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

[Samuel Klein]

It's good to see so much interest in this thread.

The purpose of transparency is not feedback.  It is valuable in its own right.
It reduces surprise and supports planning discussions elsewhere in the movement.

And any information shared in a lookahead document would be at a high
level; not budget minutiae.

To be clear about my earlier comment, I started a section about it on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_budget#Proposal:_Sharing_future_forecasts_and_annual_plans


On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 11:58 AM, Steven Walling
<steven.walling at gmail.com> writes:
>
> adding a lengthy community discussion period adds overhead for staff.

This assumes the only options are "total secrecy" and "lengthy public
discussion".
We have other options.  I see at least four:

0) Secrecy -- noone sees drafts or ideas until they are finalized.
1) Publishing to inform -- private drafting; a few draft snapshots
published for transparency; comments not encouraged (nor responded to,
except to correct errata).
2) Public drafting -- iterating on an idea in public, with comments
expected (but only occasionally responded to).
3) Collaborative drafting -- requesting feedback and comments
(regularly responded to and acted upon, including changing tone &
focus)

The last is the only one that involves scheduling time for public discussion.

Sue has, wonderfully, developed some personal thoughts and
recommendations as public drafts. She makes it clear how much feedback
is welcome ("This is just a scratch pad for me... You can probably
just ignore it." # "it's not a collaborative process" # "I'll respond
as much as I've got time to").  This is clear, well-received, and
limited-overhead.

I think our planning should fall somewhere between 1 and 2; currently
it is around 0.5.  We want to solicit thoughtful feedback through FDC
review.  And we can be faster about sharing the drafts we already
publish.


Phoebe writes:
> 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.

Yes, this is why the timing of discussions triggered by each plan is
not so sensitive.  But annual planning is a natural trigger for
revisiting our longer-term strategies.

SJ