Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan for FY 15-16

[Samuel Klein]

@Garfield - I would love to hear what sort of community feedback you are
hoping for; and what you would ideally get out of it.
Was this past week's input helpful?  Are you looking for additional
feedback over the coming weeks?


Liam writes:
> It would be good if the WMF would *try to set a good example* by following
> the rules that it sets for others, itself.

This is not only good, but necessary, if we want any sort of coordination
of planning and strategy across the movement.

This year's plan was much later than expected — the first draft shared a
week ago — motivated by recent changes in senior staff and plans,
particularly shifts in engineering and the creation of the community
engagement department.  As all have noted, this leaves little time for
public or board feedback, and less for dialogue about that feedback.  I
suspect a draft plan 2 months earlier would have been very useful *all the
same*, even knowing it was bound to change due to the reorganization.  This
highlights a basic problem with having static annual plans in a quickly
changing environment.

I thought we would move away from the 'static annual' planning model this
year, and this still seems to be the intent, just delayed.  I hope the
current plan draft will be the last to follow the old model, and plan
updates will become more flexible and frequent this year.  In that case, we
can still aim to get public and expert thoughtfully, say by mid-July,
specifically inviting input from affiliates and community projects that
have excellent goals and plans.  Then this feedback can guide the
implementation of the plan from July on, and guide the development of any
mid-year update of the plan.


Regardless of the deadline mentioned on the publication page, the Board is
discussing the plan at its monthly meeting on June 11, and will review a
summary of community feedback as of June 9.  [The board approval vote is
indeed at the end of June, but by the time the board meets to review that,
it is an up-or-down vote with no time for revision.]


Pine writes:
> It does make sense to me that there would be at least a month between
> publication of the full draft plan, including the documentation requested

More data & detail is needed, even for this draft.  But given how late
everything was, I appreciate that things were published for the community
as soon as they were available, despite being in a draft state.


> I think that the WMF audit committee or the WMF Board might be in a better
> position than the FDC to do a thorough review of the plan, including
> holding public Hangout meetings in which the plan is discussed, much like
> how government legislative bodies review proposed budgets in public.

A fine idea. Let's try it and see how it works: a public discussion,
inviting a set of voiced participants & making a stream available to all,
even if some invitees cannot make it.  The third week of June would fit the
current compressed schedule.   Such a public discussion would also be a
chance to make [more] connections between WMF planning and movement
strategy.

Sam
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan for FY 15-16

[Pine W]

Perhaps in July we can have an office hour to discuss improvements to
annual planning for all orgs including WMF?

Annual plans for any organization are a pain to develop and involve some
guesswork about what will happen during the year. However, given the
natures of annual fundraising and grant cycles, orgs need to know how much
money we have to work with on an annual basis and to have some
accountability for how it will be spent.

The immediate problem is the short time period for the community to review
WMF's plan, and the limits of the documentation that have been provided so
far. I suggest that WMF should address these problems first, and after this
year's full plan with supporting documentation is reviewed by the
community, we can have a discussion about annual planning more generally. I
suggest that the WMF Board vote on the plan be postponed until the end of
June in order to allow the community more time to review the plan and allow
WMF more time to produce supporting documentation.

Thanks,

Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan for FY 15-16

[Sam Klein]

On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 11:38 AM, Cristian Consonni  wrote:

> 2015-05-28 11:42 GMT+02:00 Liam Wyatt :
> > The WMF talks about "eating your own dog food"[2] in terms of
> engineering,
> > but it would be good if something similar would take place in the annual
> > planning too... Chapters are required to submit their annual plans to a
> two
> > *month* period of quite thorough public review before the FDC gives its
> > recommendations, and then there's a further period before the actual
> > decision/appeals.[3]
>

Agreed.  In the first place, the problems with such a heavy process of
review are felt by all participating groups – including the burden of
having to publish a draft budget so long before the start of the relevant
year.   Either this is a poor idea and all should find a better way, or the
WMF should do it as well.



> And also a little addition (from [1]):
> «The FDC would like to encourage the WMF to share more data in
> advance, and to do so publicly as much as possible.


Very much agreed.



> The Board may need to adjust the
> calendar of FDC work, but allowing for a comprehensive review by a
> committee from the community (such as the FDC) rather than the
> Wikimedia Foundation itself is essential, especially in light of the
> minimal feedback from the community on the public pages.
>

What do you think would be a reasonable sort of review?

Lila has mentioned the idea of moving towards updated plans every 6 months,
with detailed reports every quarter.

I would welcome an FDC-style review of the 'latest published biannual plan
+ report', on any timescale that works for the FDC, assessing the same
things that it does for all annual plans.  A review of that sort in April
or May would be timed well to influence the 'Annual Plan' discussion, even
if it was a review of the published plan & report as of January, rather
than the draft plan developed in April.   How would current FDC members
feel about this?  Can we find a way to do this without obliging the current
FDC members to do more work?  [considering that there are others with
similar experience in the movement]


The WMF has high competencies in governance and in running a large
> organization, and should be significantly more proactive in
> disseminating its knowledge and supporting chapters and thematic
> organizations through training, onboarding plans, and fostering
> cross-chapter exchange.
>

Bearing in mind the size and budget of the new Community Engagement
department, I'd be interested to see more specific suggestions here, or
pointers to examples of this done well.

> As it was already said above. I, personally, do think that we can
> discuss about making some adjustments to the process to make it work
> for an organisation of the size of the WMF, but I also would like to
> see the WMF play along the rule of everybody else in the movement
> (again, considering all the special need and characteristics of this).

I think we can make it work.  There are other movements with collaborative
budgeting or community review that we can learn from.
What sorts of adjustments do you have in mind?

Sam
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan for FY 15-16

[Pine W]

I agree that a longer feedback period is appropriate, preferably with the
same kind of public notices requesting comment that are pushed out for FDC
application reviews.

Overall I would say that this year's process is a regression from last
year's, and is inconsistent with the degree of transparency and openness
that characterize good governance practices.  I would like WMF to apply the
same standards to itself that it applies to the affiliates. I felt that
last year's process was a big step in the right direction, and the
regression this year is disappointing.

Pine
On May 29, 2015 7:06 AM, "Dariusz Jemielniak"  wrote:

> perhaps you're right. But keep in mind that the FDC has been set up
> specifically as a committee advising the Board in this specific area, and
> is composed of people with particular competence in finance, grants, etc.
> Whichever body is chosen though, a longer feedback/comment period is
> necessary.
>
> best,
>
> dj
>
> On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 7:50 PM, Pine W  wrote:
>
> > It does make sense to me that there would be at least a month between
> > publication of the full draft plan, including the documentation that
> > requested, and the closure of the comment period.
> >
> > In its current form the plan is too vague for me to support it as
> written.
> >
> > I think that the WMF audit committee or the WMF Board might be in a
> better
> > position than the FDC to do a thorough review of the plan, including
> > holding public Hangout meetings in which the plan is discussed, much like
> > how government legislative bodies review proposed budgets in public. This
> > would increase public confidence in the quality of the plan.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Pine
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>
>
> --
>
> __
> prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak
> kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego
> i centrum badawczego CROW
> Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego
> http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl
>
> członek Akademii Młodych Uczonych Polskiej Akademii Nauk
> członek Komitetu Polityki Naukowej MNiSW
>
> Wyszła pierwsza na świecie etnografia Wikipedii "Common Knowledge? An
> Ethnography of Wikipedia" (2014, Stanford University Press) mojego
> autorstwa http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=24010
>
> Recenzje
> Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml
> Pacific Standard:
> http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/killed-wikipedia-93777/
> Motherboard: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/an-ethnography-of-wikipedia
> The Wikipedian:
> http://thewikipedian.net/2014/10/10/dariusz-jemielniak-common-knowledge
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wmcon15] Re: [Wikisource-l] Wikisource UG report on the WMCON15

[David Cuenca Tudela]

Dear Asaf and Juan Bautista,

Thanks a lot for your comments, I am glad to have some feedback on these
ideas that were discussed during the WMCON. They are not entirely mine,
they just popped up while discussing the topic and I think they might be
interesting to explore them.

TBH, I think they need more discussion in person and see if there are any
takers. It is a big responsibility to start leading projects, specially now
that the (human) interfaces are not that clear.

If the Wikisource conference does happen in the end, it will be the perfect
to advance on these discussions and start experimenting with organizational
structures. Better to experiment at little scale first and learn from it
than to expect global change without testing it first on the local level
first.

Cheers,
Micru

On Sat, May 30, 2015 at 7:30 AM Juan Bautista H. Alegre <
johnny.ale...@wikimedia.org.ph> wrote:

>  I'm all for this.
>
> Juan Bautista Alegre
> Wikimedia Philippines
>
>
> —
> Sent from Mailbox 
>
>  On Saturday May 30, 2015 at 1:08 PM, Asaf Bartov ,
> wrote:​
>
>  Thank you for sharing this.  I could not attend that session, and this
> was an interesting read.  I would be happy to advise on some of the
> proposed ideas if there are people interested in leading them.
>
>A.
>
> On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 2:04 AM, David Cuenca Tudela 
> wrote:
>
> ​
>
>
>   Dear all,
>>
>> I have written a short piece on the WMCON and some interesting aspects
>> about the organizational future of User Groups.
>>
>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ew8cVJhqqenGUAVVaTQqkisyPyd1tSX-zbVfi-Uuo8U/edit?usp=sharing
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Micru
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> Asaf Bartov
> Wikimedia Foundation 
>
>  Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share
> in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
> https://donate.wikimedia.org
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A "Listen" Button

[Jane Darnell]

What you may find interesting about her story is that she has never
actually "seen" a Wikipedia article (though we used to have a Funk &
Wagnalls new world encyclopedia that was read religiously too). Whenever I
get to see her in real life (only about 1x or 2x per year) she has
remembered all of the Wikipedia inconsistencies throughout the year and
asks me to go in there and "fix" them. Oddly, she never asks my brothers to
do this, so to her, writing Wikipedia is a woman's work.

On Sat, May 30, 2015 at 8:30 AM, Isarra Yos  wrote:

> This is actually a good point in general. There are the average users, who
> are important and then some, but there are always other use cases too. Even
> if we can't reasonably support them, they're still there and still merit
> considering, if nothing else, and without stories like these we'd probably
> never even know.
>
> So thank you.
>
> On 29/05/15 14:49, Jane Darnell wrote:
>
>> My blind mom drives me and my brothers crazy by asking us to read her
>> Wikipedia articles after she has listened to some book-on-tape or radio
>> show. It would be great if she could speak the title of the article and
>> have the article read back to her. If we ignore her, she takes revenge by
>> turning on the TV full blast and flipping channels until she hears
>> something that she can follow (very often it's Fox news). She has been
>> legally blind for about 10 years now and what I have noticed is that she
>> is
>> very unwilling to listen to machine-read text (though it is better than
>> nothing). I have often thought it would be good to have a radio channel
>> that just hooked people like her up with people who are willing to read
>> articles available online. Probably not something for a Wiki project
>> though
>> it could be if you used each reading as an opportunity to create or update
>> an audio recording of the article.
>>
>> On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 2:02 PM, James Heilman  wrote:
>>
>>  Yes I agree that well educated, young and technical blind people from
>>> the developed world have found better solutions for using the internet
>>> that we could produce with a listen button.
>>>
>>> I see this more for 1) people who do not read because they do not know
>>> how 2) people who are blind but not technical (maybe they are elderly)
>>>
>>> Patient.co.uk say that their listen button is used about 1% of the
>>> time. You can see it here http://www.patient.co.uk/health/gout-leaflet
>>>
>>> --
>>> James Heilman
>>> MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
>>>
>>> The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine
>>> www.opentextbookofmedicine.com
>>>
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