Hi Risker,
I actually do think that a project like Reimagining Mentorship would be
fair game for this Inspire Campaign, simply by making explicit some of
their implicit goals - I've been working closely with that team, and
creating a space that is welcoming to women is something we discuss a fair
amount as part of the project, even if it wasn't emphasized in the original
proposal. Same goes for a WLM project that aimed to attract more women, or
could demonstrate high participation of women. For either project to be
considered in scope, what they'd likely need to do is state an explicit aim
to attract/support women, have a strategy for doing so, and plan to measure
gender in outcomes.
I think of the Teahouse, for example, as the first "gender gap" focused
project that Sarah Stierch and I worked on together. That space was
intended to welcome people of all genders, supporting any new Wikipedians.
But, it was an explicitly stated aim of the space to try to support more
new female editors, Sarah went out of her way to make sure we had a good
percentage of women hosts, we thought about strategies like "invitation" to
ensure women (as well as people of all genders) were likely to come to the
space, and measuring impact on gender was a clear part of the pilot wrapup.
A project like that would surely be welcome in this upcoming campaign.
When we formally announce and launch the March campaign, we'd thought to
include some examples of what kinds of ideas would be considered within
scope, to help clarify this more. Meanwhile, these early concerns and
rumblings are helping me recognize where we'll need to message most
carefully, which is useful :)
Also adding to my list the need to update the grants portal for this
campaign...agreed it could use some attention.
I, too, was pleased to calculate that 1/3 of our grantee project leaders in
both programs this year so far are women! There's been a good increase in
IEG this round (from pilot round: 0 women), perhaps thanks to the support
and advisor model that we've encouraged increasingly each round. When we
get to 50%, then I'll really celebrate though.
As for turning away non-theme-focused grants for 3 months: yes, I too worry
about how to focus without sending messages of exclusion. This isn't quite
how I'd originally hoped to run an experiment this year. But trying to make
the best of things, we'll surely learn a lot regardless from this pilot.
And it certainly feels like there is still a lot to learn about both the
gender gap and grantmaking in the Wikimedia movement.
Cheers,
Siko
On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 7:19 AM, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 6 January 2015 at 09:38, Neotarf <neotarf(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The beginning of a contentious thread on the
Wikimedia mailing list about
Project and Event Grants (PEG) and Individual Engagement Grants (IEG):
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-January/076243.html
An earlier official explanation here:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/0076…
and here, offers to work with anyone who needs funds before that time,
and notes that last year the earliest request was made in June:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/0076…
Some strong words here:
"Shutting down the grantmaking gives a strong negative signal to every
organiser. 'Your project is not important enough for the movement', that is
what this campaign says.
"This is campaign is not benefiting the community, it is damaging it and it
is damaging the trust of the community in WMF."
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-January/076276.html
Note that Gender Gap is not viewed here as *part of* the community, but
as a barrier to the community.
I think things may be calming down now that there is a much more complete
response from WMF Grants staff in respect of this action plan. One of the
issues that arose was the finding that WLM, for example, came to realise
that they had not given enough lead time for the grants process by putting
in their applications in June, so they were already consciously planning to
submit applications earlier, pretty much in the middle of this period.
That was intended to make it easier for grants request reviewers to make
timely decisions, and I for one think it was a good idea on their part.
Similarly, a few chapters whose requests are too small to go to FDC
would be making their *annual* request during this period, something they
may have scheduled months in advance. So yes, this sort of very sudden
change in direction does have an impact on other activities, and from a
narrow focus does give the impression that these large-scale activities are
seen as less important than a bunch of not-yet-posted grant requests.
I don't think the issue is really about the gender gap, it's about giving
the impression that just about any grant that is not exclusively and
specifically about the "experiment topic" (whatever that topic happens to
be) would be left unconsidered for months, even if it has some focus on the
"experiment topic". I'm pretty sure there would be the same reaction if
the topic was "bots" or "GLAM" or "Sister Projects" or
"Research".
I've got a bit of a concern that the process may be too exclusionary in
some ways. For example, WLM has historically had higher-than-average
participation by women, especially in certain countries, so one might think
that it could rationally fall into the catchment for "gender gap" funding;
however, it's been specifically excluded.
This is coming as a huge surprise to a lot of people, and I think with
good reason. The Grants portal is notoriously unnavigable, and without a
direct link to the page where this particular project was discussed, it's
next to impossible to find it.[1] The Grants portal doesn't have a general
administrative page for announcements or discussions that apply broadly (as
this does), and you literally can't get from one section of the portal to
another without leaving the portal and starting over. And the page
discussing the project doesn't actually describe it in the same way that
the emails do - the timeline is quite different, and there's nothing that
says "other than very time-sensitive grants, we won't consider anything
else".
One other thing I found odd here: " In the first half of this year, IEG
and PEG combined have spent only 9% of funds on projects aiming to directly
impact this gap and less than ⅓ of our grantee project leaders have been
women." While the dollar value of the funding is roughly proportional to
the percentage of women participating in Wikimedia projects, I was actually
extremely impressed by the fact that almost a third of grantee project
leaders are women. That's a dramatically higher percentage than we have
ever seen actively participating in Wikimedia projects overall.
Again, I'm a bit concerned that more general programs that could be funded
and are known to have attracted higher than average percentage of women
participants wouldn't be included in any calculation of funding focused on
"gender gap" issues. I can't speak for anyone else, but I genuinely do
not
believe that women only want to work in areas directly related to the
gender gap. For example "Reimagining Wikipedia Mentorship",[2] a current
grant, should be at least as interesting to women as to men, and has the
potential to have at least as significant an effect in retaining new women
editors as new men editors. But it's not counted as a gender gap activity.
Risker/Anne
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire_Grants_%E2%80%93_Gen…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Reimagining_Wikipedia_Mentorship
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Siko Bouterse
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sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org
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