On 6 January 2015 at 09:38, Neotarf <neotarf(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The beginning of a contentious thread on the Wikimedia
mailing list about
Project and Event Grants (PEG) and Individual Engagement Grants (IEG):
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-January/076243.html
An earlier official explanation here:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/0076…
and here, offers to work with anyone who needs funds before that time, and
notes that last year the earliest request was made in June:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/0076…
Some strong words here:
"Shutting down the grantmaking gives a strong negative signal to every
organiser. 'Your project is not important enough for the movement', that is
what this campaign says.
"This is campaign is not benefiting the community, it is damaging it and it
is damaging the trust of the community in WMF."
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-January/076276.html
Note that Gender Gap is not viewed here as *part of* the community, but as
a barrier to the community.
I think things may be calming down now that there is a much more complete
response from WMF Grants staff in respect of this action plan. One of the
issues that arose was the finding that WLM, for example, came to realise
that they had not given enough lead time for the grants process by putting
in their applications in June, so they were already consciously planning to
submit applications earlier, pretty much in the middle of this period.
That was intended to make it easier for grants request reviewers to make
timely decisions, and I for one think it was a good idea on their part.
Similarly, a few chapters whose requests are too small to go to FDC
would be making their *annual* request during this period, something they
may have scheduled months in advance. So yes, this sort of very sudden
change in direction does have an impact on other activities, and from a
narrow focus does give the impression that these large-scale activities are
seen as less important than a bunch of not-yet-posted grant requests.
I don't think the issue is really about the gender gap, it's about giving
the impression that just about any grant that is not exclusively and
specifically about the "experiment topic" (whatever that topic happens to
be) would be left unconsidered for months, even if it has some focus on the
"experiment topic". I'm pretty sure there would be the same reaction if
the topic was "bots" or "GLAM" or "Sister Projects" or
"Research".
I've got a bit of a concern that the process may be too exclusionary in
some ways. For example, WLM has historically had higher-than-average
participation by women, especially in certain countries, so one might think
that it could rationally fall into the catchment for "gender gap" funding;
however, it's been specifically excluded.
This is coming as a huge surprise to a lot of people, and I think with good
reason. The Grants portal is notoriously unnavigable, and without a direct
link to the page where this particular project was discussed, it's next
to impossible to find it.[1] The Grants portal doesn't have a general
administrative page for announcements or discussions that apply broadly (as
this does), and you literally can't get from one section of the portal to
another without leaving the portal and starting over. And the page
discussing the project doesn't actually describe it in the same way that
the emails do - the timeline is quite different, and there's nothing that
says "other than very time-sensitive grants, we won't consider anything
else".
One other thing I found odd here: " In the first half of this year, IEG
and PEG combined have spent only 9% of funds on projects aiming to directly
impact this gap and less than ⅓ of our grantee project leaders have been
women." While the dollar value of the funding is roughly proportional to
the percentage of women participating in Wikimedia projects, I was actually
extremely impressed by the fact that almost a third of grantee project
leaders are women. That's a dramatically higher percentage than we have
ever seen actively participating in Wikimedia projects overall.
Again, I'm a bit concerned that more general programs that could be funded
and are known to have attracted higher than average percentage of women
participants wouldn't be included in any calculation of funding focused on
"gender gap" issues. I can't speak for anyone else, but I genuinely do not
believe that women only want to work in areas directly related to the
gender gap. For example "Reimagining Wikipedia Mentorship",[2] a current
grant, should be at least as interesting to women as to men, and has the
potential to have at least as significant an effect in retaining new women
editors as new men editors. But it's not counted as a gender gap activity.
Risker/Anne
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire_Grants_%E2%80%93_Gen…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Reimagining_Wikipedia_Mentorship