[Wikimedia-l] Strange, surprising, bold and unnecessary - reply to the WMF board statement

[Theo10011]

Hey Nathan

On Thu, Feb 7, 2013, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:

> >
> I'm more inclined to criticize the budget and spending priorities of the
> WMF, to tell the truth. The various budgets for the WCA primarily went
> wrong in assuming that the WMF itself would provide the cash, a truly odd
> plan given the role the WCA's boosters saw for it. My own opinion is that
> it was that intermediary, adversary role (which one person recently
> compared to a union opposing corporate interests) that doomed the WCA. But
> there is a good point to make about the envisioned support role. It's
> difficult to understand how a single lawyer, or a single firm, was intended
> to provide legal support of any utility to chapters in 40 countries. And
> pitching the WCA's level of professionalism at a degree to where it could
> help out the largest chapters seems like an odd strategy, when it's the
> smallest and newest that would need the kind of help the WCA could provide.
>


Your evaluation might be correct about the time. But initially even the
spending was expected to come from the chapter budget, then some changes
happened, others got involved, FDC was also created and direct support
became the only revenue source. I believe Sebmol and I might have discussed
it to be an x%(nominal close to 2 or 4%) of a chapter revenue on our
singular IRC talk. I'm sure that in the last year a sizable chunk of the
budget has been burnt through, that could/should have gone to actually
creating this organization.

As you may read a single law firm was only supposed to be the initial
amount. Based on my proximity with chapter affairs at the time, my
judgement was that most issues, would not require a lot of billable hours.
And I only saw 4 or 5 chapters have any of those minor issues in a given
year. That amount was never supposed to cover 40 organizations in the first
year, but at least have someone on the ground to support. Any professional
organization would be expected to have insurance, legal compliance,
external support and lastly bankruptcy protection laws at its disposal. It
was for the smaller organizations that might need someone to occasionally
inform them about their rights or just correspond with WMF's legal dept.
for them. If you would take a look at the draft again, there was someone
else helping out with translation services on staff, combined with our
local contacts - I thought it could offer a first line of defense or a
safety-net in case WMF chose not to get involved and risk its own exposure.

Then there was someone envisioned for accounting who would follow up on
chapter reports and spending, and make sure there is full compliance. This
alone might justify the required cost-saving WMF would have, for the
back-office support it does for chapters and the compliance requirements by
law. This was a big concern at the time when I met Stu and talked with some
of the board members.

There were a lot of great ideas floating around. Asia, more specifically
India has had a lot of issues, but the highest concentration of chapters is
in europe but there is no one with local expertise available - little
co-ordination. One of the ideas at the time (might have been from John
Vandenberg) was to support chapters by region, the requirements for Asian
chapters would never mix with those of europeans (not to mention everyone
just loved the Iberocoop chapters, and it was a good model to follow).
Considering WMF has tried and prob. spent 10 times the proposed WCA budget
in India alone, and MENA region might be nearing half or more - a future
strategy might have been to focus on regional growth, rather than direct
involvement or more offices.


> As a lot of other people have said, there is clearly a role out there for a
> support organization that helps chapters develop. But I don't think the
> WCA, as it has been modeled, is the right organization for that role. I
> don't know if it is the people who were involved at various points, or the
> environment in the movement at the time a formal body was proposed, but the
> attitude and approach for the WCA has been wrong for a long time and the
> WMF is right to not support the current incarnation.


Agreed. That is a fair assessment. I'm just explaining what it was
originally supposed to be, it is far from that now.

Regards
Theo