[Wikimedia-l] compromise?

Ed Erhart the.ed17 at gmail.com
Sun Jan 6 11:07:35 UTC 2013


Hi all,

Considering that at this point it is James vs. the world, and has been for
quite some time ... have we flogged this dead horse enough yet? [1]

--Ed

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:HORSEMEAT

On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 9:00 PM, James Salsman <jsalsman at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thomas Morton wrote:
> >
> > If you know nothing about surveys or statistics it is probably a good
> idea
> > not to describe a properly calculated metric (yes, I sat down and did the
> > math) as absurd....
>
> I stand by my statement that trying to pin down donor opinion on
> whether they approve of meeting or exceeding market pay to a 1% margin
> of error with a 99% confidence interval is completely unnecessary. If
> a survey with a few hundred respondents turns out to be ambiguous,
> additional donors could be surveyed later. I have been trying to
> discuss this with Tom off-list.
>
> Pine wrote:
> >
> > I'm a little confounded as to why you're still looking to Glassdoor as
> your
> > primary source of information on employee satisfaction after Gayle
> indicated
> > that she has much more comprehensive data on this subject from the
> employee
> > survey....
>
> Please have a look at the slides from that survey at
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5m5AHoGno&t=60m -- Particular
> questions I have about the employee engagement survey so far include:
>
> (1) Is a survey of 84 respondents which asks age, marital status,
> ethnicity, gender, department, tenure, and organizational level an
> anonymous survey, or would nearly all of such responses be personally
> identifiable?  Glassdoor offers much stronger anonymity,
>
> (2) In general, were there any questions pertaining to whether
> employees are satisfied with their pay?  I can see none on any of the
> report slides. I do see questions pertaining to "recognition" which
> are repeatedly identified as problem areas. Pay is by far the largest
> complaint on Glassdoor from both satisfied and unsatisfied employees,
> but it does not appear to have been measured on the Foundation's
> survey. At 1:12:30 it is said that the slide deck will be made public.
> I hope we get to see the list of questions too.
>
> (3) The slide at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5m5AHoGno&t=65m is
> astounding. What does it mean that all three of the executive
> respondents completely agreed with the statements that "we treat
> everyone with dignity and respect" and "we consistently hire strong
> talent and recognize strong performers" but only 54% and 52% of the
> twenty-four managers responding agreed, respectively?
>
> (4) The top two questions at
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5m5AHoGno&t=65m45s indicate that
> those who have been working for the Foundation for more than two years
> have very profoundly different assessments of both recognition (which,
> again, seems to be the closest thing to pay that the survey asked
> about) and the competence of people in key positions compared to newer
> employees. Do we want to trust employees opinion in proportion to
> their experience with the organization?
>
> (5) At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5m5AHoGno&t=68m "attracting
> skilled individuals for hiring" is identified as a specific
> improvement need. How is it being addressed?
>
> David Gerard wrote:
> > Anyone in IT knows that there's such a thing as "charity scale", where
> > you get paid less because you're working for a nonprofit in exchange
> > for less stress and/or doing actual good in the world.
>
> The slide at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5m5AHoGno&t=62m10s
> indicates that in comparison against 120 corporations and 7
> non-profits who have participated in similar surveys over the past
> seven years, the Foundation scored in the 76th percentile on this
> survey.  I am not sure that reflects very well, given the state of the
> economy over that time period.
>
> I do believe paying people more does lower their stress and attract
> and retain more talent. Although there is apparently no shortage of
> opinion to the contrary, I have yet to see any data in agreement with
> those opinions.
>
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