hi, I am no certain that we could (or should) account for every 10% cut by apportioning it to something (10% because of governance, 10% because of lack of clarify of proposal, etc.). But of course this is not necessarily what you're proposing, you're asking for MORE detail, basically. Please, observe that we did recommend Wikidata to be fully sustained. Also, remember, that all appeals are not going to the FDC at all - we will not have ANY opportunity to argue one way or another in case of all appeals. The Board will consider them, and will base not only on our recommendations, but also on the notes from confidential proceedings of the FDC committee (two Board members are non-voting observers). There is also an ombudsperson overseeing the whole process formally. In any case, I understand that it would be more desirable to see every dollar cut connected to one item of our feedback. I am not certain, though, if we will be able to do so in the future in all cases (but we may try, when possible). best, dariusz "pundit" On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 2:43 PM, pajz <pajzmail(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- __________________________ prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego i centrum badawczego CROW Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl członek Akademii Młodych Uczonych Polskiej Akademii Nauk członek Komitetu Polityki Naukowej MNiSW Wyszła pierwsza na świecie etnografia Wikipedii "Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia" (2014, Stanford University Press) mojego autorstwa http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=24010 Recenzje Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml Pacific Standard: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/killed-wikipedia-93777/ Motherboard: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/an-ethnography-of-wikipedia The Wikipedian: http://thewikipedian.net/2014/10/10/dariusz-jemielniak-common-knowledge

Practically, before our meeting we work on reading the proposals and evaluations, as well as community's feedback, and request additional information, if necessary. Then we make anonymous initial allocations. Then we meet and discuss each case in rounds (at least two per proposal, more or longer if necessary - e.g. we spent definitely more time discussing WMDE proposal than any other one this round). In each round we go into discussing the details of the project. In the first round we typically would end with additional anonymous allocation (each time we also see the results - how they are clustered, the mean, the median, deviation, etc.). After seeing the allocations we discuss WHY each of us proposes a cut/increase/full funding and have a free exchange of arguments. We repeat this process, then we move to "gradients of agreement" tool (allowing to express 7 different shades of agreement/disagreement for a proposed amount). We continue discussions and arguments, including considerations of what will need to be cut in terms of budgetary items, whether there may be need to make staff cuts (which we really try to treat responsibly, we know that people's lives are involved), until we have agreement on a certain allocation. In absolutely most cases the consensus is really high eventually. dariusz "pundit"

well, we do have detailed discussions, as you describe. It is the final allocation that fundamentally DOES NOT rely on an assumption that it is the FDC, who should point to what needs to be cut. All in all, this is unrestricted funding scheme - all of our recommendations are basically advice, we cannot really make demands on what needs to be expanded, and what needs to be shut down. So I believe that the model of decision-making is directly related to the fact that chapters receive unrestricted funding anyway. There are many layers of accountability, but indeed a bystander cannot exactly pit each dollar cut to a particular argument - we only give reasonably detailed feedback to organizations as a whole, since the total allocation is, again, unrestricted. best, dj "pundit" On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 5:57 PM, pajz <pajzmail(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- __________________________ prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego i centrum badawczego CROW Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl członek Akademii Młodych Uczonych Polskiej Akademii Nauk członek Komitetu Polityki Naukowej MNiSW Wyszła pierwsza na świecie etnografia Wikipedii "Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia" (2014, Stanford University Press) mojego autorstwa http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=24010 Recenzje Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml Pacific Standard: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/killed-wikipedia-93777/ Motherboard: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/an-ethnography-of-wikipedia The Wikipedian: http://thewikipedian.net/2014/10/10/dariusz-jemielniak-common-knowledge

On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 11:21 PM, pajz <pajzmail(a)gmail.com> wrote: se, but I myself would like for us (as a movement) to be able to target best projects and guarantee their undisturbed financing. This can definitely go through the FDC, in a multi-year funding scheme, when it is precise enough (this round we've decided that we need more detail for this to work). Ideally (and I'm talking about ideas, not a current structure), we should be able to say that part (a) of the proposal is excellent and we know for sure that should get funding for many years ahead (this could be because of operational excellence, like WIkidata, but also even for small, mundane and repeatable projects of small chapters, this would also allow them to apply e.g. every two years if they basically do the same, proven stuff), part (b) is ambiguous and we do not recommend funding it (although the chapter can do as they please), part (c) is fine, but should be part of a regular, year-to-year application, and part (d) in our view should be scratched. best, dariusz "pundit" best, dj

Hi Patrik, (I'm speaking for myself as a member of the FDC, not as a spokesperson for the whole committee.) A large part of the reason that the FDC was created was to have an international group of volunteers do the work of helping the organizations in the wikimedia family do a better job around strategic planning, governance practices, and creating and executing budgeted activities that bring impact to the wikimedia movement locally and globally. During this round of the FDC evaluating the requests, the majority of the organizations that we were looking at had submitted requests to the FDC for the past 3 years. While we have seen improvement around strategic planning, budget planning and evaluation, there is still a great amount of room for improvement from everyone in the wikimedia movement (including the WMF.) If you read the recommendations, FDC is primarily asking the largest organizations to re-evaluate their current capacity to deliver impact to the movement in line with the funds that they are using. In many instances it involves looking at the organizations overall capacity to develop and execute a strategic plan. Because the FDC is making recommendations about unrestricted funds, rather than focusing on a specific project or program, often the reductions in funds is linked to concerns about an organizations capacity to grow (eg., hire and manage more staff, do more complicated projects.) In some instance we gave general comments about some funds. For example, the FDC commented on the Wikimedia Deutschland’s Volunteer Support program, with an estimated cost of € 710,000 ($880,000 USD) for next year which was larger than any other single proposal made to the FDC. Reiterate that I'm speaking for myself not the whole FDC, I think that Wikimedia Deutschland did not make a stronger justification to the whole wikimedia movement about why that this high level of funding should be dissemination to the wikimedia movement through this program. Because we are making a recommendation about unrestricted funds, this type of evaluation and revamping needs to come from inside Wikimedia Deutschland. Patrik, you are asking good questions and making insightful comments, so I encourage you to join the larger discussion about the way that the wikimedia movement funds the work of volunteers and organizations. Look out for announcements about community discussion around strategic planning and wikimedia movement grants and join in!. Warm regards, Sydney Poore User:FloNight Member FDC On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 5:21 PM, pajz <pajzmail(a)gmail.com> wrote:

In regards to the original problem brought up by Gerard, FDC is more or less on its maximum I think. Its members never did such (or similar) job(s) before FDC (the closest would be credit checks, but that is like and IEG grant review - it is pretty far from such a comprehensive grant - technically a full "business plan" - review) Despite the little to zero initial experience of its members, all-volunteer setup and the ever changing circumstances (global goals, focus points, etc.) and how in general awful it sounds if you say it out lout that an all-amateur (in the good sense) and inexperienced group of people are handling out USD 6 million every year in their free time and for free, it works pretty well. Not perfect but you can not demand or expect perfection from such a setup. That is why there is a whole process now to correct the mistakes that arise from this "non-professional system", including a dedicated ombudsperson for the case(s). I think this is fair enough, the quality of the reviews are visibly improving from year to year and for the first time there is a real possibility to fix the mistakes and errors made, like the "incoherentness" of reviews. Things from this point could be better only through radical changes to the system imo. Balazs 2014-11-25 9:41 GMT, Ilario Valdelli <valdelli(a)gmail.com>om>:

~50k means 50.000 Euros or 500.000 Euros? The value is important because cutting 20% or 30% in biggest budget means to justify that to the stakeholders. The model that FDC is bringing to the chapters is more complex than previously because the chapters have to find external funds. This means that the group of stakeholders has to be enlarged (a lot). I would give you the definition of stakeholders from ITIL: "those individuals or groups that have an interest in an organization, service or project and are potentially interested or engaged in the activities, resources, targets or deliverables". WMF is one stakeholders. The submitters of a project are stakeholders, the members of the associations are stakeholders, the editor of Wikimedia projects are stakeholders and so on. In this case the FDC cannot evaluate the strategy of a chapter because WMF is *one of the stakeholders*. And WMF cannot say that a chapter has not a strategy because a decision like this generates as consequence a complete review of the strategy in order to attract stakeholders. Basically if WMF is asking to find external funds to reduce the risk, the consequence is that WMF is also declaring to would be a stakeholder with less importance and less impact in the decision of the strategy of the chapter. This is not my personal opinion, it's an evident consequence of biggest budget. regards On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 12:43 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak &lt;darekj(a)alk.edu.pl&gt; wrote: -- Ilario Valdelli Wikimedia CH Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera Switzerland - 8008 Zürich Wikipedia: Ilario <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ilario> Skype: valdelli Facebook: Ilario Valdelli <https://www.facebook.com/ivaldelli> Twitter: Ilario Valdelli <https://twitter.com/ilariovaldelli> Linkedin: Ilario Valdelli <http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=6724469> Tel: +41764821371 http://www.wikimedia.ch

2014-11-25 13:49 GMT+01:00 Ilario Valdelli &lt;valdelli(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: That's a very good point. but we can rely that entities stay true on their bylaws that, having been examined as part of the affiliation process should all point towards the movement mission (in their own contextualized wa). In other words this is when AffComm work kicks in (in the long term). C

2014-11-25 12:05 GMT+01:00 Balázs Viczián &lt;balazs.viczian(a)wikimedia.hu&gt;hu>: I must admit that I am little sad to say that the FDC is not that special but what we are doing is called "participatory grantmaking" and it's hardly new. Participatory grantmaking is a practice that has been around for a while now (since the 1970s): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_grantmaking Of course, not all of us have the astounding background of Dariusz ("Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" (cit.)) but that's acceptable in the framework of participatory grantmaking. We are also participating with all the other WMF committees volunteers (IEG, GAC) in a research program from Lafayette Practice (http://www.thelafayettepractice.com/), I think that Anasuya Sengupta [WMF's Director of Grantmaking[*]] can give more info about this if needed. Of course any feedback is appreciated and process feedback even more. On a somewhat related note, I want also to take the occasion to point out that WMF said that they will devise a community review process for their annual plan. This mechanism has still to be devised, it will probably not be the FDC[+]. C [*] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grantmaking_and_Programs [+] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Ad…

In my opinion you are under-evaluating the impact of your so-called "advices". It's sufficient to compare the leaving of employees in chapters staff after and before these advices. Regards On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 6:05 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak &lt;darekj(a)alk.edu.pl&gt; wrote: -- Ilario Valdelli Wikimedia CH Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera Switzerland - 8008 Zürich Wikipedia: Ilario <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ilario> Skype: valdelli Facebook: Ilario Valdelli <https://www.facebook.com/ivaldelli> Twitter: Ilario Valdelli <https://twitter.com/ilariovaldelli> Linkedin: Ilario Valdelli <http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=6724469> Tel: +41764821371 http://www.wikimedia.ch

Ok, but if the request is to diversify the incoming, I suppose that the evaluation of the chapters *must change*. If the chapters have to find funds because there is no sufficient money to fund their programs (and not a single project), I suppose that the main workload of the chapters would be to find funds and not to do projects. If you evaluate the ability to do projects, and not to find funds, the current measures are inconsistent. I remember that someone in WMF several years ago said that the chapters have to focus on projects because there is sufficient money to cut off the time of fundraising and to dedicate this time in more profitable time. Now the strategy is changing. So the chapters have to find money. I read a lot of incoherences in this statement and in general in what was said several years ago when the chapters where invited to don't be payment processors. On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 4:33 PM, Cristian Consonni &lt;kikkocristian(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- Ilario Valdelli Wikimedia CH Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera Switzerland - 8008 Zürich Wikipedia: Ilario <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ilario> Skype: valdelli Facebook: Ilario Valdelli <https://www.facebook.com/ivaldelli> Twitter: Ilario Valdelli <https://twitter.com/ilariovaldelli> Linkedin: Ilario Valdelli <http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=6724469> Tel: +41764821371 http://www.wikimedia.ch

The problem is that any change means "change management". I would say that the board must evaluate the impact of any change they are bringing using the same effort they use to evaluate an impact of a project. Any change means change manegemtn (as said) to adapt the current organization to this change. A change means: money, time, review of strategy, review of organization, review of scope of the organization. Basically the time needed to find money and to adapt the organization to the changes is more or less similar to the time needed to do projects. Now I will come back to the FDC: I would expect from the FDC a dedicated section to say that the chapters need resources to finance this change and this resources *cannot be financed with external funds* because it's a request of the board of WMF and the board of WMF must also define the financial resources to adapt this change. The realistic approach of the FDC would be: the chapters are required to adapt their organization and their strategy to this decision, so WMF will finance the chapters to *apply this change*. It cannot be done with external funds or with money of the chapters, because it's not a decision of the donors or of the General Assembly. In any governance aspect it's important to understand that any change is connected with a risk management and with a specific budget to manage the change because any change can have the biggest impact in the organization and probably this impact cannot be rollbacked without spending additional resources. regards On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 1:29 PM, Cristian Consonni &lt;kikkocristian(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- Ilario Valdelli Wikimedia CH Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera Switzerland - 8008 Zürich Wikipedia: Ilario <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ilario> Skype: valdelli Facebook: Ilario Valdelli <https://www.facebook.com/ivaldelli> Twitter: Ilario Valdelli <https://twitter.com/ilariovaldelli> Linkedin: Ilario Valdelli <http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=6724469> Tel: +41764821371 http://www.wikimedia.ch

Hoi, What makes sense is to spend money effectively. When the German chapter decides to change its way drastically, it does not follow that they deserve the same amount of money no questions asked. When they decide to change, they can provide plans that allow for the evaluation of the new track. Asking for money because of the need for change is no problem. The notion that the community knows best is as much propaganda as anything. Maybe it does, it depends on the plans and in the results to learn if the German community has the right end of the stick. Thanks, GerardM On 24 November 2014 at 14:31, Juergen Fenn &lt;schneeschmelze(a)googlemail.com&gt; wrote:

Hoi, Then why did the nl.wikimedia chapter not get the funding they asked for? Thanks, GerardM On 24 November 2014 at 13:29, Cristian Consonni &lt;kikkocristian(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

I can also read that: "Yet the growth of *non-English communities* and project material is critical for a vigorous and energetic long-term future for the projects, and indeed, it is one of the top priorities developed by the movement through our strategic planning process". In addition I can read in the question of external funds that: "It should also mean that *movement entities with the ability to fundraise independently*, should seek to diversify their funding base in order to create a sustainable, scalable strategy for their own growth". In my opinion there is a misreading of the FDC in these guidelines because it seems that the FDC agrees that the chapters have organized themselves as "community supporter" and not as fundraiser. So the suggestion of looking for external funds should be valid for chapter "with the ability to fundraise independently". It's a good principle, but this principle asks also to evaluate if a chapter is sufficiently mature to do it. Sorry, everytime I read this guidance I see no real support in your "general" principles. regards On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 3:19 PM, Cristian Consonni &lt;kikkocristian(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- Ilario Valdelli Wikimedia CH Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera Switzerland - 8008 Zürich Wikipedia: Ilario <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ilario> Skype: valdelli Facebook: Ilario Valdelli <https://www.facebook.com/ivaldelli> Twitter: Ilario Valdelli <https://twitter.com/ilariovaldelli> Linkedin: Ilario Valdelli <http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=6724469> Tel: +41764821371 http://www.wikimedia.ch

I beleive you can find part of what you ask for in the staff assessment https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round1/Wikim… The decline in editors are among the steepest of any community *Editors* *Country* *Wikipedia* *1 October 2012* *1 October 2013* *1 October 2014* All editors Deutschland German 14,740 13,484 12,720 Active (5+/mo) 5,290 4,661 4,301 WMDE is continuing its expensive community support work that has not demonstrated past impact and in its current design does not seem likely to generate significant future impact commensurate with costs. WMDE's budget is disproportionally focused on its community support program, which does not have commensurate impact. Anders pajz skrev den 2014-11-23 14:43:

Anders, what are the comparable numbers out of Sweden? Not generated by bots. What is the link for this? Rupert On Nov 23, 2014 2:59 PM, "Anders Wennersten" &lt;mail(a)anderswennersten.se&gt; wrote:

Hi Anders, On 23 November 2014 at 14:59, Anders Wennersten &lt;mail(a)anderswennersten.se&gt; wrote: while, as I said, I have no particular interest in defending WMDE and have not even read their proposal, let me say that I would find that a preposterous measure of success/failure. You can't just look at a time series of the number of editors and say "good trend -> congrats, chapter" / "bad trend -> oh, guess the chapter did a bad job". What tells you that if a project is experiencing a 10% decline of its editor base from year 1 to year 2 that it wouldn't have lost 20% without the chapter's activities? (I did not have the impression though that this is what FDC staff meant with "has not demonstrated past impact".) Patrik

"Federico Leva (Nemo)" &lt;nemowiki(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Note the different scales on the time axes, though. But I think the bigger problem will not be the number of ac- tive editors, but the quality of the corpus if the majority of editors indeed "fixes" articles on a train or in a lift. Tim

On Mon, 24 Nov 2014, at 10:55, Juergen Fenn wrote: Were that the case, I'd've expected WM-DE to dissolve in protest. That it exists suggests that things would continue to work the same way - with the Chapter supporting outreach and similar activities - for another while. -- svetlana

Dear Gerald, you spreading propaganda. Of course there is a practical vision to move forward. And even the Interims-ED is already a better alternative to what was understood under management and leadership by Mr. Richter. Best regards Jens Best Am 24.11.2014 07:19 schrieb "Gerard Meijssen" &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt;om>:

Well, you maybe true with the fact that some of it is "hidden", but if you have to start clearing the mess you inherited for good not every necessary action you undertake is immediately seen. True on that. Sustainable Structure and real impact is a little bit more complicated to establish and to nourish than increasing money numbers and collecting thousands of zombie members. So, yes, the real work starts now. best regards Jens Best 2014-11-24 7:34 GMT+01:00 Gerard Meijssen &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: -- -- Jens Best Präsidium Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. web: http://www.wikimedia.de mail: jens.best <http://goog_17221883>@wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985.

Hoi, Sorry if I am not clear. My understanding of the mail I replied to was the point that the Germans were their usual self in their reaction to the Visual Editor and were punished for that. THIS is in my opinion not the case. The argument was about dismissing Pavel in such a way that it cost tons of money and without any noticable effect.. The fact that the German Wikipedia is not performing well has more to do with the conservatism of the Wikipedia community and is not attributable to the chapter. What is happening in Sweden is something that is known to me but I do not know about any research or other papers that explain what it is exactly what is happening there.. Such papers would help chip away at the archaic stance of many German Wikipedians. IMHO they are wrong in many ways but having papers explaining what it is EXACTLY what they have right and wrong would be really valuable. Thanks, GerardM On 24 November 2014 at 07:59, Anders Wennersten &lt;mail(a)anderswennersten.se&gt; wrote: