It seems clear to me, based on the end result and what foundation board and senior staff have said, that they decided an account of money they wanted to request from the FDC and then decided what to designate as non-core so that it added up to that amount. Rather disingenuous of them, but Sue has been very clear that she only sees the foundation's application as a way of testing the process rather than as actually being the right way to determine the budget. On Oct 8, 2012 11:14 AM, "Itzik Edri" <itzik(a)infra.co.il> wrote:

If you consider the WMF financial reserves it's true, but for what I understand, the FDC should decide about the distribution of the forthcoming fundraising and so we can only guess that the movement has no fundings problem. If this winter we cannot reach the total amount fixed, what will happen?

I personnaly agree that the "core" should be

something between this extremitiy and the actual WMF FDC proposal where the community can comment only 10% of the real WMF budget.

On 8 October 2012 12:18, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: and sees as Hi Thomas & Itzik, There's FAQ material on the wikis about how core versus non-core were determined -- I think it's part of the annual plan FAQ. (I'd link you to it, but I'm in a bit of a rush. Maybe somebody else can point to the right place?) The Board and I had a number of discussions about core versus non-core -- to very swiftly recap, we decided that we did not want core to mean the rock-bottom base costs of operating the site. We realized that in making that decision we'd risk being confusing, and that people would likely end up sending inquiries like the one Itzik just sent, because they'd likely be operating on the assumption that core did indeed mean base costs. We considered whether to label it as something other than "core" in order to avoid being confusing, but in the end went ahead with core for lack of a better word. Going from memory -- core is intended to represent the ordinary costs of running the global sites -- so for example, it would include all the costs of maintaining the trademark portfolio, providing legal defence where necessary, doing media stuff and internal global movement communications work, etc. For example we decided that internationalization & localization are part of "core," because our core work includes providing a service in multiple languages. We did not want core to represent the base, rock-bottom, non-negotiable costs of operating the sites on a shoestring, because that's not the purpose of this exercise, because we're not in a position where we need to make extraordinarily difficult choices about whether to preserve, for example, internationalization & localization versus site performance. If we were in that position (needing to make very painful choices due to financial necessity) of course we would. But that's not where we are. Thomas, it's not actually true that I see this as purely an exercise in testing the FDC process, although I do definitely think running part of the WMF budget through the FDC will help us be sensitive to fund-seeker needs as we iterate the process. I do also see value in the process itself -- getting community input on the WMF's non-core activities, etc., will be useful. (Just FYI -- I won't be able to reply any more to this thread for much of the rest of the day, by the way -- I'm swamped and doing a bunch of things.) Thanks, Sue _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 10:07 PM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote: Thanks John. I'm not sure I agree, since without an internal research team it's hard for the WMF to interface with outside researchers. But I find this sort of specific feedback on WMF expenses most welcome.

Hopefully this can be refactored on the wiki as comments on the annual plan.

Along the lines of Charles's comment, it is also helpful to get feedback on what seems 'high priority, extended core' and what seems 'non core' (though we don't have crisp definitions for that distinction yet, we should develop one).

Does the merchandise store, which will cost USD 311000, have an ROI published somewhere? *Hey John,