Re: [Wiki-research-l] Chapters

[Tilman Bayer]

This 2010 conference paper by Leonhard Dobusch and Sigrid Quack compared
the global affiliate network of the Wikimedia Foundation and Creative
Commons, based on many interviews with (on the Wikimedia side) chapter
members:
http://wikis.fu-berlin.de/download/attachments/59080767/Dobusch-Quack-Paper.pdf

On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 5:41 PM, Aisha Brady  wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Could anyone point me towards any papers relevant to Wikimedia chapters
> (how they function, the work they do, whether they have been successful or
> otherwise)?
>
> Thank you! :)
>
> Aisha
>
> ___
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
>


-- 
Tilman Bayer
Senior Analyst
Wikimedia Foundation
IRC (Freenode): HaeB
___
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

Re: [Wiki-research-l] Chapters

[Maria Cruz]

Hi Aisha,
to answer your question, the only relevant publications that may help you
are reports. Chapters and user groups report at least annually, but we have
not done a comparison between affiliate groups. We have only done this
comparative studies for program mapping [1] and grants accountability
purposes [2].

You can find the annual reports on Meta here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports That page is where all affiliates
latest reporting is cataloged, and is always updated. Some of them are a
simple count of activities, others have more narrative and more data.

Hope that helps!

Best,

María
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Evaluation/Evaluation_reports
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Evaluation/Evaluation_at_the_Wikimedia_Foundation



On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 5:41 PM Aisha Brady  wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Could anyone point me towards any papers relevant to Wikimedia chapters
> (how they function, the work they do, whether they have been successful or
> otherwise)?
>
> Thank you! :)
>
> Aisha
> ___
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
-- 
María Cruz
Communications and Outreach Project Manager, Community Engagement
___
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

Re: [Wiki-research-l] Chapters

[Ziko van Dijk]

Hello Aisha,

Indeed there is not much research on Wikimedia affiliates (chapters or
other). What are you specifically interested in, for what research purpose?
In sociology, history, management science? :-)

Kind regards
Ziko

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ziko





2017-01-10 12:56 GMT+01:00 Gerard Meijssen :

> Hoi,
> Return on investment is in our context all too arbitrary. Ask yourself; is
> investing in gender gap important but does it make the best return on
> investment. At the time I invested in documenting every person who died in
> Wikidata. It was a good investment because now people have taken over from
> me. Now at years end they use Wikidata to know who the "famous" people are.
>
> The question is not bang for the buck. The question is where are we weak
> and how can we change this. My current project is adding information about
> the nobility, the monarchs of particularly Asia. I am learning as I am
> doing this and I blog about it. All the investments in students working on
> Wikipedia does not make the quality of the subjects I write about better.
> Many of the stuff I am involved with has a point of view that I find is
> hardly neutral. It is however not the subjects students are taught.
>
> When a chapter, a community finds that a specific area is important to
> them, they should be able to do so. Their relevance and work / investment
> is not to be mistaken for a provable "return on investment". Because of the
> gender gap I do give more time to the women I find. That awareness is
> something you cannot measure but it does have a bearing. People with proper
> historic knowledge could do much more; they would study the relationship
> between marriages and peace between countries when they are ruled by
> monarchs. They would bring this out. At this time we do not even have many
> of the important battles and wars from the past... I am not saying this is
> more important but it paints the picture.
>
> When you want return on investment, there are the things people do not
> care about because it means that it changes the way things are. The best
> return on investment for Wikidata is by replacing red links and wiki links
> with references to Wikidata items. I dare anyone to find an argument how it
> will not bring more quality to any Wikipedia.
>
> My point is that we will only look into the things that we know and care
> for and in the process forget what we do it for. Money / investment is more
> of the same. I prefer that we trust more and do not measure using our own
> yard stick.
>
> NB I am into meters and metric myself :)
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
> On 10 January 2017 at 11:30, Jane Darnell  wrote:
>
>> What's wrong with "return on investment"? And what is a "term of art"
>> exactly? I agree with Kerry and Pine both about the frustrations, but I
>> also agree with Asaf in terms of all the improvements WMF has made. The
>> problem with making a yearly chapter plan is the lack of knowledge on what
>> "impact" (still better than any other word) was achieved the previous year,
>> making estimation nearly impossible. For the Dutch chapter, the various
>> projects (WLM etc) have been able to come up with their own measurements
>> over time. The problem with any new project is that there is never anything
>> to base estimates on. I am a terrible estimator myself (even when I have
>> pretty good data to base my estimate on), but I enjoy finding creative ways
>> to measure things. Right now we are in general terrible at measuring
>> project-related chapter stuff, and the stuff we are good at measuring is
>> hard to share with the people who need it most (see Asaf's comments about
>> active editors).
>>
>> Last night I had a long skype-chat with my gendergap friends in NL and we
>> were plotting what we can measure now as a way of being able to measure
>> impact after some (soon-to-be-dreamed-up) international women's day editing
>> event in March. One of the problems with measuring edits is the need for
>> anonymity that Asaf and Kerry talk about. So we need to somehow capture
>> aggregated measurements, but how can we do this and how do we define a
>> "gendergap-related edit"? Theoretically this is an edit made either by a
>> new or existing editor -or- about a woman, and either one is prompted not
>> by something random (organic growth model of Wikimedia projects such as
>> Wikipedia), but specifically by something in our gendergap workgroup
>> "output" (whatever that is). The return on investment (=what we get for
>> giving our personal time) is the increase in such edits over time. At the
>> end of the day, we need to measure "our" increase of aggregated edits
>> against the "normal" increase in aggregated edits, and if we can never
>> measure this, why don't we all just shut up and go back to editing? Well I
>> believe that these efforts will at some point become measurable and I have
>> good faith that these efforts are not just "drops in the bucket". Sometimes
>> it helps to 

Re: [Wiki-research-l] Chapters

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Return on investment is in our context all too arbitrary. Ask yourself; is
investing in gender gap important but does it make the best return on
investment. At the time I invested in documenting every person who died in
Wikidata. It was a good investment because now people have taken over from
me. Now at years end they use Wikidata to know who the "famous" people are.

The question is not bang for the buck. The question is where are we weak
and how can we change this. My current project is adding information about
the nobility, the monarchs of particularly Asia. I am learning as I am
doing this and I blog about it. All the investments in students working on
Wikipedia does not make the quality of the subjects I write about better.
Many of the stuff I am involved with has a point of view that I find is
hardly neutral. It is however not the subjects students are taught.

When a chapter, a community finds that a specific area is important to
them, they should be able to do so. Their relevance and work / investment
is not to be mistaken for a provable "return on investment". Because of the
gender gap I do give more time to the women I find. That awareness is
something you cannot measure but it does have a bearing. People with proper
historic knowledge could do much more; they would study the relationship
between marriages and peace between countries when they are ruled by
monarchs. They would bring this out. At this time we do not even have many
of the important battles and wars from the past... I am not saying this is
more important but it paints the picture.

When you want return on investment, there are the things people do not care
about because it means that it changes the way things are. The best return
on investment for Wikidata is by replacing red links and wiki links with
references to Wikidata items. I dare anyone to find an argument how it will
not bring more quality to any Wikipedia.

My point is that we will only look into the things that we know and care
for and in the process forget what we do it for. Money / investment is more
of the same. I prefer that we trust more and do not measure using our own
yard stick.

NB I am into meters and metric myself :)
Thanks,
  GerardM

On 10 January 2017 at 11:30, Jane Darnell  wrote:

> What's wrong with "return on investment"? And what is a "term of art"
> exactly? I agree with Kerry and Pine both about the frustrations, but I
> also agree with Asaf in terms of all the improvements WMF has made. The
> problem with making a yearly chapter plan is the lack of knowledge on what
> "impact" (still better than any other word) was achieved the previous year,
> making estimation nearly impossible. For the Dutch chapter, the various
> projects (WLM etc) have been able to come up with their own measurements
> over time. The problem with any new project is that there is never anything
> to base estimates on. I am a terrible estimator myself (even when I have
> pretty good data to base my estimate on), but I enjoy finding creative ways
> to measure things. Right now we are in general terrible at measuring
> project-related chapter stuff, and the stuff we are good at measuring is
> hard to share with the people who need it most (see Asaf's comments about
> active editors).
>
> Last night I had a long skype-chat with my gendergap friends in NL and we
> were plotting what we can measure now as a way of being able to measure
> impact after some (soon-to-be-dreamed-up) international women's day editing
> event in March. One of the problems with measuring edits is the need for
> anonymity that Asaf and Kerry talk about. So we need to somehow capture
> aggregated measurements, but how can we do this and how do we define a
> "gendergap-related edit"? Theoretically this is an edit made either by a
> new or existing editor -or- about a woman, and either one is prompted not
> by something random (organic growth model of Wikimedia projects such as
> Wikipedia), but specifically by something in our gendergap workgroup
> "output" (whatever that is). The return on investment (=what we get for
> giving our personal time) is the increase in such edits over time. At the
> end of the day, we need to measure "our" increase of aggregated edits
> against the "normal" increase in aggregated edits, and if we can never
> measure this, why don't we all just shut up and go back to editing? Well I
> believe that these efforts will at some point become measurable and I have
> good faith that these efforts are not just "drops in the bucket". Sometimes
> it helps to just keep trying to reinvent the wheel, and until we do, we
> keep at least a list of new and improved articles that we are sure were
> prompted by our efforts (though these are certainly not 100% of all the
> edits we have inspired).
>
> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 7:52 AM, Gerard Meijssen <
> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> With logic like "return on investment" you favour big over important. So
>> no, please no.
>> 

Re: [Wiki-research-l] Chapters

[Jane Darnell]

What's wrong with "return on investment"? And what is a "term of art"
exactly? I agree with Kerry and Pine both about the frustrations, but I
also agree with Asaf in terms of all the improvements WMF has made. The
problem with making a yearly chapter plan is the lack of knowledge on what
"impact" (still better than any other word) was achieved the previous year,
making estimation nearly impossible. For the Dutch chapter, the various
projects (WLM etc) have been able to come up with their own measurements
over time. The problem with any new project is that there is never anything
to base estimates on. I am a terrible estimator myself (even when I have
pretty good data to base my estimate on), but I enjoy finding creative ways
to measure things. Right now we are in general terrible at measuring
project-related chapter stuff, and the stuff we are good at measuring is
hard to share with the people who need it most (see Asaf's comments about
active editors).

Last night I had a long skype-chat with my gendergap friends in NL and we
were plotting what we can measure now as a way of being able to measure
impact after some (soon-to-be-dreamed-up) international women's day editing
event in March. One of the problems with measuring edits is the need for
anonymity that Asaf and Kerry talk about. So we need to somehow capture
aggregated measurements, but how can we do this and how do we define a
"gendergap-related edit"? Theoretically this is an edit made either by a
new or existing editor -or- about a woman, and either one is prompted not
by something random (organic growth model of Wikimedia projects such as
Wikipedia), but specifically by something in our gendergap workgroup
"output" (whatever that is). The return on investment (=what we get for
giving our personal time) is the increase in such edits over time. At the
end of the day, we need to measure "our" increase of aggregated edits
against the "normal" increase in aggregated edits, and if we can never
measure this, why don't we all just shut up and go back to editing? Well I
believe that these efforts will at some point become measurable and I have
good faith that these efforts are not just "drops in the bucket". Sometimes
it helps to just keep trying to reinvent the wheel, and until we do, we
keep at least a list of new and improved articles that we are sure were
prompted by our efforts (though these are certainly not 100% of all the
edits we have inspired).

On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 7:52 AM, Gerard Meijssen 
wrote:

> Hoi,
> With logic like "return on investment" you favour big over important. So
> no, please no.
> Thanks,
>  GerardM
>
> On 10 January 2017 at 07:23, Pine W  wrote:
>
>>
>> To clarify my earlier comment about the term "impact": this has been used
>> as a term of art by WMF in ways that I think are difficult even for native
>> English speakers to grasp without specific instruction in how WMF uses the
>> term. In practice, among grantees, the term seems to be used to mean a
>> variety of things: "outcome", "output", "success", etc. I am hopeful that
>> we can discontinue use of the word "impact" because of its confusing and
>> varied uses in practice.
>>
>> I am in favor of attempting to quantify how much return on investment is
>> received on the money and time (including precious volunteer time) invested
>> in and by the affiliates and the people who participate in affiliate work.
>> I suggest using terms other than "impact" to describe these returns on
>> investment.
>>
>> I share a number of Kerry's frustrations with WMF grantmaking for
>> affiliates; some of those frustrations were factors in my decision to
>> significantly decrease my involvement in Cascadia Wikimedians, although
>> there were other significant factors as well.
>>
>> Pine
>>
>>
>>
>> ___
>> Wiki-research-l mailing list
>> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>>
>>
>
> ___
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
>
___
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

Re: [Wiki-research-l] Chapters

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
With logic like "return on investment" you favour big over important. So
no, please no.
Thanks,
 GerardM

On 10 January 2017 at 07:23, Pine W  wrote:

>
> To clarify my earlier comment about the term "impact": this has been used
> as a term of art by WMF in ways that I think are difficult even for native
> English speakers to grasp without specific instruction in how WMF uses the
> term. In practice, among grantees, the term seems to be used to mean a
> variety of things: "outcome", "output", "success", etc. I am hopeful that
> we can discontinue use of the word "impact" because of its confusing and
> varied uses in practice.
>
> I am in favor of attempting to quantify how much return on investment is
> received on the money and time (including precious volunteer time) invested
> in and by the affiliates and the people who participate in affiliate work.
> I suggest using terms other than "impact" to describe these returns on
> investment.
>
> I share a number of Kerry's frustrations with WMF grantmaking for
> affiliates; some of those frustrations were factors in my decision to
> significantly decrease my involvement in Cascadia Wikimedians, although
> there were other significant factors as well.
>
> Pine
>
>
>
> ___
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
>
___
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

Re: [Wiki-research-l] Chapters

[Pine W]

To clarify my earlier comment about the term "impact": this has been used
as a term of art by WMF in ways that I think are difficult even for native
English speakers to grasp without specific instruction in how WMF uses the
term. In practice, among grantees, the term seems to be used to mean a
variety of things: "outcome", "output", "success", etc. I am hopeful that
we can discontinue use of the word "impact" because of its confusing and
varied uses in practice.

I am in favor of attempting to quantify how much return on investment is
received on the money and time (including precious volunteer time) invested
in and by the affiliates and the people who participate in affiliate work.
I suggest using terms other than "impact" to describe these returns on
investment.

I share a number of Kerry's frustrations with WMF grantmaking for
affiliates; some of those frustrations were factors in my decision to
significantly decrease my involvement in Cascadia Wikimedians, although
there were other significant factors as well.

Pine
___
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

Re: [Wiki-research-l] Chapters

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
>From my perspective, this endless talk, these ever shifting sands prevent
chapters in many ways to branch out and do things that are not necessarily
the best from a global point of view but are the best from a local point of
view. Do appreciate that many of these discussions are not happening on a
level playing field with too much consideration given to the Anglo Saxon
point of view and practice.

When I observe the funding and the allocation of money to chapters it is a
case in point. For regulatory purposes the Dutch chapter cannot use
"Wikipedia" in its funding mission because it is exclusively used by the
WMF. At the same time, the Dutch chapter is asked to support fundraising in
the Netherlands AND is asked to substantially do its own fundraising. Other
chapters do not need funding from the WMF and they do as they see fit, they
are not restricted by all this continuous talk.

I have also observed that the WMF has its own agenda and when projects fail
because of said agenda, it is still the others who are to blame. This is
something I observed in a project that I got funding for. To make it worse,
the reason why part of my project failed is remembered but not the part
where my project got screwed because prerequisites needed from the WMF were
not met.

Ask yourself, why are projects and practices to be adopted by other
languages and why is there so little that goes the other way? Do appreciate
that English is less than 50% of our traffic.
Thanks,
   GerardM

On 9 January 2017 at 21:45, Pine W  wrote:

> Hi Aisha,
>
> I suggest that you contact Jaime Anstee and/or Katy Love (cc'd here) about
> this subject, because they are WMF staff who do a lot of work with
> grantmaking and performance evaluation for chapters. They might know of
> some analyses that could help you.
>
> Discussions about what kinds of resources, and what quantities of
> resources, to allocate to the chapters vs. smaller affiliates, other kinds
> of grants, and WMF-run work that focuses on content and community
> development, have been happening for years, and are likely to continue for
> the foreseeable future.
>
> Different chapters function differently, partly because of varied cultural
> and legal contexts, so there is not a monolithic model of how a chapter
> should run. The definition of "successful" varies from affiliate to
> affiliate.
>
> There has been a discussion for years about how to define and quantify
> affiliate "impact"; my personal preference is to abolish are use of that
> word. (:
>
> Pine
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 5:41 PM, Aisha Brady  wrote:
>
>> Hi!
>>
>> Could anyone point me towards any papers relevant to Wikimedia chapters
>> (how they function, the work they do, whether they have been successful or
>> otherwise)?
>>
>> Thank you! :)
>>
>> Aisha
>>
>> ___
>> Wiki-research-l mailing list
>> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>>
>>
>
> ___
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
>
___
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

Re: [Wiki-research-l] Chapters

[Asaf Bartov]

Hi, Kerry.

Thanks for sharing these thoughts.  I know what you're talking about, and I
think they are important to express, for the benefit of those who do not
have experience with the kinds of activities running a chapter requires. (I
do.)

Some comments, inline:

(Pardon the length of this e-mail.  I thought it a good opportunity to
engage with this important topic, and I hope I offer some new thoughts to
at least some of you.)

On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 4:50 PM Kerry Raymond 
wrote:

> My personal 10c on this having been a chapter member for several  years
> and a chapter committee member for some of those years  is that there are
> the chapters who get annual funding and those who don’t.
>

And there are chapters (and non-chapters) that get funding on a project
basis, which *can* include some compensation for lost days of employment.
If you think this could help WMAU, I encourage you to discuss it with one
of WMF's grant program officers.  See [[m:Grants:Start]].

Also, chapters can transition from project funding to annual funding, given
a track record of accountable spending and organizational maturity.  Some
example of chapters that have made that transition in the last couple of
years are Wikimedia Ukraine and Wikimedia Spain.


> If you don’t get annual funding, then you have no staff member who can do
> the day-to-day administrative work (every organisation has to submit forms
> to their government, organise auditing, keep the web site updated, do the
> bookkeeping, etc) so this work has to be farmed out to the members, which
> means that sometimes you have nobody with the right skills
> (responsibilities of treasurers make it a particularly difficult role to
> fill) and that you use up all of people’s time and goodwill in doing the
> day-to-day stuff instead of doing the exciting projects you hoped you’d be
> doing as a chapter member.
>

In addition to the possibility of getting reimbursed for time off work,
grants proposals can be written to include paying contractors for services
like bookkeeping, auditing, and Web site management.  I recognize it
*usually* falls to the (active among the) board members of a small chapter,
but it doesn't have to, with a bit of planning.


> Contrary to what WMF think ,there is a lot of work involved in writing
> grant applications
>

I wonder what makes you say that.  As a former grantmaker at WMF, I know I
have never considered writing grant applications easy (or fun), and
certainly never said anything of the sort.  I do think WMF has taken some
pains over the years to make the process _as_ painless as possible (not
pain-free, to be sure), and I think we're doing fairly well compared to
most traditional grantmakers.  But I know I speak for my team when I say
none of us thinks this is not a lot of work.

If, on the other hand, you meant to say "it's more work than a group of
volunteers can be expected to do" -- that I do disagree with.  There is
ample empirical evidence that many groups of volunteers *do* manage to
write grant applications, and with some care and good judgment, they also
manage to grow the organization, both in active and engaged volunteer base,
and in organizational capacity up to and including hiring employees.


> and, when you are doing it with lots of volunteers each with randoms
> skills and only a certain amount of spare time, generally some people let
> you down (family issues, busy at work, or maybe just don’t know how to
> write the section allocated to them) and it doesn’t get finished to meet
> the deadline, which is then a waste of the time of the people who did their
> share of the work. The net result is a somewhat demoralising downward
> spiral with fewer members, burned-out committee people, and fewer
> achievements. I’ve pretty much abandoned trying to work chapter-wide and
> just try to do what I can in my own local area.
>

This is certainly demoralizing, and I am sorry to hear this has been your
experience. I have heard similar experiences from others in Australia.
There is no doubt that in addition to objective difficulties (huge country,
widely distributed community), there have also been some difficulties
caused by some internal strife and poor decisions in WMAU's past, which
must have contributed to the downward spiral, as you aptly call it, of
frustration, demotivation, and burnout.

The only known cure to such a downward spiral is resisting it with an
upward spiral: finding new people, or at least new energy, to put in work
despite the frustration and despite past disappointments, utilizing all
available resources (e.g. those I described above, and several others that
had perhaps not been available in previous years), and creating an upward
spiral of small successes, motivating and drawing others, and growing
anew.  Perhaps you are on your way to doing this, with the activities you
mentioned taking on; perhaps you do not feel up to doing this, and I am not
laying that burden on your shoulders; I am merely sharing a tho

Re: [Wiki-research-l] Chapters

[Stuart A. Yeates]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 1:50 PM, Kerry Raymond 
wrote:

> My personal 10c on this having been a chapter member for several  years
> and a chapter committee member for some of those years  is that there are
> the chapters who get annual funding and those who don’t. If you don’t get
> annual funding, then you have no staff member who can do the day-to-day
> administrative work (every organisation has to submit forms to their
> government, organise auditing, keep the web site updated, do the
> bookkeeping, etc) so this work has to be farmed out to the members, which
> means that sometimes you have nobody with the right skills
> (responsibilities of treasurers make it a particularly difficult role to
> fill) and that you use up all of people’s time and goodwill in doing the
> day-to-day stuff instead of doing the exciting projects you hoped you’d be
> doing as a chapter member. Contrary to what WMF think ,there is a lot of
> work involved in writing grant applications and, when you are doing it with
> lots of volunteers each with randoms skills and only a certain amount of
> spare time, generally some people let you down (family issues, busy at
> work, or maybe just don’t know how to write the section allocated to them)
> and it doesn’t get finished to meet the deadline, which is then a waste of
> the time of the people who did their share of the work. The net result is a
> somewhat demoralising downward spiral with fewer members, burned-out
> committee people, and fewer achievements. I’ve pretty much abandoned trying
> to work chapter-wide and just try to do what I can in my own local area.
>
>
>
> WMF strongly pushes you to use volunteer time in a chapter, but overlooks
> practical realities. Engagement with GLAMs almost always involves weekday
> meetings; most volunteers are not available on weekdays due to their own
> employment. I have 7 upcoming GLAM sessions in the next 3 weeks (all for
> 1Lib1Ref) all on weekdays and despite my call for help to both chapter
> members and the Australian noticeboard, nobody is volunteering; I guess I
> am doing them all myself (assuming I don’t have conflicting commitments).
> Even committee meetings are very hard to schedule across 4 time zones with
> everyone with different working hours, different commitments to family
> events etc on the weekends, and technology problems with phones/computers
> often waste a lot of the meeting time (some people can’t get Hangouts to
> work for them, other people’s microphones cut out randomly, etc). Our
> chapter has never met face to face.
>

I've been approached several times to start/spearhead a national chapter
and have declined for exactly these reasons.

cheers
stuart

--
...let us be heard from red core to black sky
___
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

Re: [Wiki-research-l] Chapters

[Kerry Raymond]

...@lists.wikimedia.org] On 
Behalf Of Pine W
Sent: Tuesday, 10 January 2017 6:46 AM
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities 

Cc: Jaime Anstee ; Katy Love 
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Chapters

 

Hi Aisha,

I suggest that you contact Jaime Anstee and/or Katy Love (cc'd here) about this 
subject, because they are WMF staff who do a lot of work with grantmaking and 
performance evaluation for chapters. They might know of some analyses that 
could help you.

Discussions about what kinds of resources, and what quantities of resources, to 
allocate to the chapters vs. smaller affiliates, other kinds of grants, and 
WMF-run work that focuses on content and community development, have been 
happening for years, and are likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Different chapters function differently, partly because of varied cultural and 
legal contexts, so there is not a monolithic model of how a chapter should run. 
The definition of "successful" varies from affiliate to affiliate. 

There has been a discussion for years about how to define and quantify 
affiliate "impact"; my personal preference is to abolish are use of that word. 
(:

 

Pine

 

 

On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 5:41 PM, Aisha Brady mailto:aishabr...@gmail.com> > wrote:

Hi! 

 

Could anyone point me towards any papers relevant to Wikimedia chapters (how 
they function, the work they do, whether they have been successful or 
otherwise)? 

 

Thank you! :)

 

Aisha


___
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org 
<mailto:Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org> 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

 

___
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

Re: [Wiki-research-l] Chapters

[Pine W]

Hi Aisha,

I suggest that you contact Jaime Anstee and/or Katy Love (cc'd here) about
this subject, because they are WMF staff who do a lot of work with
grantmaking and performance evaluation for chapters. They might know of
some analyses that could help you.

Discussions about what kinds of resources, and what quantities of
resources, to allocate to the chapters vs. smaller affiliates, other kinds
of grants, and WMF-run work that focuses on content and community
development, have been happening for years, and are likely to continue for
the foreseeable future.

Different chapters function differently, partly because of varied cultural
and legal contexts, so there is not a monolithic model of how a chapter
should run. The definition of "successful" varies from affiliate to
affiliate.

There has been a discussion for years about how to define and quantify
affiliate "impact"; my personal preference is to abolish are use of that
word. (:

Pine


On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 5:41 PM, Aisha Brady  wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Could anyone point me towards any papers relevant to Wikimedia chapters
> (how they function, the work they do, whether they have been successful or
> otherwise)?
>
> Thank you! :)
>
> Aisha
>
> ___
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
>
___
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

Re: [Wiki-research-l] Chapters

[Aaron Halfaker]

Relevant: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_Dialogue

On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 12:23 PM, Jonathan Morgan 
wrote:

> Hi Aisha,
>
> Interesting question. I haven't read anything that fits this description,
> but you may want to take a look at the work of Iolanda Pensa[1] and Darius
> Jemielniak[2], both of whom are researchers and also active in Movement
> governance.
>
> 1. http://repository.supsi.ch/2138/
> 2. http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=24010
>
> On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 5:41 PM, Aisha Brady  wrote:
>
>> Hi!
>>
>> Could anyone point me towards any papers relevant to Wikimedia chapters
>> (how they function, the work they do, whether they have been successful or
>> otherwise)?
>>
>> Thank you! :)
>>
>> Aisha
>>
>> ___
>> Wiki-research-l mailing list
>> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Jonathan T. Morgan
> Senior Design Researcher
> Wikimedia Foundation
> User:Jmorgan (WMF) 
>
>
> ___
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
>
___
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

Re: [Wiki-research-l] Chapters

[Jonathan Morgan]

Hi Aisha,

Interesting question. I haven't read anything that fits this description,
but you may want to take a look at the work of Iolanda Pensa[1] and Darius
Jemielniak[2], both of whom are researchers and also active in Movement
governance.

1. http://repository.supsi.ch/2138/
2. http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=24010

On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 5:41 PM, Aisha Brady  wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Could anyone point me towards any papers relevant to Wikimedia chapters
> (how they function, the work they do, whether they have been successful or
> otherwise)?
>
> Thank you! :)
>
> Aisha
>
> ___
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
>


-- 
Jonathan T. Morgan
Senior Design Researcher
Wikimedia Foundation
User:Jmorgan (WMF) 
___
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l

[Wiki-research-l] Chapters

[Aisha Brady]

Hi!

Could anyone point me towards any papers relevant to Wikimedia chapters
(how they function, the work they do, whether they have been successful or
otherwise)?

Thank you! :)

Aisha
___
Wiki-research-l mailing list
Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l