Sydney,
I love your definition of measurement standards as an "evaluation
process that is hearty but not too burdensome for volunteers"! I think
the most basic problem that I, Nora, and most people have in
comprehending the extent of the gendergap problem is that we tend to
assume that there are a few measurements already in place, and there
are not. It is very difficult to make estimations that can be used for
budgeting and tracking purposes that are not related to hard numbers
such as "30%". Our problem is that we don't even have a proper
"null-line" where we can say "this is where we are starting from".
Because I tend to edit in a niche corner of Wikipedia projects
concerning Dutch painters of the 17th-century, I am familiar with all
of the problematic gendergap areas related to this niche. If you look
at this category:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Painters_by_nationalityOnly 151 categories are listed and fewer countries represented, with
most of the entries for those countries with higher internet access
rates in the general population. There are lots of painters left to
categorize! Within this work-in-progress, user "Ser Amantio di
Nicolao" decided to help track women painters by setting up the
following subcategory back in February:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Women_painters_by_nationality
You will see the following subcategories (working down the alphabet,
exhaustion for Ser Amantio di Nicolao apparently kicked in at "I" for
Italy):
American women painters (484 P)
Australian women painters (58 P)
Austrian women painters (13 P)
British women painters (3 C, 118 P)
Canadian women painters (84 P)
Dutch women painters (59 P)
French women painters (94 P)
German women painters (8 P)
Italian women painters (53 P)
I think it would be great to have an overview of female painters
across the world and across centuries, but how can we expand such
efforts so that more people contribute and more people become aware of
this small effort? I decided to add in the women in my dataset, but
it's not a priority for me, and never will be. That said, I only
started to add women into this category, because I noticed it was
there. You can't just go and create empty categories, nor can you
create categories for one or two items, so it's a lot of work to add
the categories for other countries. Who is ever going to do this? Is
it valuable? Would we ever want to pay for it? Recently we had a
"kerfuffle" about women novelists being ghettoized - such categories
should not remove painters from their main category, but be a tracking
category only.
Coming back to the subject of estimations for work planned, it's
always a useful experience to state 10 things on Monday that you are
100% positive you will get done by Saturday (because you already have
them planned). Each Saturday revisit the list and score (1) for done
and (0) for not done. If you do this each week for 10 weeks, add up
your score and be prepared to eat humble pie.
In answer to the question of who decides what goals we need to
establish -- well, that answer is "we do!"; and the answer to the
question of who decides what estimates we need to make of work we want
to do -- same thing.
Nora, your tracking idea sounds great when you say "From an operations
standpoint the sign-in sheets should be sent to the Main office after
every workshop, the results tabulated and reported to the appropriate
constituents. At minimum, the board and the sponsoring group should
receive feedback on goals on a quarterly basis." Unfortunately, this
will not work in our volunteer context, because no one is going to
volunteer to do this tabulation and send the reports. Categories are a
great way of showing a snapshot of work-in-progress, but they don't
roll up and are not automatically created. Somehow though, this is the
type of dashboard that we need, with the extra stipulation that we
want a dashboard that doesn't require a lot of volunteer tweaking.
That is very hard to achieve on Wikipedia. Hopefully WikiData will
become the answer, but any and all suggestions are welcome!
Jane
2013/10/22, Sydney <sydney.poore@gmail.com>:
Hello Nora,
One of the key roles of the FDC is focusing the Wikimedia movement on
developing sound measurable goals that match the mission of the movement,
and to then have the organizations use a evaluation process that is hearty
but not too burdensome for volunteers who are likely to be heavily involved
with projects.
The Wikimedia movement as a whole is in an infancy stage of figuring out how
organizations can achieve the right balance between time spend on
administrative and bureaucratic activities and the time spent creating
content for the various Wikimedia Foundation projects.
In my opinion every organization in the movement, small or large, can
benefit from the type of comments that you shared in your email. I encourage
you and other interested people to push up your sleeves and help the
organizations develop meaningful measurable goals around the topic of the
gender gap (or anything else.)
It would be really useful for a group of interested people to review the
organization various activities and make suggestions about how goals related
to increasing the diversity of the movement can be added.
If you or anyone else is interested, I will help you figure out the best way
to accomplish this task. The Wikimedia Foundation had staff dedicated to
assisting the movement with the general evaluations of projects and
programs. But their numbers are few and the task is large!!! Plus the
involvement of volunteers is an important ethos of the movement. So the
involvement of volunteers is key to getting this done in a meaningful and
timely way.
Regards,
Sydney
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 22, 2013, at 13:38, "trueself56 ." <trueself54@gmail.com> wrote:
I reviewed some of the proposals that have been submitted for funding from
the aspects of concrete goals. I have a background in United States Human
Service charities as an Operations Manager and database administrator. One
of the most challenging activities for an agency is to identify goals in a
manner that is meaningful to all constituents and can be tracked. If a
goal cannot be defined with an action statement and specific target
numbers and the result that proves the target numbers, then the goal
language must be modified and/or the result that proves the goal changed.
At the time of goal identification the tracking methods should be
determined and reviewed for feasibility.
A goal should be so clearly written that anyone who is a member of the
organization understands how to collect the data that proves the goal. A
common failing is creating goals that sound really impressive but are so
vague that the people responsible for doing the work and collecting the
data don't know which activity proves the goal and what form or question
or whatever, they have to do to get the information back to the Main
Office. (And "don't they understand that I am very busy and who reads
this, and oh lord, what did I do last time I filled out this form and
...")
For example: Efforts will be made to increase the participation of women
and other minorities in monthly workshops by 30%. This goal will be
verified by sign-in sheets that ask for gender and (ethnicity, cultural
group or whatever concrete statistic defines the goal).
From an operations standpoint the sign-in sheets should be sent to the
Main office after every workshop, the results tabulated and reported to
the appropriate constituents. At minimum, the board and the sponsoring
group should receive feedback on goals on a quarterly basis. This keeps
the goals in front of everybody and lets everyone know what progress is
being is being towards achieving those goals while there is still time to
improve their methods.
The most effective grants I worked with tied achievable goals to monetary
rewards. If quarterly goals weren't met, future financial allocations were
jeopardized and indeed, in cases of egregious inactivity, programs lost
funding mid-fiscal year.
The preceeding goal language was created in a vacuum without consultation
with any constituents in the space of approx. one hour and is to be used
only as an example.
Organizations tend to use too many words to describe what they are trying
to accomplish. Grant language must be straight-forward and easily
understood. If the average user/volunteer/staff member doesn't understand
the goals at first reading then further refining is of the highest
importance
Please let me know if there is anything I can do to be of service.
Regards,
Nora (Norawashere)
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