hi Pine,
On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 4:03 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
My impression of this whole situation with the Knight Foundation is that the WMF's strong tendency toward closed-door and closed-loop processes are hurting WMF more than helping it. If WMF had been transparent with the community about this situation in the first place and a consultation with the community had happened as negotiations were underway with Knight, I am wondering if a mutually agreeable solution could have been created at that time. Now we're in the midst of a lot of skepticism, suspicion, and political difficulties.
I am not certain if it would even make sense for the WMF to engage the community every time it applies for an exploratory grant in such amount (roughly 1/300th of its budget). Also, after some consultation internally, my understanding is that in practice it will often not be sensible to insist on publishing grant applications, basically because many donors are just not as progressive as we would like them to be, and we do not want to decrease our chances for a grant in the future (donors may not be comfortable releasing this, and in the same time they will not want to be singled out in public as the only ones who refused).
Having stated that, I am happy to acknowledge that in this particular case (of a great, open-minded donor, with whom we have a good and long relationship) it is reasonable (and possible) to release this info, also to cut the wild speculations.
Lisa - awesome job, many thanks for making this happen!
best,
dj