[Wikimedia-l] [Foundation-l] Volunteers Wanted: Funds Dissemination Process Advisory Group

[Thomas Dalton]

On 10 April 2012 10:02, Jan-Bart de Vreede <jdevreede at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Hi Thomas,
>
> Getting the FDC "right" will be the most important thing to being able to provide resources to chapters and others that have great plans that further our movement goals. Doing this in a transparent and open way is an important requirement to getting it right. Not sure why you would want to rush this through?

I don't want to rush it, I want to do it efficiently. I'll ask again,
what questions is it that you want to answer with the process?

With anything like this, there are basically three questions:

1) What needs to be done?
2) Who is going to do it?
3) How are they going to do it?

We already know the answer to the first question - it's in the
resolution calling for the creation of the committee - and it is
usually best to leave the third question for the committee to work out
for themselves. That just leaves deciding on the membership. We don't
need this lengthy and expensive process to work that out, we just need
to go on meta and talk about it until we reach a consensus (or,
failing that, until all the relevant points have been made and the WMF
board can make a final decision).

12 people spending 4 hours a week, plus meetings including some
in-person meetings (which includes lots of expensive travel and
accommodation, as well as a lot of time), is an enormous amount of
time and money. I think we need to be very clear about what we
actually want to achieve with all that time and money.