[Wikimedia-l] Resignation announcement, and a parting remark to everyone

[Christophe Henner]

On 29 April 2013 17:53, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 29 April 2013 16:47, Ilario Valdelli <valdelli at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Unfortunately I know that any project is specific and peculiar but the
>> *personal* feeling doesn't help because it means that another FDC will
>> evaluate it differently.
>
>
> And this is *precisely* what was predicted when the centralisation of
> funds came in.
>
> (I take no joy whatsoever in noting that we told WMF so, and WMF
> actively chose to ignore it.)
>
>
> - d.
>

Hey David,

I fear, but I might be wrong so correct me on that, that you are
mixing two things that happened roughly at the same time:
* the payment processing
* the FDC creation

Payment processing centralisation that is, imo, on the long run a wrong move.
And the FDC that is, imo, a good move on the long run.

The first question, payment processing, is not up to discussion for
the coming years. [
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Fundraising_2012 ]

Whether we like it, or not, the decision the board made is clearly a
middle ground that leaves us a few years to test out what seems to be
the most efficient. I'm sure we will have long discussions about that
in 2015 (if my calculus isn't too bad, we should start to talk about
it around then).

If you are actually talking about that, please forget that email (as I
don't think it's useful to get in that discussion now ^^)

So the FDC and the centralisation of fund dissemination. Well, before
FDC, funds were not really disseminated. WMF and chapters provided
other chapters with grant, but for a non fundraising chapter there was
little chance to get large sums of money and there was no way to
ensure the movement was growing with good practices.

I can't really see why that is a bad thing.

Is the WM HK situation good for the movement right now? Perhaps not.
And honestly I don't feel I'm in any position to evaluate that. I
didn't read thoroughly their proposal and I just saw about their grant
issue (whoever fault it is) today.

The FDC process need to be improved, we all agree on that, and WM HK
situation do show that we need that step in-between GAC grants and FDC
allocation.

The FDC is in its infancy, and we're hitting bumps. We're facing new challenges.
And quite frankly when we designed it last year, I was expecting much
much much more issues than we had.

I don't believe we would be pointing fingers and that we'd rather try
to find what went wrong and how to fix it.

And that exactly is what we're doing now I think, and what will be
done over the coming month.

And as the board member of a chapter that had its first proposal
mostly refused and had to go through the process twice in 6 month (and
is right now working on the FDC Q1 report) I can definitely say
there's room for improvement AND that the FDC process is a really
heavy process.

Best,

--
Christophe