On 15-02-25 11:15 AM, Edward Saperia wrote:
I'm not sure you've understood correctly. In
my proposed system, people
propose projects and these projects are advertised on the centralnotice
banners.
Ah, I indeed hadn't. My understanding was that you wanted to substitute
for the grants process(es) but that the actual source of funding would
remain the WMF coffers.
In which case I need to reclassify your idea from "intriguing" to
"horrifying" in my opinion. Not because I find anything fundamentally
objectionable to crowdfunding (I do not, and have indeed thrown money at
a number of cool crowdfunded projects in the past) but because - as
FloNight noted - this is an invitation to formalize and cement systemic
bias to an insane degree. "All the knowlegde" - not "all the knowledge
someone is willing and able to afford".
Beyond which is the simple reality that many things you'll find no
shortage of agreement that they need to be done are, fundamentally,
unsexy and unimpressive. You would be hard-pressed to make a workable
"marketing campaign" for them, and quickly find that the boring stuff
gets underfunded no matter how important.
I still think there is something to the idea of trying to work in more
"crowdsourcing" to the project financing processes - being able to
create a lightweight and attractive way of getting a vast number of
community members to weigh in on the relative desirability of ways to
spend money towards the projects /is/ a laudable objective.
-- Marc