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

[Nathan]

Exactly. The community is involved in the strategic planning process,
and has the opportunity to review the spending and changes over time,
both through the visible elements of annual planning and the annual
reports. In addition, there is (obviously) pretty robust discussion
here when questions arise about priorities. I don't know that a new
stage of budget development of "community feedback" would be very
useful.

Many people may not be familiar with what an in-process budget for
$30m+ of spending looks like, or how they arrive at the final product
(which is usually presented publicly, and even internally at higher
levels, in a summary format). It simply isn't reasonable to expect
that anyone outside the WMF is going to have meaningful input on the
minutiae of budgeting. Time and attention of community members is best
spent on FDC proposals, strategic planning and Board elections - and
the levers for those roles already exist.

~Nathan