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<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">Dear Wikimedians,
WMIN EC, FDC Members, FDC Staff and the WMF Board:<br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">*sorry for X
posting and for the long e-mail*<br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">This statement is
in response to the CIS-A2K's FDC proposal discussions during the
months of April to June 2014. For those of you who would like to
know the context please see the discussion pages on meta here [1]
& [2]. Apologies for putting out this statement at least a
couple of weeks late.<br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">It was in September
2012 that CIS was given an opportunity and a responsibility to
serve and grow the Wikimedia movement in India through our Access
to Knowledge (A2K) program. As many of you know we have left no
stone unturned in doing our best to growing the free culture/open
knowledge movement in India and in Indian languages. CIS is
grateful to the Wikimedia movement from which we have learned
immensely as an organization. We are yet again grateful to all you
for reposing the trust and responsibility yet again in the A2K
program with the FDC Grant [3]. Even more so as our FDC
application went through a rigorous community feedback. <br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">Some interesting
stats on the CIS-A2K FDC proposal: the entire discussion ran into
approximately 75,000 words. Of this CIS-A2K's responses consisted
about 28,000 words and 47,000 words were by the community members,
WMIN EC members, FDC staff and FDC members. This is probably the
longest discussion on any of the FDC proposals so far. 25
Wikimedians (of this about 8 are “new users who have not edited
since”); 4 out of 7 WMIN EC members; 4 FDC members; 4 FDC/WMF
staff; and 1 WMF Board member took part in the CIS-A2K FDC
proposal discussion. <br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">On a candid note,
some of the community engagement during the FDC process was
painful like walking on fire, but we are glad that we have gone
through this process. We thank each and everyone who has engaged
with our A2K work and the program proposals that we have put forth
for the next year. We have learnt some useful lessons and assure
you that we will continue to improve upon our programmatic
efficiency, efficacy, accountability and transparency.<br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">We would also like
to take this opportunity to reflect on some of the critical points
of feedback that we received from all of you and outline the steps
that we have taken or plan to take.<br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">1) The Grant
proposed is too high within the local context. Especially Salaries
and the Administrative costs were considered to be high. (This was
echoed by many Wikimedians - Ravi, Dhaval, Hari & Pradeep;
WMIN EC members Karthik & Pranav; FDC Staff and FDC members.
Some specifically suggested that we consider revising the salaries
at least to bring them on par with the existing salaries within
CIS.)<br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">We have taken the
community's feedback to CIS Board and our Board concurred with the
community's feedback and suggested that we take appropriate
measures to bring in some sort of parity in salaries for the A2K
team, and noted that this will be better in the long run.
Accordingly we have revised the CIS-A2K team salaries taking into
consideration the following factors a) feedback from the Community
and FDC; b) performance of the team member during the last one
year (i.e. until March 2014); and c) scope of work for the coming
year based on the draft work plans. *<u>We would like to inform
that the total revised staff salary budget is less than 35% from
what was proposed to the FDC.</u>* The average monthly salary of
the A2K team under the FDC grant will be about Rs. 73,000/- per
month. Further CIS will also raise some portion of the salary.
Please see here [4] for the revised salary structure for the
CIS-A2K team which is effective from July 1, 2014. We have also
reduced some of the costs against Team travel across the plans.
This and the other changes to the budget will soon be shared with
the community. </p>
<br>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">2) Ambitious
scaling up of the language specific strategy that CIS-A2K has
adopted and the sustainability of the growth. Also the number of
proposed plans is too ambitious. (FDC members, Staff along with
Ravi and Blue Rasberry).</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">We have taken this
feedback into consideration and decided to limit the language
specific plans to 5 (4 existing and 1 new), and will suspend 2
language area plans . Since we started to actively work with the
Wikimedia movement (from Sept. 2012), sustainable and qualitative
growth of Indic Wikimedia projects has been one of our core
concerns. We have already stated the measures that we will
proposed to take up towards sustainability of the various
initiatives in our response to the questions raised on Meta during
the FDC proposal process. We look forward to seeking more ideas
from the community on this aspect as we continue to work with them
through the next 12 months. CIS-A2K will also cut down some of the
proposed stand-alone projects. Based on the community's feedback
we will soon share revised plans that will guide our work for the
next one year.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">3) Focus on policy,
advocacy and content donation and acquisition. (FDC members and
Pradeep.)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">CIS-A2K program
will more pro-actively look at various possibilities of
influencing policy in creating an enabling environment for open
knowledge and Wikimedia movement in India. We have already put in
efforts to create policy level changes in each of the language
area and some of them may fructify soon. However, it is important
to note that any kind of policy work is difficult to quantify to
visibly demonstrate the impact and to appropriately claim
attribution of success. We will also put more effort in bringing
Indic content in the open. We are incorporating this suggestion in
revising the plans.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">4) Independent
community review of the work done by CIS-A2K. (Ravi and Pradeep)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">We see the
importance of this suggestion. As stated here <link> CIS-A2K
did propose for a Community led review in our last year's plans.
However, this could not materialize for various reasons. We have
internally discussed on how best we could ensure that this is
done. In the coming weeks we will share some ideas for the
community's feedback on how we could collectively create a
structure that will independently and periodically review the work
done by CIS-A2K and other movement entities. We will use this
learning in the next one year. </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">5) Community
involvement in the programs and activities catalyzed by CIS-A2K.
(Ravi, Hari, Pradeep, some from WMIN EC, FDC members and staff)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">We disagree with
this aspect of the feedback, especially with regard to the four
language areas (Kannada, Konkani, Odia and Telugu). CIS-A2K was
privileged to have the active involvement of these language
communities and the proposed plans for July 2014 to June 2015 were
discussed with the respective language community across various
channels. We believe that there is a silent majority across these
language communities and also in other language communities that
actively engages with CIS-A2K and our work. However, we do
recognize the importance of appropriately capturing the community
mandate to CIS-A2K publicly (especially on wiki). We are exploring
various means of capturing the community's involvement. We also
believe it is important for the FDC, WMF and Wikimedia movement in
India to find ways of listening to this silent majority of the
community members who otherwise choose not to be very vocal on the
mailings lits and Meta.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">6) Impact of the
language specific strategy. (Pradeep, Hari, Ravi, Ansuman, Dhaval,
Shyamal, some from WMIN EC and FDC members)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">CIS-A2K believes
that it's language specific strategy, has been effective in
growing the respective Wikimedia projects. We have already brought
in a significant traction to each of the four language area
projects and associated communities. Though it is too early to
assert (as we rolled-out plans based on this strategy a year ago
in June 2013) we believe that our language specific strategy is
already yielding productive results. Other than the “independent
community review” we will explore even more robust methodology/ies
to demonstrate the impact of the language strategy. However, we
welcome continuous feedback from the community which help us to
learn and progress collectively. The community feedback if it is
of formative in nature than summative would be a significant value
add for us to make swift changes.<br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">7) Natural/Organic
v. Artificial/Inorganic growth of Indian language Wikipedias.
(Ravi, Pradeep & FDC members)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">CIS-A2K does not
see the bright line that is being drawn about organic v. inorganic
growth within the context of Wikimedia movement (in India). There
are many nuances to this debate and it is not productive to pitch
these as mutually exclusive approaches. Further, our experience
taught us that what is organic (to be done by volunteers) and what
is inorganic (could be supported by paid professionals) changes
from a language community to language community and their context.
There is no one model. We believe it is important to respect this
diversity across language communities in India. For instance, some
language communities (given their current context) feel that
Wikipedia Outreach should be supported by paid professionals
whereas some think it should be done by volunteers. While we
appreciate the broader philosophy that define each of these
approaches, we have been putting every effort to bring the best of
both of these approaches in our work. We strongly believe that
there is an immense amount of learning for all of us as a
movement, if we could collectively explore how to best utilize
volunteers and voluntary sector professional energies than to
pitch them as mutually exclusive. At the end of the day we all are
driven by the same collective vision of growing open knowledge.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">We will soon share
the revised plans and budget for the next year and look forward to
your continuous engagement in our collective dream of further
growing the Wikimedia and open knowledge movement in India. <br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 114%">Best wishes,</p>
Vishnu<br>
CIS-A2K<br>
Note: This is being put up on Meta here [1]<br>
<br>
[1]
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Proposal_form">https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Proposal_form</a><br>
[2]
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Staff_proposal_assessment">https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Staff_proposal_assessment</a><br>
[3]
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Board_decisions/2013-2014_round2">https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Board_decisions/2013-2014_round2</a><br>
[4] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://bit.ly/1sY6XQU">http://bit.ly/1sY6XQU</a><br>
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