Hello,
Recently the review for the Wikidata conference grant application has started, and I have complained that the funds allocated are insuficient to cover the needs of the grants. The requested amount for the grants was 36,000 EUR, but in my opinion that should be at least 72,000 EUR.
I have the feeling that the WMF is sitting on a pile of money just giving breadcrumbs to the community, and the community has to suffer in silence about this stinginess. What can we do as a community to request with a clear voice the funds that we need?
Why are there two standards? One standard seems to be that everything that the WMF needs to allocate can go unsupervised, whereas another standard seems to apply to community activities where every penny is so supervised that it becomes a pain in the ass to organize anything big.
The Wikidata Conference needs more funds to be a success and I think that in the grand scheme of things, the money requested is just peanuts compared to the money that the WMF has collected from donors.
If things have to be done well, then the community has every right to claim the money from the donors. The WMF has no right to appropriate that money and use it as a hammer to sabotage events that could have a real impact like the Wikidata Conference.
I request that the amount of funds allocated for grants to be increased from 36,000 eur to 72,000 eur, and this is an informed request that I perform both as a community member and as a member of the Wikidata Conference Grants Committee.
The link to my complaint can be found here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:Conference/WMDE/WikidataCon#Comp...
The link to the Wikidata Conference Grants Commitee can be found here: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikidataCon_2017/Volunteer/Scholarshi...
I hope to have some feedback about this complaint. Thank you, Micru