 Thread Jens Best

Hi all,

I think some clarification is needed by people who are in charge for the
grantmaking process. There is a difference between shutting down the
grantmaking process (PEG) and (IEG) for three full months and adding a
voluntary gendergap theme to a project to get better funding chances.

So I really would like to see some clarifications about these leaked plans
before having a propably heated debate about it.

Needless to say that adding ideologically driven must-haves to a general
grantmaking process which only purpose is to serve the voluntary work on a
supposed-to-be-free encyclopedia would leave a disturbing impression on
many people.

best regards

Jens Best



2015-01-03 15:46 GMT+01:00 Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com:

 There are multiple ways in how to define the Gendergap, in this case it is
 about female participation.

 I do think it is a problem that the number of female participants is
 dramatically lower than those of male contributors, but still this does not
 give any good reason to exclude good projects who are not particular aiming
 for female contributors.

 WMF wants to solve the Gendergap by excluding good other projects. That is
 a very bad situation.

 Trying to solve the Gendergap by enlarging the Community Gap.

 Bad idea.

 Romaine



 2015-01-03 15:33 GMT+01:00 Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com:

  Nope. Gendergap is about the gap in female participation, not in
  female-related topics. The Dutch Wikipedia has a severe gap with only 6%
  female participation. I would say this is a pretty urgent problem for the
  Dutch and Flemish community, so I was very glad to see this as a main
 theme
  for the coming three months.
 
  On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 3:17 PM, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com
  wrote:
 
   Hello Jane,
  
   Sorry, but I think you miss the problem here.
  
   As I said before, I am fine with more projects that improve the
 coverage
  of
   so-called female topics, but not if this is damaging the projects which
  do
   not aim for such.
  
   I hope this campaign in this form is cancelled and witdrawn and that
  never
   ever such situation appears again. This way of working is damaging the
   trust in WMF, discouraging many volunteers, worsening projects, etc.
  
   Having a Gendergap campaign in this form is NOT in line with the vision
  the
   Wikimedia movement has.
  
The current campaign is scheduled to be one of hopefully many,
 targeted
   at the community in order to generate themed proposals.
  
   If it was really targeted at the Wikimedia community, it would not have
   excluded other projects.
  
   I propose everyone to refuse to take part in this as this is a move in
  the
   wrong direction.
  
   And how WLM to attract more female particpation? By having a special
   category for pink buildings.
   Under this condition, a question as such can't be taken seriously.
  
   Romaine
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   2015-01-03 14:58 GMT+01:00 Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com:
  
As a member of the IEG committee I am happy to say that there is no
  need
   to
panic. WLM is highly successful project and no one is talking about
shutting it down, or any other project for that matter. The current
campaign is scheduled to be one of hopefully many, targeted at the
community in order to generate themed proposals. The current growth
 of
highly diverse and inspirational proposals takes increasingly more
  energy
to manage, judge, and maintain. By introducing a three-month long
  theme,
   it
is hoped that the following will occur:
1) Grant committee members in their voluntary role as proposal
  reviewers
and community sponsors will experience less burn-out in managing
   proposals
as their will be more cross pollination per cohort of proposers and
  their
proposals.
2) A targeted campaign to attract proposals will enable easier
   translation
across projects if the target audience can be identified in advance
3) A targeted campaign will attract more volunteer committee members
 to
manage proposals, hopefully attracting local experts in various
  Wikimedia
projects.
   
The Gendergap will be the first theme. I think it's a great idea! How
  can
WLM attract more female participation? Any ideas?
   
On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 11:26 AM, Romaine Wiki 
 romaine.w...@gmail.com
wrote:
   
 Hi all,

 Some disturbing news entered my mailbox the past days. The grant
  making
 team is going to shut down the grantmaking process for Project and
   Event
 Grants (PEG) and Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) for three full
months!

 They have decided that they want to focus only on a specific
  strategic
 priority: the gender gap, and that all other good projects are
  refused
for
 3 months (February-April).

 Having more attention to a strategic priority is fine to me. Having
   more
 attention to the problem of the gender gap,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

There are multiple ways in how to define the Gendergap, in this case it is
about female participation.

I do think it is a problem that the number of female participants is
dramatically lower than those of male contributors, but still this does not
give any good reason to exclude good projects who are not particular aiming
for female contributors.

WMF wants to solve the Gendergap by excluding good other projects. That is
a very bad situation.

Trying to solve the Gendergap by enlarging the Community Gap.

Bad idea.

Romaine



2015-01-03 15:33 GMT+01:00 Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com:

 Nope. Gendergap is about the gap in female participation, not in
 female-related topics. The Dutch Wikipedia has a severe gap with only 6%
 female participation. I would say this is a pretty urgent problem for the
 Dutch and Flemish community, so I was very glad to see this as a main theme
 for the coming three months.

 On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 3:17 PM, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com
 wrote:

  Hello Jane,
 
  Sorry, but I think you miss the problem here.
 
  As I said before, I am fine with more projects that improve the coverage
 of
  so-called female topics, but not if this is damaging the projects which
 do
  not aim for such.
 
  I hope this campaign in this form is cancelled and witdrawn and that
 never
  ever such situation appears again. This way of working is damaging the
  trust in WMF, discouraging many volunteers, worsening projects, etc.
 
  Having a Gendergap campaign in this form is NOT in line with the vision
 the
  Wikimedia movement has.
 
   The current campaign is scheduled to be one of hopefully many, targeted
  at the community in order to generate themed proposals.
 
  If it was really targeted at the Wikimedia community, it would not have
  excluded other projects.
 
  I propose everyone to refuse to take part in this as this is a move in
 the
  wrong direction.
 
  And how WLM to attract more female particpation? By having a special
  category for pink buildings.
  Under this condition, a question as such can't be taken seriously.
 
  Romaine
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  2015-01-03 14:58 GMT+01:00 Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com:
 
   As a member of the IEG committee I am happy to say that there is no
 need
  to
   panic. WLM is highly successful project and no one is talking about
   shutting it down, or any other project for that matter. The current
   campaign is scheduled to be one of hopefully many, targeted at the
   community in order to generate themed proposals. The current growth of
   highly diverse and inspirational proposals takes increasingly more
 energy
   to manage, judge, and maintain. By introducing a three-month long
 theme,
  it
   is hoped that the following will occur:
   1) Grant committee members in their voluntary role as proposal
 reviewers
   and community sponsors will experience less burn-out in managing
  proposals
   as their will be more cross pollination per cohort of proposers and
 their
   proposals.
   2) A targeted campaign to attract proposals will enable easier
  translation
   across projects if the target audience can be identified in advance
   3) A targeted campaign will attract more volunteer committee members to
   manage proposals, hopefully attracting local experts in various
 Wikimedia
   projects.
  
   The Gendergap will be the first theme. I think it's a great idea! How
 can
   WLM attract more female participation? Any ideas?
  
   On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 11:26 AM, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com
   wrote:
  
Hi all,
   
Some disturbing news entered my mailbox the past days. The grant
 making
team is going to shut down the grantmaking process for Project and
  Event
Grants (PEG) and Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) for three full
   months!
   
They have decided that they want to focus only on a specific
 strategic
priority: the gender gap, and that all other good projects are
 refused
   for
3 months (February-April).
   
Having more attention to a strategic priority is fine to me. Having
  more
attention to the problem of the gender gap, sounds good to me as
 such,
  we
can use much more projects and content in those areas. But that does
  not
mean that many many volunteers who are organizing other projects
 should
become the victim of other projects.
   
This is a negative signal to all those volunteers who are currently
   working
on project plans to be submitted in February, March and April. Good
projects to be ignored, just because the WMF think those are less
important. They say this is a positive campaign, but this sounds as a
negative campaign to me. This discourages many volunteers in doing
projects.
   
And even worse: this is only to be generally announced 2 weeks before
   that
period of shutting down starts! (this sounds like a joke, sadly it
  isn't)
   
To organize a good project volunteers (yes, we are still unpaid! and
organize

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

Nope. Gendergap is about the gap in female participation, not in
female-related topics. The Dutch Wikipedia has a severe gap with only 6%
female participation. I would say this is a pretty urgent problem for the
Dutch and Flemish community, so I was very glad to see this as a main theme
for the coming three months.

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 3:17 PM, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hello Jane,

 Sorry, but I think you miss the problem here.

 As I said before, I am fine with more projects that improve the coverage of
 so-called female topics, but not if this is damaging the projects which do
 not aim for such.

 I hope this campaign in this form is cancelled and witdrawn and that never
 ever such situation appears again. This way of working is damaging the
 trust in WMF, discouraging many volunteers, worsening projects, etc.

 Having a Gendergap campaign in this form is NOT in line with the vision the
 Wikimedia movement has.

  The current campaign is scheduled to be one of hopefully many, targeted
 at the community in order to generate themed proposals.

 If it was really targeted at the Wikimedia community, it would not have
 excluded other projects.

 I propose everyone to refuse to take part in this as this is a move in the
 wrong direction.

 And how WLM to attract more female particpation? By having a special
 category for pink buildings.
 Under this condition, a question as such can't be taken seriously.

 Romaine














 2015-01-03 14:58 GMT+01:00 Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com:

  As a member of the IEG committee I am happy to say that there is no need
 to
  panic. WLM is highly successful project and no one is talking about
  shutting it down, or any other project for that matter. The current
  campaign is scheduled to be one of hopefully many, targeted at the
  community in order to generate themed proposals. The current growth of
  highly diverse and inspirational proposals takes increasingly more energy
  to manage, judge, and maintain. By introducing a three-month long theme,
 it
  is hoped that the following will occur:
  1) Grant committee members in their voluntary role as proposal reviewers
  and community sponsors will experience less burn-out in managing
 proposals
  as their will be more cross pollination per cohort of proposers and their
  proposals.
  2) A targeted campaign to attract proposals will enable easier
 translation
  across projects if the target audience can be identified in advance
  3) A targeted campaign will attract more volunteer committee members to
  manage proposals, hopefully attracting local experts in various Wikimedia
  projects.
 
  The Gendergap will be the first theme. I think it's a great idea! How can
  WLM attract more female participation? Any ideas?
 
  On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 11:26 AM, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com
  wrote:
 
   Hi all,
  
   Some disturbing news entered my mailbox the past days. The grant making
   team is going to shut down the grantmaking process for Project and
 Event
   Grants (PEG) and Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) for three full
  months!
  
   They have decided that they want to focus only on a specific strategic
   priority: the gender gap, and that all other good projects are refused
  for
   3 months (February-April).
  
   Having more attention to a strategic priority is fine to me. Having
 more
   attention to the problem of the gender gap, sounds good to me as such,
 we
   can use much more projects and content in those areas. But that does
 not
   mean that many many volunteers who are organizing other projects should
   become the victim of other projects.
  
   This is a negative signal to all those volunteers who are currently
  working
   on project plans to be submitted in February, March and April. Good
   projects to be ignored, just because the WMF think those are less
   important. They say this is a positive campaign, but this sounds as a
   negative campaign to me. This discourages many volunteers in doing
   projects.
  
   And even worse: this is only to be generally announced 2 weeks before
  that
   period of shutting down starts! (this sounds like a joke, sadly it
 isn't)
  
   To organize a good project volunteers (yes, we are still unpaid! and
   organize these projects in our spare time!) we need the time to
  communicate
   well with all our partners and sponsors, and need the time to come up
  with
   a good project plan with a stable basis. Rushing a project in just a
  couple
   of weeks time is very unpleasant and does not help in getting a good
   quality project. And announcing it two weeks before the period
 indicates
   that organizers aren't taken seriously (enough).
  
   For example, we are currently planning to organize Wiki Loves Monuments
  in
   2015 again, the world wide contest to have a better documentation and
   better display of all the cultural monuments worldwide, recognised as
   largest photo contest in the world by Guinness World Records. We are

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason


Hi all,

I think that it's important to say that someone of the grant's team 
probably will be out until 11th January (I have received an out of 
office), so I suggest to postpone this discussion if we would not 
proceed to a 

conviction in absentia.


Personally I had some concerns and I did a proposal suggesting to 
dedicate a whole year to the a thematic priority but reducing 50% of the 
grants for each round to this topic.


Why? It's simple, because there are some investments to do to revitalize 
or to improve some areas, but there is no sense to forget that the 
remaining areas still need to be supported and helped.


The worst would be to lose editors in the traditional areas (without a 
good support) and in the same time to do not gain new volunteers through 
the gender gap in order to fill the loss.


Though it is normal in any charitable foundation to assign a percentage 
of the annual grants to a specific priority, there is not a scandal.


The best is to define what is the good way to have less stress in the 
community. I think that a good suggestion done friendly and without 
stress may help the movement.


About the remaining part I would say that some budgets for WLM are also 
in the FDC applications and the FDC *already* stated the priorities for 
2015 and *already* did some evaluations in order to define the impact.


I suggest to consider also these statements for the next WLM.

regards

On 03.01.2015 11:26, Romaine Wiki wrote:

Hi all,

Some disturbing news entered my mailbox the past days. The grant making
team is going to shut down the grantmaking process for Project and Event
Grants (PEG) and Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) for three full months!

They have decided that they want to focus only on a specific strategic
priority: the gender gap, and that all other good projects are refused for
3 months (February-April).

Having more attention to a strategic priority is fine to me. Having more
attention to the problem of the gender gap, sounds good to me as such, we
can use much more projects and content in those areas. But that does not
mean that many many volunteers who are organizing other projects should
become the victim of other projects.

This is a negative signal to all those volunteers who are currently working
on project plans to be submitted in February, March and April. Good
projects to be ignored, just because the WMF think those are less
important. They say this is a positive campaign, but this sounds as a
negative campaign to me. This discourages many volunteers in doing projects.

And even worse: this is only to be generally announced 2 weeks before that
period of shutting down starts! (this sounds like a joke, sadly it isn't)

To organize a good project volunteers (yes, we are still unpaid! and
organize these projects in our spare time!) we need the time to communicate
well with all our partners and sponsors, and need the time to come up with
a good project plan with a stable basis. Rushing a project in just a couple
of weeks time is very unpleasant and does not help in getting a good
quality project. And announcing it two weeks before the period indicates
that organizers aren't taken seriously (enough).

For example, we are currently planning to organize Wiki Loves Monuments in
2015 again, the world wide contest to have a better documentation and
better display of all the cultural monuments worldwide, recognised as
largest photo contest in the world by Guinness World Records. We are
currently working on forming a team and want to have a good stable plan to
be submitted within some weeks, but now we need to rush. And yes we need to
start in January/February or it will be too late to organize it properly.

Also all the national teams of Wiki Loves Monuments, the international team
recommend all the national teams to start in January/February, to have a
proper organisation together with various local partners and sponsors, but
now all these teams are delayed for three months.

And a personal project of mine in Belgium, I am planning to organize Wiki
Loves Art in Belgium, together with various partners and sponsors. We
intent to start in February, but now have to rush to get such done.

By the way: did you know there is a Belgium Gap? Belgian subjects are
relatively less and worse described on the various Wikipedias.


This shutting down results in:
* Discouraging many volunteers who are planning to submit good project
proposals.
* Having volunteers rushed with project plans, which lowers the quality of
the plans.
* Having volunteers being late and delayed with projects, for no good
reason.

Grantmaking is intented to support the communities, not frustrating them.
WMF: stop this negative campaign!


And for all project teams who want to organize a gender gap project: great
you organize this, it is very very welcome! But I like to make a
suggestion: submit the proposal on the first day after the shutting down
period to give a strong signal to WMF that shutting down is a

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

I find it interesting to discover via this conversation that it has not
been defined yet!

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 4:12 PM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 3:33 PM, Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com wrote:

  Nope. Gendergap is about the gap in female participation, not in
  female-related topics.
 

 I would say it is both, but in either case this would be important to
 define if that is the criteria on which to solicit proposals. (The vision
 of Wikimedia is to share the sum of all human knowledge, so from that
 standpoint the end is to close the gap in coverage, diversity in the
 editorship is a  very important means to it.)

 In any case, experimentation with the grants programme is probably for the
 benefit of the community, but so is reliability and predictability. If the
 original assumptions are clear, announcing a major policy change for the
 grants programme only with 3 weeks of planned lead time seems to go againts
 those latter expectations unfortunately.

 Best regards,
 Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

I would not comment but it's important to define if this gap has been 
minimal in the past.


If the femal participation has always been under the 10% (in 10 years) 
within a community, probably there are some infrastructural problems to 
be analyzed.


The expected impact can be perceived as a temporary bother by the 
current community and refused when the support will finish.


regards



On 03.01.2015 15:33, Jane Darnell wrote:

Nope. Gendergap is about the gap in female participation, not in
female-related topics. The Dutch Wikipedia has a severe gap with only 6%
female participation. I would say this is a pretty urgent problem for the
Dutch and Flemish community, so I was very glad to see this as a main theme
for the coming three months.




--
Ilario Valdelli
Wikimedia CH
Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre
Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
Tel: +41764821371
http://www.wikimedia.ch


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

2015-01-03 Thread Bence Damokos

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 3:33 PM, Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com wrote:

 Nope. Gendergap is about the gap in female participation, not in
 female-related topics.


I would say it is both, but in either case this would be important to
define if that is the criteria on which to solicit proposals. (The vision
of Wikimedia is to share the sum of all human knowledge, so from that
standpoint the end is to close the gap in coverage, diversity in the
editorship is a  very important means to it.)

In any case, experimentation with the grants programme is probably for the
benefit of the community, but so is reliability and predictability. If the
original assumptions are clear, announcing a major policy change for the
grants programme only with 3 weeks of planned lead time seems to go againts
those latter expectations unfortunately.

Best regards,
Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

..and I dream of repetitive metrics that can be compared year to year

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 5:02 PM, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote:

 Ethically, I would rather defer a proposal, such as one for Wiki Loves
 Pride or a more general diversity event, until the restriction is lifted.

 There is too much pointless political flim flam already in our Wikimedia
 community without masking events as GenderGap for the sake of faking
 metrics.

 Fae
 On 3 Jan 2015 15:50, Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com wrote:

  ..and I am hoping to see lots of gendergap paint
 
  On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 4:42 PM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org
  wrote:
 
   I hoped that after the discussions on the wiki loves monuments mailing
   list, someone of the grant team would have proactively informed the
 wider
   community in an earlier stage. I hope that the fact they did not do
 this,
   means they are reconsidering the way this campaign is shaped.
  
   As indicated before, this 'shutdown' (or focus) of Individual
 Engagement
   Grants as well as Project and Event Grants was confirmed
   
  
 
 https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007600.html
   by
   Alex Wang. She referred in that email to this onwiki description
   
  
 
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire_Grants_%E2%80%93_Gender_gap_campaign
   .
   I should also emphasize that Alex indicated that they don't expect this
  to
   impact WLM-related grants (because they expect teams to request funding
   much
   later in the process
   
  
 
 https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007603.html
   
   - not before june/july, an assumption I disagree with), and she also
   suggested the closing was not as hard as it sounds, as she's willing to
   discuss problems (she emphasized this in her email).
  
   I don't want to reiterate all discussions about whether gendergap is
 the
   problem or a symptom (we have many gaps in our community, of which the
   gender gap is the most visible and easiest to measure), but I do feel
   uncomfortable with this campaign. I have asked around a bit in the past
   week and only received negative feedback on the campaign - with people
   confirming my fear that this will likely undermine the community
 support
   (or at least support by the 'organizing community') for
 gendergap-related
   projects in general - be it out of frustration, compensation or
  jealousy. I
   called it a 'negative campaign' in my emails because the focus is not
  about
   actively boosting one type of requests (which is the claim), but rather
   about making it harder to do something unrelated to it in the hope that
   people instead will choose for the easy way, and organize a gendergap
   related event.
  
   What I also fear, is that people will just give their request a tiny
 bit
  of
   'gendergap'-paint, make up some way how they help reduce it (which is
   basically true for almost any outreach event aiming at a group with
 less
   than 90% men - i.e. almost any group aside from Wikipedia or catholic
   priests). I'm confident that most of our outreach projects, including
  Wiki
   Loves Monuments, could claim to reach relatively more women than the
  editor
   population contains. But I am very unhappy if we start distributing
  grants
   on such shaky grounds - those projects often are much stronger in
 general
   editor retention, which happens to be relatively more women. The focus
 of
   the projects would be unnaturally shifted in the grant request compared
  to
   the actual activities.
  
   Again, I hope that the decision makers involved here will reconsider
 the
   way this has been shaped, and frame it more in a positive way, focusing
  on
   supporting efforts in a thematic direction, rather than discouraging
  other
   thematic directions. And as I have said elsewhere: I would be similarly
   against this, with any other theme - I wouldn't be able to stand the
 idea
   to focus entirely on photo-events only for three months...
  
   Best,
   Lodewijk
  
   On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 3:59 PM, Jens Best jens.b...@wikimedia.de
  wrote:
  
Hi all,
   
I think some clarification is needed by people who are in charge for
  the
grantmaking process. There is a difference between shutting down the
grantmaking process (PEG) and (IEG) for three full months and
 adding a
voluntary gendergap theme to a project to get better funding
 chances.
   
So I really would like to see some clarifications about these leaked
   plans
before having a propably heated debate about it.
   
Needless to say that adding ideologically driven must-haves to a
  general
grantmaking process which only purpose is to serve the voluntary work
  on
   a
supposed-to-be-free encyclopedia would leave a disturbing impression
 on
many people.
   
best regards
   
Jens Best
   
   
   
2015-01-03 15:46 GMT+01:00 Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com:
   
 There are

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

2015-01-03 Thread Fæ

Ethically, I would rather defer a proposal, such as one for Wiki Loves
Pride or a more general diversity event, until the restriction is lifted.

There is too much pointless political flim flam already in our Wikimedia
community without masking events as GenderGap for the sake of faking
metrics.

Fae
On 3 Jan 2015 15:50, Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com wrote:

 ..and I am hoping to see lots of gendergap paint

 On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 4:42 PM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org
 wrote:

  I hoped that after the discussions on the wiki loves monuments mailing
  list, someone of the grant team would have proactively informed the wider
  community in an earlier stage. I hope that the fact they did not do this,
  means they are reconsidering the way this campaign is shaped.
 
  As indicated before, this 'shutdown' (or focus) of Individual Engagement
  Grants as well as Project and Event Grants was confirmed
  
 
 https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007600.html
  by
  Alex Wang. She referred in that email to this onwiki description
  
 
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire_Grants_%E2%80%93_Gender_gap_campaign
  .
  I should also emphasize that Alex indicated that they don't expect this
 to
  impact WLM-related grants (because they expect teams to request funding
  much
  later in the process
  
 
 https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007603.html
  
  - not before june/july, an assumption I disagree with), and she also
  suggested the closing was not as hard as it sounds, as she's willing to
  discuss problems (she emphasized this in her email).
 
  I don't want to reiterate all discussions about whether gendergap is the
  problem or a symptom (we have many gaps in our community, of which the
  gender gap is the most visible and easiest to measure), but I do feel
  uncomfortable with this campaign. I have asked around a bit in the past
  week and only received negative feedback on the campaign - with people
  confirming my fear that this will likely undermine the community support
  (or at least support by the 'organizing community') for gendergap-related
  projects in general - be it out of frustration, compensation or
 jealousy. I
  called it a 'negative campaign' in my emails because the focus is not
 about
  actively boosting one type of requests (which is the claim), but rather
  about making it harder to do something unrelated to it in the hope that
  people instead will choose for the easy way, and organize a gendergap
  related event.
 
  What I also fear, is that people will just give their request a tiny bit
 of
  'gendergap'-paint, make up some way how they help reduce it (which is
  basically true for almost any outreach event aiming at a group with less
  than 90% men - i.e. almost any group aside from Wikipedia or catholic
  priests). I'm confident that most of our outreach projects, including
 Wiki
  Loves Monuments, could claim to reach relatively more women than the
 editor
  population contains. But I am very unhappy if we start distributing
 grants
  on such shaky grounds - those projects often are much stronger in general
  editor retention, which happens to be relatively more women. The focus of
  the projects would be unnaturally shifted in the grant request compared
 to
  the actual activities.
 
  Again, I hope that the decision makers involved here will reconsider the
  way this has been shaped, and frame it more in a positive way, focusing
 on
  supporting efforts in a thematic direction, rather than discouraging
 other
  thematic directions. And as I have said elsewhere: I would be similarly
  against this, with any other theme - I wouldn't be able to stand the idea
  to focus entirely on photo-events only for three months...
 
  Best,
  Lodewijk
 
  On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 3:59 PM, Jens Best jens.b...@wikimedia.de
 wrote:
 
   Hi all,
  
   I think some clarification is needed by people who are in charge for
 the
   grantmaking process. There is a difference between shutting down the
   grantmaking process (PEG) and (IEG) for three full months and adding a
   voluntary gendergap theme to a project to get better funding chances.
  
   So I really would like to see some clarifications about these leaked
  plans
   before having a propably heated debate about it.
  
   Needless to say that adding ideologically driven must-haves to a
 general
   grantmaking process which only purpose is to serve the voluntary work
 on
  a
   supposed-to-be-free encyclopedia would leave a disturbing impression on
   many people.
  
   best regards
  
   Jens Best
  
  
  
   2015-01-03 15:46 GMT+01:00 Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com:
  
There are multiple ways in how to define the Gendergap, in this case
 it
   is
about female participation.
   
I do think it is a problem that the number of female participants is
dramatically lower than those of male contributors, but still this
 does
   not
give

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

Teemu,
Of course! Not only that, but I think that an internal survey already shows
that WLM attracts a higher percentage of female contributors than any other
project that measured it. Don't assume by the subject heading of this
thread that any WLM project is being shut down. In fact, nothing is being
shut down.
Jane

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 6:03 PM, Leinonen Teemu teemu.leino...@aalto.fi
wrote:

 Hei,

 5 cents: would it make a difference if the Wiki Loves Monuments / Art
 project plans (and others) will explicitly promise that, for instance, the
 gender (f/m) balance of the participants (n 500) will be 40/60 and +50% of
 them will be new editors?

 This would be meet the strategic objectives.

 -Teemu

 On Sat Jan 03 2015 05:27:47 GMT-0500 (COT), Romaine Wiki wrote:
  Hi all,
 
  Some disturbing news entered my mailbox the past days. The grant making
  team is going to shut down the grantmaking process for Project and Event
  Grants (PEG) and Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) for three full
 months!
 
  They have decided that they want to focus only on a specific strategic
  priority: the gender gap, and that all other good projects are refused
 for
  3 months (February-April).
 
  Having more attention to a strategic priority is fine to me. Having more
  attention to the problem of the gender gap, sounds good to me as such, we
  can use much more projects and content in those areas. But that does not
  mean that many many volunteers who are organizing other projects should
  become the victim of other projects.
 
  This is a negative signal to all those volunteers who are currently
 working
  on project plans to be submitted in February, March and April. Good
  projects to be ignored, just because the WMF think those are less
  important. They say this is a positive campaign, but this sounds as a
  negative campaign to me. This discourages many volunteers in doing
 projects.
 
  And even worse: this is only to be generally announced 2 weeks before
 that
  period of shutting down starts! (this sounds like a joke, sadly it isn't)
 
  To organize a good project volunteers (yes, we are still unpaid! and
  organize these projects in our spare time!) we need the time to
 communicate
  well with all our partners and sponsors, and need the time to come up
 with
  a good project plan with a stable basis. Rushing a project in just a
 couple
  of weeks time is very unpleasant and does not help in getting a good
  quality project. And announcing it two weeks before the period indicates
  that organizers aren't taken seriously (enough).
 
  For example, we are currently planning to organize Wiki Loves Monuments
 in
  2015 again, the world wide contest to have a better documentation and
  better display of all the cultural monuments worldwide, recognised as
  largest photo contest in the world by Guinness World Records. We are
  currently working on forming a team and want to have a good stable plan
 to
  be submitted within some weeks, but now we need to rush. And yes we need
 to
  start in January/February or it will be too late to organize it properly.
 
  Also all the national teams of Wiki Loves Monuments, the international
 team
  recommend all the national teams to start in January/February, to have a
  proper organisation together with various local partners and sponsors,
 but
  now all these teams are delayed for three months.
 
  And a personal project of mine in Belgium, I am planning to organize Wiki
  Loves Art in Belgium, together with various partners and sponsors. We
  intent to start in February, but now have to rush to get such done.
 
  By the way: did you know there is a Belgium Gap? Belgian subjects are
  relatively less and worse described on the various Wikipedias.
 
 
  This shutting down results in:
  * Discouraging many volunteers who are planning to submit good project
  proposals.
  * Having volunteers rushed with project plans, which lowers the quality
 of
  the plans.
  * Having volunteers being late and delayed with projects, for no good
  reason.
 
  Grantmaking is intented to support the communities, not frustrating them.
  WMF: stop this negative campaign!
 
 
  And for all project teams who want to organize a gender gap project:
 great
  you organize this, it is very very welcome! But I like to make a
  suggestion: submit the proposal on the first day after the shutting down
  period to give a strong signal to WMF that shutting down is a bad idea.
 
 
  It is time for a new strategic priority: closing the Community Gap. That
 is
  the gap between WMF and the local communities worldwide. It is not new,
 it
  exists for many years already. (It resulted also in the drama of the
  situation around the Mediaviewer in 2014, the drama with the Visual
 Editor
  in 2013, etc. in what WMF didn't sense well the community.) (Maybe the
 gap
  is less between WMF and the English speaking part of the world, but the
  world is larger. We have many people around the world who are speak a

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

2015-01-03 Thread Leinonen Teemu

Hei,

5 cents: would it make a difference if the Wiki Loves Monuments / Art project 
plans (and others) will explicitly promise that, for instance, the gender (f/m) 
balance of the participants (n 500) will be 40/60 and +50% of them will be new 
editors?

This would be meet the strategic objectives.

-Teemu

On Sat Jan 03 2015 05:27:47 GMT-0500 (COT), Romaine Wiki wrote:
 Hi all,
 
 Some disturbing news entered my mailbox the past days. The grant making
 team is going to shut down the grantmaking process for Project and Event
 Grants (PEG) and Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) for three full months!
 
 They have decided that they want to focus only on a specific strategic
 priority: the gender gap, and that all other good projects are refused for
 3 months (February-April).
 
 Having more attention to a strategic priority is fine to me. Having more
 attention to the problem of the gender gap, sounds good to me as such, we
 can use much more projects and content in those areas. But that does not
 mean that many many volunteers who are organizing other projects should
 become the victim of other projects.
 
 This is a negative signal to all those volunteers who are currently working
 on project plans to be submitted in February, March and April. Good
 projects to be ignored, just because the WMF think those are less
 important. They say this is a positive campaign, but this sounds as a
 negative campaign to me. This discourages many volunteers in doing projects.
 
 And even worse: this is only to be generally announced 2 weeks before that
 period of shutting down starts! (this sounds like a joke, sadly it isn't)
 
 To organize a good project volunteers (yes, we are still unpaid! and
 organize these projects in our spare time!) we need the time to communicate
 well with all our partners and sponsors, and need the time to come up with
 a good project plan with a stable basis. Rushing a project in just a couple
 of weeks time is very unpleasant and does not help in getting a good
 quality project. And announcing it two weeks before the period indicates
 that organizers aren't taken seriously (enough).
 
 For example, we are currently planning to organize Wiki Loves Monuments in
 2015 again, the world wide contest to have a better documentation and
 better display of all the cultural monuments worldwide, recognised as
 largest photo contest in the world by Guinness World Records. We are
 currently working on forming a team and want to have a good stable plan to
 be submitted within some weeks, but now we need to rush. And yes we need to
 start in January/February or it will be too late to organize it properly.
 
 Also all the national teams of Wiki Loves Monuments, the international team
 recommend all the national teams to start in January/February, to have a
 proper organisation together with various local partners and sponsors, but
 now all these teams are delayed for three months.
 
 And a personal project of mine in Belgium, I am planning to organize Wiki
 Loves Art in Belgium, together with various partners and sponsors. We
 intent to start in February, but now have to rush to get such done.
 
 By the way: did you know there is a Belgium Gap? Belgian subjects are
 relatively less and worse described on the various Wikipedias.
 
 
 This shutting down results in:
 * Discouraging many volunteers who are planning to submit good project
 proposals.
 * Having volunteers rushed with project plans, which lowers the quality of
 the plans.
 * Having volunteers being late and delayed with projects, for no good
 reason.
 
 Grantmaking is intented to support the communities, not frustrating them.
 WMF: stop this negative campaign!
 
 
 And for all project teams who want to organize a gender gap project: great
 you organize this, it is very very welcome! But I like to make a
 suggestion: submit the proposal on the first day after the shutting down
 period to give a strong signal to WMF that shutting down is a bad idea.
 
 
 It is time for a new strategic priority: closing the Community Gap. That is
 the gap between WMF and the local communities worldwide. It is not new, it
 exists for many years already. (It resulted also in the drama of the
 situation around the Mediaviewer in 2014, the drama with the Visual Editor
 in 2013, etc. in what WMF didn't sense well the community.) (Maybe the gap
 is less between WMF and the English speaking part of the world, but the
 world is larger. We have many people around the world who are speak a
 different language. WMF is not sensing the worldwide community well
 enough.)
 Finally we should do more about this Community Gap.
 
 For those celebrating: I wish you a happy new year with great projects that
 make every single human being freely share in the sum of all human
 knowledge!!
 
 Romaine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

2015-01-03 Thread Lila Tretikov

For everyone here: I've asked our Grantmaking team to comment and clarify
the details of this plan.

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 9:32 AM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org
wrote:

 Answering to Teemu and Chris:

 I do think that the for Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Art it is safe
 to claim that if we organize it the way we would always do, it would still
 tip the gender balance in our community a little more to the female side.
 However, I disagree that this should be a main consideration, because I
 think that would be true for so many outreach projects. Focusing on that
 would be a pity and a distraction imho. Also, for most participants we
 don't know the gender, and we don't want to know the gender (because asking
 for it alone can scare people away) - except for a sample of them, who
 happen to answer the survey afterwards. All data on that is quite shaky.

 If necessary, I could easily make a case why WLM is a wonderful gendergap
 project - the point is that I don't want volunteers to waste their time on
 making such cases, but rather let them be innovative, come up with new
 ideas instead of rebranding existing ideas on something like the gendergap.
 My problems are more fundamental than 'I can't get money for my specific
 project'.

 So Chris: yes, these people do a lot for reducing the gender gap in our
 projects. Also, Wikimedia organizers tend to hop between projects - their
 next might be more focused on a topic that is popular with women, if their
 current idea isn't yet. Drawing them into a topic in a positive way (what
 we do is cool! Join us!) tends to be more successful than telling them they
 are not allowed to do other stuff (we won't fund you at all unless you do
 this specific theme).

 Prioritisation sounds great, but that only works that way if you have one
 clearly defined pool of resources, that you can actually control. What do
 you think is the major bottle neck in organizing activities in the
 Wikimedia movement? In my experience, that is not money, or even WMF staff
 capacity (even though it is a limiting factor sometimes), but the primary
 bottle neck is volunteer organizers (or editors). And volunteer time is not
 a resource you can easily 'control'. If you want to influence it, the most
 effective way is by persuading the volunteers why another angle is more
 interesting, more fun, more effective.

 Best,
 Lodewijk



 On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 6:11 PM, Chris Keating chriskeatingw...@gmail.com
 wrote:

  Like Bence, I would be interested to see how this kind of experiment in
 WMF
  grantmaking works out. And also like him I would be a little surprised if
  something like this is implemented with no notice period.
 
  A couple of responses to Lodewijk's post;
 
 
   with people
   confirming my fear that this will likely undermine the community
 support
   (or at least support by the 'organizing community') for
 gendergap-related
   projects in general - be it out of frustration, compensation or
 jealousy.
 
 
  Out of interest, were any of these people doing anything at all to
 support
  the reduction of the gender gap in the first place? ;)
 
 
 
   I
   called it a 'negative campaign' in my emails because the focus is not
  about
   actively boosting one type of requests (which is the claim), but rather
   about making it harder to do something unrelated to it in the hope that
   people instead will choose for the easy way, and organize a gendergap
   related event.
  
 
  Equally, if you have limited resources, prioritising one thing means
  reducing attention to something else. So saying we shouldn't work on the
  gender gap if anything else gets less atention as a result is logically
  equivalent to saying We shouldn't work on the gender gap.
 
  Regards,
 
  Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

2015-01-03 Thread Lodewijk

Answering to Teemu and Chris:

I do think that the for Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Art it is safe
to claim that if we organize it the way we would always do, it would still
tip the gender balance in our community a little more to the female side.
However, I disagree that this should be a main consideration, because I
think that would be true for so many outreach projects. Focusing on that
would be a pity and a distraction imho. Also, for most participants we
don't know the gender, and we don't want to know the gender (because asking
for it alone can scare people away) - except for a sample of them, who
happen to answer the survey afterwards. All data on that is quite shaky.

If necessary, I could easily make a case why WLM is a wonderful gendergap
project - the point is that I don't want volunteers to waste their time on
making such cases, but rather let them be innovative, come up with new
ideas instead of rebranding existing ideas on something like the gendergap.
My problems are more fundamental than 'I can't get money for my specific
project'.

So Chris: yes, these people do a lot for reducing the gender gap in our
projects. Also, Wikimedia organizers tend to hop between projects - their
next might be more focused on a topic that is popular with women, if their
current idea isn't yet. Drawing them into a topic in a positive way (what
we do is cool! Join us!) tends to be more successful than telling them they
are not allowed to do other stuff (we won't fund you at all unless you do
this specific theme).

Prioritisation sounds great, but that only works that way if you have one
clearly defined pool of resources, that you can actually control. What do
you think is the major bottle neck in organizing activities in the
Wikimedia movement? In my experience, that is not money, or even WMF staff
capacity (even though it is a limiting factor sometimes), but the primary
bottle neck is volunteer organizers (or editors). And volunteer time is not
a resource you can easily 'control'. If you want to influence it, the most
effective way is by persuading the volunteers why another angle is more
interesting, more fun, more effective.

Best,
Lodewijk



On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 6:11 PM, Chris Keating chriskeatingw...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Like Bence, I would be interested to see how this kind of experiment in WMF
 grantmaking works out. And also like him I would be a little surprised if
 something like this is implemented with no notice period.

 A couple of responses to Lodewijk's post;


  with people
  confirming my fear that this will likely undermine the community support
  (or at least support by the 'organizing community') for gendergap-related
  projects in general - be it out of frustration, compensation or jealousy.


 Out of interest, were any of these people doing anything at all to support
 the reduction of the gender gap in the first place? ;)



  I
  called it a 'negative campaign' in my emails because the focus is not
 about
  actively boosting one type of requests (which is the claim), but rather
  about making it harder to do something unrelated to it in the hope that
  people instead will choose for the easy way, and organize a gendergap
  related event.
 

 Equally, if you have limited resources, prioritising one thing means
 reducing attention to something else. So saying we shouldn't work on the
 gender gap if anything else gets less atention as a result is logically
 equivalent to saying We shouldn't work on the gender gap.

 Regards,

 Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

Nope. Whether or not lots and lots of female-related content is generated
and by whom, the participation factor is crucial. Without the women, there
is no female perspective, period. And as far as gender measurement goes,
even if you count all the ones who declined to specify their gender, the
Dutch Wikipedia still comes up as less than 10% female.

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 5:54 PM, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 It is perfectly defined, it only matters which point of view you take.

 The Wikimedia movement consists out of people, projects and content. There
 is less content about so-called female topics. There seem to be less
 projects that specifically cover those so-called female topics. And there
 are less female contributors. All three of these views are related with
 each other.

 And as I sometimes write about those so-called female topics, I notice it
 is more difficult to write neutral about those topics and therefore harder
 to write about.

 Further, I must say that I personally do not feel any need to disclose my
 gender, even while a lot of you have met me. Maybe it is different on some
 wikis, but generally I have the impression that many users do not want to
 disclose it either. So the percentage is less well defined, but I do think
 the m/f spread is far from balanced.
 But something what seems not to be defined is what those so-called female
 topics exactly are. And second, how large these subjects combined are in
 the outside world, because wanting them to be 50-50 is not fair if the
 subjects are 20-80 spread. Or maybe there are gender neutral topics also.

 So yes, there are certainly things that are not defined, but what the
 gendergap is, seems to be defined.

 Romaine


 2015-01-03 16:48 GMT+01:00 Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com:

  I find it interesting to discover via this conversation that it has not
  been defined yet!
 
  On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 4:12 PM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com
 wrote:
 
   On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 3:33 PM, Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  
Nope. Gendergap is about the gap in female participation, not in
female-related topics.
   
  
   I would say it is both, but in either case this would be important to
   define if that is the criteria on which to solicit proposals. (The
 vision
   of Wikimedia is to share the sum of all human knowledge, so from that
   standpoint the end is to close the gap in coverage, diversity in the
   editorship is a  very important means to it.)
  
   In any case, experimentation with the grants programme is probably for
  the
   benefit of the community, but so is reliability and predictability. If
  the
   original assumptions are clear, announcing a major policy change for
 the
   grants programme only with 3 weeks of planned lead time seems to go
  againts
   those latter expectations unfortunately.
  
   Best regards,
   Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

It is perfectly defined, it only matters which point of view you take.

The Wikimedia movement consists out of people, projects and content. There
is less content about so-called female topics. There seem to be less
projects that specifically cover those so-called female topics. And there
are less female contributors. All three of these views are related with
each other.

And as I sometimes write about those so-called female topics, I notice it
is more difficult to write neutral about those topics and therefore harder
to write about.

Further, I must say that I personally do not feel any need to disclose my
gender, even while a lot of you have met me. Maybe it is different on some
wikis, but generally I have the impression that many users do not want to
disclose it either. So the percentage is less well defined, but I do think
the m/f spread is far from balanced.
But something what seems not to be defined is what those so-called female
topics exactly are. And second, how large these subjects combined are in
the outside world, because wanting them to be 50-50 is not fair if the
subjects are 20-80 spread. Or maybe there are gender neutral topics also.

So yes, there are certainly things that are not defined, but what the
gendergap is, seems to be defined.

Romaine


2015-01-03 16:48 GMT+01:00 Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com:

 I find it interesting to discover via this conversation that it has not
 been defined yet!

 On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 4:12 PM, Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com wrote:

  On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 3:33 PM, Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com wrote:
 
   Nope. Gendergap is about the gap in female participation, not in
   female-related topics.
  
 
  I would say it is both, but in either case this would be important to
  define if that is the criteria on which to solicit proposals. (The vision
  of Wikimedia is to share the sum of all human knowledge, so from that
  standpoint the end is to close the gap in coverage, diversity in the
  editorship is a  very important means to it.)
 
  In any case, experimentation with the grants programme is probably for
 the
  benefit of the community, but so is reliability and predictability. If
 the
  original assumptions are clear, announcing a major policy change for the
  grants programme only with 3 weeks of planned lead time seems to go
 againts
  those latter expectations unfortunately.
 
  Best regards,
  Bence
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

2015-01-03 Thread Chris Keating

Like Bence, I would be interested to see how this kind of experiment in WMF
grantmaking works out. And also like him I would be a little surprised if
something like this is implemented with no notice period.

A couple of responses to Lodewijk's post;


 with people
 confirming my fear that this will likely undermine the community support
 (or at least support by the 'organizing community') for gendergap-related
 projects in general - be it out of frustration, compensation or jealousy.


Out of interest, were any of these people doing anything at all to support
the reduction of the gender gap in the first place? ;)



 I
 called it a 'negative campaign' in my emails because the focus is not about
 actively boosting one type of requests (which is the claim), but rather
 about making it harder to do something unrelated to it in the hope that
 people instead will choose for the easy way, and organize a gendergap
 related event.


Equally, if you have limited resources, prioritising one thing means
reducing attention to something else. So saying we shouldn't work on the
gender gap if anything else gets less atention as a result is logically
equivalent to saying We shouldn't work on the gender gap.

Regards,

Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

Hi Jane,

Read!
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007600.html

 From February 1-April 30, PEG will only accept
 proposals as part of the gender gap campaign, with the exception for urgent
 requests.

This means regular projects will not be accepted. That is effectively
shutting the grantmaking down.
Of course we will not let WLM to be shut down. But this grantmaking
shutting down is very demotivating and discouraging, for many organisers.

This is also counter productive in solving the gender gap problem.

Romaine





2015-01-03 18:10 GMT+01:00 Jane Darnell jane...@gmail.com:

 Teemu,
 Of course! Not only that, but I think that an internal survey already shows
 that WLM attracts a higher percentage of female contributors than any other
 project that measured it. Don't assume by the subject heading of this
 thread that any WLM project is being shut down. In fact, nothing is being
 shut down.
 Jane

 On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 6:03 PM, Leinonen Teemu teemu.leino...@aalto.fi
 wrote:

  Hei,
 
  5 cents: would it make a difference if the Wiki Loves Monuments / Art
  project plans (and others) will explicitly promise that, for instance,
 the
  gender (f/m) balance of the participants (n 500) will be 40/60 and +50%
 of
  them will be new editors?
 
  This would be meet the strategic objectives.
 
  -Teemu
 
  On Sat Jan 03 2015 05:27:47 GMT-0500 (COT), Romaine Wiki wrote:
   Hi all,
  
   Some disturbing news entered my mailbox the past days. The grant making
   team is going to shut down the grantmaking process for Project and
 Event
   Grants (PEG) and Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) for three full
  months!
  
   They have decided that they want to focus only on a specific strategic
   priority: the gender gap, and that all other good projects are refused
  for
   3 months (February-April).
  
   Having more attention to a strategic priority is fine to me. Having
 more
   attention to the problem of the gender gap, sounds good to me as such,
 we
   can use much more projects and content in those areas. But that does
 not
   mean that many many volunteers who are organizing other projects should
   become the victim of other projects.
  
   This is a negative signal to all those volunteers who are currently
  working
   on project plans to be submitted in February, March and April. Good
   projects to be ignored, just because the WMF think those are less
   important. They say this is a positive campaign, but this sounds as a
   negative campaign to me. This discourages many volunteers in doing
  projects.
  
   And even worse: this is only to be generally announced 2 weeks before
  that
   period of shutting down starts! (this sounds like a joke, sadly it
 isn't)
  
   To organize a good project volunteers (yes, we are still unpaid! and
   organize these projects in our spare time!) we need the time to
  communicate
   well with all our partners and sponsors, and need the time to come up
  with
   a good project plan with a stable basis. Rushing a project in just a
  couple
   of weeks time is very unpleasant and does not help in getting a good
   quality project. And announcing it two weeks before the period
 indicates
   that organizers aren't taken seriously (enough).
  
   For example, we are currently planning to organize Wiki Loves Monuments
  in
   2015 again, the world wide contest to have a better documentation and
   better display of all the cultural monuments worldwide, recognised as
   largest photo contest in the world by Guinness World Records. We are
   currently working on forming a team and want to have a good stable plan
  to
   be submitted within some weeks, but now we need to rush. And yes we
 need
  to
   start in January/February or it will be too late to organize it
 properly.
  
   Also all the national teams of Wiki Loves Monuments, the international
  team
   recommend all the national teams to start in January/February, to have
 a
   proper organisation together with various local partners and sponsors,
  but
   now all these teams are delayed for three months.
  
   And a personal project of mine in Belgium, I am planning to organize
 Wiki
   Loves Art in Belgium, together with various partners and sponsors. We
   intent to start in February, but now have to rush to get such done.
  
   By the way: did you know there is a Belgium Gap? Belgian subjects are
   relatively less and worse described on the various Wikipedias.
  
  
   This shutting down results in:
   * Discouraging many volunteers who are planning to submit good project
   proposals.
   * Having volunteers rushed with project plans, which lowers the quality
  of
   the plans.
   * Having volunteers being late and delayed with projects, for no good
   reason.
  
   Grantmaking is intented to support the communities, not frustrating
 them.
   WMF: stop this negative campaign!
  
  
   And for all project teams who want to organize a gender gap project:
  great
   you organize this,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

Thanks Lila!

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 7:35 PM, Lila Tretikov l...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 For everyone here: I've asked our Grantmaking team to comment and clarify
 the details of this plan.

 On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 9:32 AM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org
 wrote:

  Answering to Teemu and Chris:
 
  I do think that the for Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Art it is
 safe
  to claim that if we organize it the way we would always do, it would
 still
  tip the gender balance in our community a little more to the female side.
  However, I disagree that this should be a main consideration, because I
  think that would be true for so many outreach projects. Focusing on that
  would be a pity and a distraction imho. Also, for most participants we
  don't know the gender, and we don't want to know the gender (because
 asking
  for it alone can scare people away) - except for a sample of them, who
  happen to answer the survey afterwards. All data on that is quite shaky.
 
  If necessary, I could easily make a case why WLM is a wonderful gendergap
  project - the point is that I don't want volunteers to waste their time
 on
  making such cases, but rather let them be innovative, come up with new
  ideas instead of rebranding existing ideas on something like the
 gendergap.
  My problems are more fundamental than 'I can't get money for my specific
  project'.
 
  So Chris: yes, these people do a lot for reducing the gender gap in our
  projects. Also, Wikimedia organizers tend to hop between projects - their
  next might be more focused on a topic that is popular with women, if
 their
  current idea isn't yet. Drawing them into a topic in a positive way (what
  we do is cool! Join us!) tends to be more successful than telling them
 they
  are not allowed to do other stuff (we won't fund you at all unless you do
  this specific theme).
 
  Prioritisation sounds great, but that only works that way if you have one
  clearly defined pool of resources, that you can actually control. What do
  you think is the major bottle neck in organizing activities in the
  Wikimedia movement? In my experience, that is not money, or even WMF
 staff
  capacity (even though it is a limiting factor sometimes), but the primary
  bottle neck is volunteer organizers (or editors). And volunteer time is
 not
  a resource you can easily 'control'. If you want to influence it, the
 most
  effective way is by persuading the volunteers why another angle is more
  interesting, more fun, more effective.
 
  Best,
  Lodewijk
 
 
 
  On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 6:11 PM, Chris Keating 
 chriskeatingw...@gmail.com
  wrote:
 
   Like Bence, I would be interested to see how this kind of experiment in
  WMF
   grantmaking works out. And also like him I would be a little surprised
 if
   something like this is implemented with no notice period.
  
   A couple of responses to Lodewijk's post;
  
  
with people
confirming my fear that this will likely undermine the community
  support
(or at least support by the 'organizing community') for
  gendergap-related
projects in general - be it out of frustration, compensation or
  jealousy.
  
  
   Out of interest, were any of these people doing anything at all to
  support
   the reduction of the gender gap in the first place? ;)
  
  
  
I
called it a 'negative campaign' in my emails because the focus is not
   about
actively boosting one type of requests (which is the claim), but
 rather
about making it harder to do something unrelated to it in the hope
 that
people instead will choose for the easy way, and organize a gendergap
related event.
   
  
   Equally, if you have limited resources, prioritising one thing means
   reducing attention to something else. So saying we shouldn't work on
 the
   gender gap if anything else gets less atention as a result is
 logically
   equivalent to saying We shouldn't work on the gender gap.
  
   Regards,
  
   Chris
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

2015-01-03 Thread Lodewijk

I hate to fall in repetition of the discussion we had already on the wiki
loves monuments mailing list about this but:
- the problems we identified are far more general than Wiki Loves
Monuments. Even if WLM is fully unaffected, our points stand because that
would be because of timing and not because it works so well.
- One of the learning lessons in 2013 for the international team (I was
part of that team), was that the grant request was finalized way too late.
The request dragged on too long for many reasons, and was already started
behind schedule. If it were up to me, the 2015 team would already make the
request this month anyway.
- Most teams indeed seem to either have it in an Annual Plan Grant, or are
very late in requesting. Also this is something we learn from each time
that it is, in fact, too late. I would definitely not encourage teams to
delay requesting if they already know what they have to request (this is
different if they are still chasing sponsors etc). Most of the other work
for organizing is already due in June-Aug, so it would be smart to be
finished with the finances by then. It allows to focus on what matters most
during that time.

Just to summarize from the other threat.

Best,
Lodewijk

On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 8:53 PM, Ilario Valdelli valde...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi Romaine,
 probably it's my feeling but a lot of countries apply for a grant for WLM
 very late (in general during summer).

 So it cannot be demotivating for WLM.

 I do not understand the impact of the project to assign the first three
 months of 2015 to a specific topic with the normal period of application
 for the national teams.

 The same international team of 2013 submitted the request in June.

 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Wiki_Loves_
 Monuments_international_team/2013_coordination

 Regards

 On 03.01.2015 20:01, Romaine Wiki wrote:

 Hi Jane,

 Read!
 https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/
 2014-December/007600.html

   From February 1-April 30, PEG will only accept
 proposals as part of the gender gap campaign, with the exception for
 urgent
 requests.

 This means regular projects will not be accepted. That is effectively
 shutting the grantmaking down.
 Of course we will not let WLM to be shut down. But this grantmaking
 shutting down is very demotivating and discouraging, for many organisers.

 This is also counter productive in solving the gender gap problem.

 Romaine


 --
 Ilario Valdelli
 Wikimedia CH
 Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
 Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre
 Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
 Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
 Tel: +41764821371
 http://www.wikimedia.ch


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

Hi Ilario,

As said before, that certain grant requests are submitted late, it doesn't
mean it is a good idea.

I was also not speaking about WLM organizers alone, but about all
organizers in general.
Shutting down the grantmaking for them is highly demotivating. Also when it
does not effect them directly.

It is effectively shutting down all projects that should start or are to be
started in these three months. The Grants page says
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Start : Supporting mission-allied
people and organizations around the world.
This is not supporting, but demotivating, demolishing, discouraging, and
frustrating the organizing volunteers.

Shutting down the grantmaking gives a strong negative signal to every
organiser. Your project is not important enough for the movement, that is
what this campaign says.

This is campaign is not benefiting the community, it is damaging it and it
is damaging the trust of the community in WMF.

It is enlarging the Community Gap.

Romaine












2015-01-03 20:53 GMT+01:00 Ilario Valdelli valde...@gmail.com:

 Hi Romaine,
 probably it's my feeling but a lot of countries apply for a grant for WLM
 very late (in general during summer).

 So it cannot be demotivating for WLM.

 I do not understand the impact of the project to assign the first three
 months of 2015 to a specific topic with the normal period of application
 for the national teams.

 The same international team of 2013 submitted the request in June.

 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Wiki_Loves_
 Monuments_international_team/2013_coordination

 Regards

 On 03.01.2015 20:01, Romaine Wiki wrote:

 Hi Jane,

 Read!
 https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/
 2014-December/007600.html

   From February 1-April 30, PEG will only accept
 proposals as part of the gender gap campaign, with the exception for
 urgent
 requests.

 This means regular projects will not be accepted. That is effectively
 shutting the grantmaking down.
 Of course we will not let WLM to be shut down. But this grantmaking
 shutting down is very demotivating and discouraging, for many organisers.

 This is also counter productive in solving the gender gap problem.

 Romaine


 --
 Ilario Valdelli
 Wikimedia CH
 Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
 Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre
 Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
 Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
 Tel: +41764821371
 http://www.wikimedia.ch


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

2015-01-03 Thread Mathias Damour


Le 03/01/2015 14:58, Jane Darnell a écrit :

As a member of the IEG committee I am happy to say that there is no need to
panic. WLM is highly successful project and no one is talking about
shutting it down, or any other project for that matter. The current
campaign is scheduled to be one of hopefully many, targeted at the
community in order to generate themed proposals. The current growth of
highly diverse and inspirational proposals takes increasingly more energy
to manage, judge, and maintain. By introducing a three-month long theme, it
is hoped that the following will occur:
1) Grant committee members in their voluntary role as proposal reviewers
and community sponsors will experience less burn-out in managing proposals
as their will be more cross pollination per cohort of proposers and their
proposals.
2) A targeted campaign to attract proposals will enable easier translation
across projects if the target audience can be identified in advance
3) A targeted campaign will attract more volunteer committee members to
manage proposals, hopefully attracting local experts in various Wikimedia
projects.

The Gendergap will be the first theme. I think it's a great idea! How can
WLM attract more female participation? Any ideas?


No, I have ideas for other good projects, not this one.

I think that the capacity by the WMF - and actual action - to switch on 
and off the grants without debate and even notice depending on such 
thought and so-called campaign is prejudicial, like the capacity to 
switch on and off the donations from one country like - say Russia - is 
prejudicial too.


Le 03/01/2015 22:21, Romaine Wiki a écrit :

The Grants page says
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Start : Supporting mission-allied
people and organizations around the world.
This is not supporting, but demotivating, demolishing, discouraging, and
frustrating the organizing volunteers.


More simply, I would say that supporting does not mean governing or 
piloting.


All things considered, Sue Gardner was eventually wrong. Give the 
fundraising and the grantmaking back to the chapters.


--
Mathias Damour
User:Astirmays

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason

Yes, considering that WLM mailing list has less subscribers than this 
one, I suppose that it's better to repeat here this question.


The discussion is now out of that thread because it has opened a new one 
here.


This may be helpful for people who do not understand the root cause of 
this discussion.


Regards

On 03.01.2015 21:19, Lodewijk wrote:

I hate to fall in repetition of the discussion we had already on the wiki
loves monuments mailing list about this but:
- the problems we identified are far more general than Wiki Loves
Monuments. Even if WLM is fully unaffected, our points stand because that
would be because of timing and not because it works so well.
- One of the learning lessons in 2013 for the international team (I was
part of that team), was that the grant request was finalized way too late.
The request dragged on too long for many reasons, and was already started
behind schedule. If it were up to me, the 2015 team would already make the
request this month anyway.
- Most teams indeed seem to either have it in an Annual Plan Grant, or are
very late in requesting. Also this is something we learn from each time
that it is, in fact, too late. I would definitely not encourage teams to
delay requesting if they already know what they have to request (this is
different if they are still chasing sponsors etc). Most of the other work
for organizing is already due in June-Aug, so it would be smart to be
finished with the finances by then. It allows to focus on what matters most
during that time.

Just to summarize from the other threat.

Best,
Lodewijk




--
Ilario Valdelli
Wikimedia CH
Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre
Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
Tel: +41764821371
http://www.wikimedia.ch


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason