Today in the Metrics & Activities meeting, the WMF took a significant step toward improving its transparency and accountability -- something under much discussion in recent weeks.
The cause of this was not the recent drama around the Board, but a recommendation given by the FDC in November 2015, that the WMF should hold its own financial decisions to a standard similar to that expected of the organizations it funds.
Kudos to the FDC for taking the initial step, the WMF board for approving the recommendation, and Luis Villa (who discussed the issue in some depth at the meeting) and everyone at WMF who worked toward implementing the recommendation. I'm sure many of us will be looking forward to the results.
I have discussed this in a bit more detail on my blog: http://wikistrategies.net/fdc-recommendation/
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 4:36 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
The cause of this was not the recent drama around the Board, but a recommendation given by the FDC in November 2015, that the WMF should hold its own financial decisions to a standard similar to that expected of the organizations it funds.
Yes, the FDC has been in discussion about this since at least 2013, and my hope is that 2016 will start a good example and tradition.
In principle, the way I see it (and it is my personal view only), there should be different standards for small/grassroot organizations (let's say, up to 100,000$ budget), medium ones (100k-1m), and the large, fully professional ones, including WMF, so I think that as a final outcome WMF should set standards, that will be higher than required from most of the organizations. But one step at a time.
best,
dariusz
Thanks for the kind words, Pete.
For what it is worth, other details on our initial proposal to FDC are on meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_2016-17_Annual_Planning_Recommendation Note that this was the initial proposal, and we are deliberately trying to keep it fluid, so some things will inevitably change.
I would urge everyone to keep expectations in check: this process will be a first at this scale for both us and FDC. As with any good experiment(s), some will succeed and others will fail; hopefully we'll learn along the way, of course.
Luis
On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 1:36 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
Today in the Metrics & Activities meeting, the WMF took a significant step toward improving its transparency and accountability -- something under much discussion in recent weeks.
The cause of this was not the recent drama around the Board, but a recommendation given by the FDC in November 2015, that the WMF should hold its own financial decisions to a standard similar to that expected of the organizations it funds.
Kudos to the FDC for taking the initial step, the WMF board for approving the recommendation, and Luis Villa (who discussed the issue in some depth at the meeting) and everyone at WMF who worked toward implementing the recommendation. I'm sure many of us will be looking forward to the results.
I have discussed this in a bit more detail on my blog: http://wikistrategies.net/fdc-recommendation/
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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