Fair enough, Brion :-) -- I'm just going to amplify and elaborate a little on Jennifer's original mail. I think some of this is on the meta page, but I'll say it here anyway.
The purpose of the chapters grant process is to make money available to people to get good work done. The basic assumption underpinning it is that those people know best what they need to make progress towards our shared goals. They know their culture best, they know their situation best, and they know best what will help them get stuff done. Because of that, the intent of the Wikimedia Foundation is to provide a simple lightweight process for grants approval. Many chapters have never applied for a grant in any context: they are learning how to do it, and we want to support that learning. We have an obligation to apply some scrutiny to their requests (and we do), but we also acknowledge that we at the Foundation may or may not have any particular expertise in Portugese culture, or German culture, or Indian. We don't pretend to be the experts in their specific context. To that end, we're comfortable applying some scrutiny and finetuning, which Jennifer has done --- but we do also want to trust them, and to assume good faith. I am confident that the Portugese grant recipients, like the other recipients, will put the money to good use. They're required to report on what they did with it, and we expect that if the money turns out to be too much, or the need turns out to be somewhat different than planned, they will tell us so, and we will work out something sensible that is not wasteful. Probably some mistakes will be made, and we will learn from that. That will be unavoidable, and is also a desirable part of the process. Part of the purpose is to learn -- all of us, together. And that is also why the process is public: so people other than the Foundation and the grant recipients, can comment and influence and share and learn. On the whole, I am confident the money will be well-used, and will achieve its goal: supporting people in advancing our shared mission, in ways that make sense in their context. Thanks, Sue On 11/09/2009, Brion Vibber <br...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > May I respectfully suggest that further discussion on this thread be > taken offlist until new arguments come to light which have not already > been posted? > > -- brion > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation 415 839 6885 office 415 816 9967 cell Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
