I'm pretty concerned that the systematic biases in the wikimedia movement would be continued if there was no organized effort to do a comprehensive review of all proposals to see where we are lacking diversity. I'm in favor of having more focused funding calls like the Inspire Gender Gap campaign.
A large part of the work of the community grant committees..IEG, PEG, FDC...is evaluating the feasibility of the projects, the impact of work, and giving feedback. This work needs the assistance of paid staff to make sure all the information needed to make decision is available. Then volunteers to look at the information and give a recommendation. I'm not clear on how the work flow you suggest would get the important aspects of the work accomplished. I'm not opposed to a group outside of WMF taking over this type of work. But there was a huge vacuum in the movement around Learning and Evaluation until recently. The WMF began doing this work for lack of anyone else doing it well. At this point, I can't see an independent organization being feasible. Instead of small Project and Event Grants, micro grants, or travel grants, many organizations are asking for unrestricted funds to pay for staff, offices, equipment, specialized staff for software development. They want to have funds to make long term plans with GLAM partner organizations. The evaluation of these large grant requests is extremely time consuming. Our current method of asking a group of volunteers to be available to this type of work a set period of time, and having it also open for other community comment seems to the best approach to make sure every project get a fair look. Today there are dozens of ideas for projects on meta waiting for people to comment and offer assistance of some type. I'm in favor of doing more to encourage members of the wikimedia movement to come to meta and join in working on them. IdeaLab. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Ideas Sydney Poore User:FloNight Wikipedian in Residence at Cochrane Collaboration On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 9:37 AM, Edward Saperia <edsape...@gmail.com> wrote: > This reminds me of a slightly heretical idea I had a while ago while > thinking about crowdfunding and WMF fundraising... > > Currently the WMF raises money via site banners, and spends these on > programmes and disburses them via grants, which go to all kinds of projects > - education, outreach, development, Wikimedians in Residence, etc etc. > Despite the relative openness of the WMF as an organisation, this is still > a very centralised, top down method of handling (the disbursement of) these > funds. If we're truly going down the "everything open, everything community > driven" route, the more consistent approach would be something like the > following: > > The community submit funding proposals for projects they want to do, of any > kind. Each has a campaign page with a description of the project (much like > a kickstarter page, with project milestones, background, team etc), a > monetary target they're trying to raise, and a banner design. These > projects compete for advertising time on the site banner via a community > curated queue; When they're at the top of this queue, they're displayed on > the banners, which lead to their project pages; if they hit their > fundraising target, they're taken down; if they have a low conversion rate > (% of views that lead to donations), they're demoted down the queue and, if > persistently low, rejected entirely. > > The criteria for prioritisation of projects in the queue and the vetting of > project quality is done organically by the community, who would create and > evolve guidelines and policies. The actual handling of the queue could be > done algorithmically via an openly editable algorithm, or even done > manually like with e.g. WP:ITN - you'd just need a widget that tells you > how much a given project has raised so far and what the conversion rate is. > If the community is concerned about people being shown too many banners, we > dial down the number of people being shown banners, or raise the bar in > terms of acceptable conversion rates. > > If a project raises money and is ultimately considered a failure, then > hopefully the community will learn from this and provide more support / be > more careful with that kind of project in the future. However, one hopes > that this will also allow for bolder project ideas to get off the ground, > and also allow for a much larger amount of small funding to go to many > small projects, as there is no centralised grants body that has to process > them all. > > In order to pay for its own programmes, then, the WMF itself would have to > submit projects into this queue. Nobody would have to go to any centralised > body for money - all funds would be raised and disbursed via this one > channel. Operationally I suppose the WMF would provide the infrastructure > to actually receive and send out the money. > > You could even start getting clever with e.g. showing different campaigns > to readers from different geographical regions, or particular campaigns to > readers looking at articles from particular wikipedia categories, and I > imagine that kind of thing would start to evolve on its own. > > It really struck me that the discussions around the centralnotice > fundraising banners fell into a classic pattern; one centralised team doing > their best, but being overwhelmed by feedback from a large community. This > model puts all this attention to good use. > > *Edward Saperia* > Conference Director for Wikimania 2014 <http://www.wikimanialondon.org> > email <edsape...@gmail.com> • facebook <http://www.facebook.com/edsaperia> > • > twitter <http://www.twitter.com/edsaperia> • 07796955572 > 133-135 Bethnal Green Road, E2 7DG > > On 24 February 2015 at 18:54, Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipe...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > On Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 10:43 AM, Austin Hair <adh...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > With more and more Wikimedians engaging in crowdfunding, I suppose we > > > can talk about whether the mailing list for Wikimedia movement > > > organization is the place to advertise in this way. For my part, I > > > don't think a simple (i.e., without any additional context) "please > > > check out this Indiegogo" is any different from "hey, check out my > > > blog," so when the last one came through the queue I rejected it > > > without much thought. It certainly wasn't done with any prejudice. > > > > > > > For my part, I always like to see crowdfunding pitches from > > Wikimedians. There haven't been *that* many of them (maybe 8 or 10?), > > and so far they've all (that I've seen) come from prolific > > contributors. > > > > These crowdfunding pitches generally take a lot more effort to put > > together than a blog post does, and they are also easy and satisfying > > to act on. If I can take 3 minutes and a few dollars to simultaneously > > say thanks to a great contributor and help them make even better > > contributions, I'm grateful for that opportunity. > > > > -Sage > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
