Hi Sydney, I understand your perspective, but I also understand the "where is the carrot?" question. I would actively support the campaign if it had been run as one of stating that for X weeks or months that the WMF grants system would give priority to gendergap related proposals and that we would have other themes during the year. This is effectively what has been said is happening, it just has been expressed as a ban against non-gendergap proposals.
Folks would understand if their proposal then got responses such as "thank you, with the priority on gendergap we have scheduled your excellent WLM/Belgium/LGBT Pride proposal for a review in 2 months time". As a founder of a user group and once a trustee of a chapter, I would be concerned if this same method was applied to my most loved project areas for a month or two, unless the volunteer group were notified well in advance so that we could work with the grants team with our network of contacts and communication channels to ensure a healthy mix of proposals in time for the limited window available. A community changing and high impact proposal might take up to a year to assemble a team of volunteers and have a strong enough vision to put a detailed proposal together. A month or even 3 months notice puts a huge amount of stress on the handful of unpaid volunteers prepared to put in the hard work that these proposals take, not because the system is overly bureaucratic, but because we are so worried about doing the right thing, doing it well and keepinhg our network of volunteers on-board with plans and ready to use the grant to maximum effect when it arrives. Sadly "burn-out" remains a major issue for our most active volunteers and we should take care to set up our systems to be flexible and low stress. I hope the experiment is successful and there are some interesting gendergap proposals that have significant measurable outcomes on our projects, in terms of active users and content creation. At the same time I hope that folks responsible for the grants process will adapt and improve to find a more harmonious positive approach to prioritization; i.e. lots of easy to understand carrots which are not too tricky to reach for. Fae On 9 January 2015 at 15:34, Sydney Poore <[email protected]> wrote: > It appears to me that you are entirely missing the actual nature of the > problem and the reason for having a campaign targeted at the gender gap. > > The *problem* is that there have been a suboptimal number of grant requests > for funds to address the gender gap even though it a listed priority of the > WMF. > > The purpose of the campaign is to invite requests for funding, have extra > support available if people need mentoring or assistance of other kinds. To > do this campaign well, the WMF staff needs to refocus the time of people > toward this endeavor. > > A wonderful response from people reading about this campaign would be to > ask: what can I do to help bring in high quality grant requests? > > Those of you who are familiar with making grant requests or using the > IdeaLab, offer to help people who are newer to the process. > > Those of you who are developers and see a way to improve an idea with > technology, step in and make suggestion. > > Over the past 3-4 years all around the world people have holding > conferences and discussing the gender gap. Now is the time to expand on the > work that has been done in these conference. Help spread the word. Assist > with translations to help some who is less comfortable writing in English > bring there ideas to meta. > > The point of this targeted campaign is far more than reserving a specific > amount of dollars for the gender gap issue. > > The biggest obstacle to success will be the lack of human resources to > refine and execute the projects. > > Therefore is the reason that people and organizations are being asked to > set aside other projects in order to help address this vital area of > concern. > > I hope everyone reading this email will do at least one small thing to help. > > Warm regards, > > Sydney > On Jan 8, 2015 11:04 PM, "Bjoern Hoehrmann" <[email protected]> wrote: -- [email protected] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
