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

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak <darekj at alk.edu.pl>wrote:

> from my point of view, it would be really great if there was more feedback
> from the community on the FDC proposals, but I also understand that reading
> detailed proposals is not necessarily something that many active members
> have the necessary time for.
>
> I think it is clear that the community can provide valuable feedback,
> although any feedback just in itself should not be the purpose in its own,
> right?
>
> best,
>
> dariusz
>

I guess it might be helpful to figure out what the point of feedback is,
exactly.

The board's input is pretty high-level. And without a pretty indepth
knowledge of costs and planning information, feedback from anyone else
(i.e. members of the community) would also of necessity be pretty
high-level.

For instance: I don't know, and don't care, how much office supplies cost
for the WMF; I trust whoever writes the budget for office supplies to know
what they're doing, and whoever their boss is to provide any necessary
checks against buying too many pencils. I *do* care if we have to expand
the physical office substantively because we hired a bunch more people,
thereby adding x% to our overall physical facilities budget. However, in
the grand scheme of things I don't even care very much about the facilities
budget: what I *really* care about is what projects all those new people
are working on, and whether those projects are the right direction for the
WMF to expand in.

I'm going to guess that last question is the one that most people on this
list also really care about. Similarly, I think that's the kind of feedback
that was initially hoped for with the FDC proposals: are these useful and
valuable projects? So the question I'd ask is whether making comments on a
draft of the WMF budget (which is a staff-driven and fairly technical
document) is the right way to get community feedback into how the WMF is
shaped.* I don't really think it is; I think ideally we'd actually be
talking about community input into more of an ongoing strategic-planning
type process that helps shape budget planning, not the other way around.

-- phoebe

* since I assume that's what the goal is of feedback, not to say review the
budget for typos, though that could also be a valuable community service.