On 24 April 2014 15:08, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
Hi all,
This round of proposals to the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) presents a new and interesting challenge - that of reviewing the entirety of the Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF's) plan for the next year. As part of the FDC process, the WMF/FDC staff normally assemble a staff assessment of each proposal. In this case, however, the WMF/FDC staff have a potential bias here, since their work is included in the WMF's proposal.
As a result, we have asked Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE), the second largest entity in our movement, to do the staff assessment of the WMF's proposal, and they have agreed to do this. WMDE will be adapting the framework of the standard staff assessment as they see fit in order to appropriately assess the WMF's proposal; the main expectation we have is that they will help identify the key strengths and weaknesses of the proposal in their assessment. They will be sharing their assessment with the WMF on the 7th May, on the same day that the FDC staff will share their assessments with the other applicants, in both cases to check for factual inaccuracies. The assessment will be posted publicly on the 8th May, on the same day that the FDC staff will publicly post their assessments.
We would also like to encourage the other Wikimedia organisations to review the WMF's proposal, and to post comments and questions on the talk page for the proposal. It goes without saying that we also encourage Wikimedia community members to also review the WMF's proposal, and the other proposals in this round, and to similarly post comments and questions. Community feedback is important for the FDC work. The FDC will take all feedback into account during its deliberations next month. We will also be inviting specific community members with particular experience/skills to ask for their input on the proposals; please get in touch if you have any suggestions of community members that should be invited to do this.
Thanks, Dariusz and Mike on behalf of the FDC _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Dariusz and Mike -
I think this is a horrible idea. WMDE is a direct beneficiary of both the WMF and the FDC decisions, and cannot be considered impartial in assessing the WMF proposals.
I also question whether or not WMDE has the skill-set necessary to make the equivalent of a 'staff assessment' of the proposals, particularly in view of the FDC's comments about their goal-setting and assessment of outcomes for their own proposal.[1]
Instead I suggest that the FDC seek authorization from the Board for an independent third party review if it feels that there is not the necessary ability for the FDC to produce its own assessment. Any assessment by the WMDE should represent its own perspective.
Risker
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2013-2014_rou...