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_Gender_gap_campaign

[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Reimagining_Wikipedia_Mentorship