The beauty of the process, is in my mind, that is set up so that each member can have their personal preferences on criteria to be used. This ensues that as many perspectives as possible is up on the table during the deliberation, and certainly not only what is in the staff assessment.
And culture context is central for most of us and it is fascinating the broad understanding of cultural context, country specifics and specific chapters operations there exist among the group of us
Anders
Ilario Valdelli skrev 2013-04-29 10:07:
Personally I think that these two points are relevant like weaknesses of the FDC.
I would read three main important weaknesses:
a) if there is a conflictual position inside the members of the FDC and a big difference of opinions probably there are no specific criteria to evaluate the projects. It seems to me that someone has a feeling and gives their *personal* opinion. To solve the incompatibilities the best solution is to agree in a matrix of criteria and to evaluate the submissions mainly with these criteria, the personal opinion should be reduced a lot b) with the point a) is associated the point b. The knowledge of these criteria helps the chapters to submit a plan leaving any bad point and it means less wasting of time for both (chapter and FDC) c) It seems to me that the evaluation of the FDC doesn't consider the context. Hong Kong is a town and is a small chapter, probably the support/empower/encourage of volunteers may not work for Hong Kong because they don't have a potential number of volunteers but they have opportunities because Hong Kong is the seat of relevant companies
I think that the study of the context of each country may help a lot to solve conflicts.
It's for the same reason that I have fear of people speaking about "peer review" and people speaking about a single model of chapter.
Speaking with no-European chapters their main request is to make clearer that they have different needs and cannot be evaluated like the European chapters.
Imagine what happens if an European chapter will do a "peer review" evaluating it with European parameters!
Regards
On 29.04.2013 09:25, Anders Wennersten wrote:
MZMcBride skrev 2013-04-29 07:13:
I took a look at the current FDC members list[1] and the decision-making information[2] but I'm still a bit unclear how decisions like this[3] are made. Is there a vote on each individual request (and subsequent recommendation)? If so, is that vote public? Or is it a single recommendation encompassing all requests for that round and members vote on that? And if so, is that vote public?
As stated, all seven FDC members before the meeting asses all proposals and write down the sum recommended for each. During the deliberation these seven figures are presented and they can differ very much, even that for the same proposal some member recommends full funding, others no funding and others partial funding. Seeing these figures, a very intense discussion start where we argue and reason, each fully paticipaing and often very passionate. If the difference still is wide, we then each prepare a new set of figures, which then normally show a level of convergence in recommended funding figures. In some cases there is still incompatible positions among the FDC members and in other there is mostly then a concern where within a span we should find the recommended figures, which also is discussed and argued. In most cases we then all agree on a recommended figure, and in other we fully agree with some expressing some level of reluctance on the agreed amount. So no votes, and the reason why we manage to come to an agreement is, i believe, that we are used on the way we reach consensus on Wikipedia. I myself, have in no other of the hundreds of groups I have been involved in, seen the same constructiveness of the participants to come to an agreement with consensus.
From the round 2 recommendation[3] we find the following snippet of text. """ We are concerned about the general increase in staff hiring that has been taking place over the last year, in particular where staff are performing functions that volunteers have been leading. We encourage entities to focus on balancing the work done by staff and volunteers in line with the Wikimedia movement's ethos of volunteers leading work, and to focus on having staff coordinate volunteer activities. We are also concerned about the growth rates of both staff and budgets. We would ask entities to consider whether their growth rates are sustainable in the long term, and whether they are leading to the most impact possible. """ Is the FDC commenting on the Wikimedia chapters here or on the Wikimedia Foundation (or both)?
The key word is "coordinating". we want to highlight that employed staff should not be seen to replace volunteers but support/empower/encourage their efforts. And this is relevant for WMF as well when hey are involved in activities where there are volunteers involved.
Anders Secretary of FDC
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