I am surprised at the reaction here. Is it so necessary for UK to have a bid or a winning bid at that, that you are willing to break convention, and spend this huge amount on a paid bid.
This is unfair. I don't know the history about the bidding process, but bids that I saw were written by volunteers, some with or without a chapters support, or even knowledge in some cases. What about competing bids, since they can't afford to hire a team to just make a bid that won't be on equal footing, should they just not bother? or ask for the same grant?
What if the UK still loses the bid? that would be donor money down the drain. If WMUK members personally finance this, it is one thing, but using this much money raised in the name of Wikipedia, to finance a bid for a single chapter to host the annual volunteer-run conference, seems very irresponsible, and antithetical to the entire spirit of a volunteer-run event.
Regards
Theo
On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 1:12 AM, Thomas Dalton
<thomas.dalton@gmail.com> wrote:
On 25 August 2012 20:28, Itzik Edri <
itzik@infra.co.il> wrote:
> Sorry, it's undiplomatic to interfere with others budget plans - but I just
> can't ignore how the future of Wikimania will look like if others will
> follow UK plans to invest £40,000 only for the bid process (about 62,000$).
received plenty of opposition.
I am in favour of spending money on bids - it is necessary if we want
to get professional quality bids. I am not in favour of spending that
kind of money on bids, though.