[Wikimedia-l] Lack of community involvement in WMF budget planning

[Steven Walling]

On Tuesday, April 23, 2013, Nathan wrote:

> The necessity of public comment on a detailed budget is overblown. I
> don't think the Foundation should dedicate a lot of time or resources
> into getting input into the budget development process from members of
> the community. This is one area where expertise and the ability to
> dedicate a substantial amount of time does matter, crowdsourcing a
> budget doesn't work. The WMF is not a wiki.


I fully agree.

My team, Editor Engagement Experiments, was one of the few submitted to the
FDC for approval.[1] We got almost no substantive questions or comments on
the Talk page or mailing lists from community members about our budget. I
got a lot more valuable feedback/questions from single hour-long meeting
with Dariusz (chair of the FDC) than from any of the public discussion or
question period.

To Leslie's point and SJ's replies: no matter how efficient our process
internally, adding a lengthy community discussion period adds overhead for
staff. The idea that we would publish and not respond directly to
volunteers, as SJ suggested, is silly. Of course we would. Having that
discussion is the whole point of publishing something before it's
finalized. The question is: is it worth the cost in staff time?

In this case I think the answer is that it would suck time and energy from
budget planning and would not add much real value to the budget other than
warm and fuzzy feelings. The amount of transparency would also not be
substantively increased, because we already publish the WMF budget and
annual plan, and respond to inquiries about it.

I'll finally note that budget planning internally is not a totally open
collaborative process. Budget owners (typically directors at the management
level) and above gather feedback and input from teams, but otherwise we
leave it up to them to work out with Sue and and C-level staff. I am very
happy to do this, and to be able to do my job without having to argue about
money with anyone. I'd like it to stay that way, thanks.

Steven

1.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Proposals/2012-2013_round1/Wikimedia_Foundation/Proposal_form