I would add that some things could be done by volunteers such as the user
group; That includes improving the documentation, but not the core coding.
There is also the issue that software developers are not interchangeable.
If an alternative bid for this were to come from a part of the world where
programmers are paid much less, I would expect to see tooling up costs to
get programmers up to speed with things like media wiki software. Also it
is worth thinking of this sort of development as a bridge between the GLAM
sector and Wikimedia, building it from one side or the other gives you the
advantage of understanding the side you are working from, building it using
an organisation that is new to both sides would I predict take longer as
the developers would need to learn about both the GLAM sector and
Wikimedia's quirks.
Jonathan Cardy
GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums) Organiser
Wikimedia UK
020 7065 0921
(I'm normally in the office Tuesday's, Wednesdays and Fridays - Emails on
Mondays and Thursdays wont usually be seen till the next day)
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered
Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT.
United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia
movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who
operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control
over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.
On 14 February 2015 at 00:11, Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 13 February 2015 at 23:54, James Hare
<james.hare(a)wikidc.org> wrote:
On Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 9:11 AM, Liam
Wyatt wrote:
Dear GLAMWiki-verse,
[tl;dr Seeking feedback. Please read the GWT 2.0 grant application
draft before I submit it officially:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Europeana/GLAMwiki_Toolset ]
Thank you very much for taking ownership of GLAMwiki Toolset—a huge
project that the WMF is not interested in and no one else really has the
resources for.
I consider this project central to Wikimedia DC’s strategic priorities
and consider its funding to be essential. I am critical of a couple of
points:
* On the must/should/could/won’t scale, I would consider “improving
documentation” to be a *lot* higher than simply “could.” A regular
criticism I hear of the toolset is that the documentation is lousy, and if
your goal is to encourage more people to use it without expert help, you
*need* better documentation. I would consider elevating the priority for
this.
* You will get dinged on your labor rates. Is there a particular reason
why it costs $100/hour to build an upload tool, a piece of software that is
not terribly specialized—even when considering EU labor rates? This isn’t
really a concern for me or Wikimedia DC since we’re not paying for it, but
I would be prepared to discuss this should it come up.
Those points aside, I really look forward to seeing the improvements that
come out of this project. Best of luck to you and Europeana!
Cheers,
James
—
James Hare
President, Wikimedia DC
http://wikimediadc.org
@wikimediadc
Thanks for the endorsement James :-)
[hint, hint...
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Europeana/GLAMwiki_Toolset#Endor…
]
I'm going to respond to the financial question right away because a couple
of other people have asked me similar things offlist. It's a valid topic to
raise so I might as well publicly reply-all :-) I'll paraphrase this issue
as two questions:
Question 1: How do you justify the labor rates?
Answer: To try to answer that, I have added a new paragraph in the grant
application earlier today:
"The daily-rate of the different roles listed here is calculated based on
the average hourly salary of the relevant *Europeana* employees. As a
project-based organisation that frequently accepts funding tied to specific
objectives, *Europeana* frequently operates by accounting for its staff
obligations in 1 hour blocks. Therefore, the costs listed here are not
invented specifically for a grant application, they are simply the normal
hourly salary of that person *x* 8 hours = 1 daily rate."
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Europeana/GLAMwiki_Toolset#Total…
I hope this answers the question sufficiently, although I do understand
that it is not the detailed "justification" that you might like. In short,
this is just how much the relevant staff cost.
Question 2: Could it be done cheaper elsewhere?
Answer: Yeah - probably. No one is pretending that Europeana is the
cheapest organisation for building software - especially since it does not
normally build software for external organisation - but they're also the
only ones with the technical ability, organisational willingness and
availability right now. Some others might have the capacity, or the
willingness, or the availability - but not all three.
As with the first question, I hope that this explains sufficiently. It is
a fair question, and I've tried to give it as straightforward an answer as
I can.
p.s. I may not be able to respond quickly to any further questions for the
next couple of days (it being the weekend and all).
-Liam / Wittylama
In my capacity as "*that Europeana guy*"
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