[Wikimedia-l] compromise?

[Ed Erhart]

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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