On Wed, Aug 16, 2023 at 10:23 PM Steven Walling
<steven.walling@gmail.com> wrote:

> With the money allocated to Knowledge Equity in the last couple years, we could have hired
> at least a couple more software engineers to do work like fulfill community wishlist requests.

I disagree with that framing. Wikimedia Foundation, even with reduced
fundraising goals, is a very well-endowed organization that can easily
shift more of its existing effort towards community wishlist requests.
_All_ areas in which it spends money are deserving of healthy
scrutiny, not just this new program. I feel it's best to evaluate this
program on its own merits -- and to make a separate argument regarding
the community wishlist & prioritization of software engineering
ventures.

To me, the question with these grants is whether there's a plausible
theory of change that ties them back to the Wikimedia mission and
movement. I share some skepticism about broad objectives around
"improving quality of sources about X" without any _obvious and
direct_ connection to the movement's work (i.e. concrete commitments
about licensing and availability of information, or collaboration with
Wikimedians). The Borealis Journalism Fund grant report [1] explicitly
states:

# of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages: 0
# of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects: 0
Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects: 0

(There are qualifiers in the report, but frankly, they're not very
plausible ones.)

I see a lot of value in WMF having new connections with these grantees
-- these are organizations Wikimedia _should_ have a relationship
with. But do we best accomplish that by directly funding their
operations? This statement from the latest announcement stands out to
me:

> The Equity Fund Committee [...] have also connected each of these grantees with regional
> and relevant partners in the Wikimedia movement, including local and established
> movement affiliates who can support knowledge equity work and help grantees learn about
> how to connect back to the work of free knowledge on the Wikimedia projects.

That's great, and I look forward to hearing what comes from these
connections. I do worry a bit about slipping into a transactional
framework -- "we give you support for your core mission, and to
maintain good relations with us, you have some meetings with friendly
Wikimedians in your area". Many grant-giving organizations tend to
adopt transactional frameworks, sometimes overtly, sometimes without
even realizing it. In the worst case, the grantee experiences it as a
chore -- a checklist item to complete to apply for the next round of
funding. Not saying that's where this program is at, just that it's
something I would suggest watching out for.

Personally, I see potential in the direction of well-scoped
fellowships/residencies/internships paid by WMF, where both parties
understand fully that engagement with the Wikimedia movement is part
of what they're signing up for. There are pitfalls here as well:
avoiding paid editing; making sure that the fellows themselves are
diverse, etc. But these issues seem "closer to the metal" of
Wikimedia's work, i.e. "the right kinds of of problems".

There's a lot of institutional history to look back on & learn from,
from GLAM residencies to WMF's internal fellowship program which you,
Steven, went through so many years ago. I'd also encourage a close
look at Outreachy, who have done amazing work getting diverse new
contributors to join open source & open science projects. And that may
be what you mean with "try less controversial methods to improve
knowledge equity", but I feel this should be entirely about
effectiveness and mission alignment, not about avoiding controversy.

In general, I'd love to hear more from both the staff and community
members on the committee how they came to their funding decisions
(i.e. what set the successful grantees apart from the unsuccessful
ones, and what theory of change animated the decisions), and where
they'd like to see the program go in future.

Warmly,
Erik

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Knowledge_Equity_Fund_%28Round_1%29_-_Borealis_philanthropy_report.pdf
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