[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Funds Dissemination Committee: Report on first year of operations

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi all,

my 2cents here (sorry for the late answer, I am having very busy days ...)

2013/10/3 Itzik Edri <itzik at infra.co.il>:
[...]
> Now, when during her ten years existence the
> foundation started to focus on *HER* evaluation? When they had one staffer
> or 40? And let not forget - the foundation in her daily program don't deal
> daily with volunteers working as part of their core programs of operate
> from their office, something that it's different from the chapters.

On this point, till some weeks ago I would wholeheartedly agree with
you Itzik, and you can rest assured that I completely second the idea
that evaluation should be fair among entities: we have a huge varety
of conditions and context to take into account; but (there's a "but")
in Wikimania I made this very same reasoning with Delphine and she
replied me back something along the lines of "yes, but there is no
turning back" [she did not really say this, this is what I got :-)].
And that's a good point, actually!
I think that we all agree that at least some of the ideas implemented
in the various grant processes (FDC, GAC, ...) are good.
Ideas like: measuring the impact of what you do; defining long term
goals; evaluate if this activity is better than that other activity...
quoting from your e-mail:

> I admire evaluation, I admire audit and failure reports. I think we should
> know what we are doing and learn from the past. But I'm also realistic,
> knowing that good evaluation require knowledge.

So the point is: since we agree that these are good ideas we try to
implement them at our best. I think this is what we usually do, btw. I
know that then there is the very important and pratical question of
"how" and "how much" we should evaluate our activity (see below about
this).

> So, because I cannot surly measure the volunteer's success – from now we
> will decide about if project is going to exist or now only if I 100% can
> measure him on the level of how many women editors was at the room and how
> many of them had laptops (not far away from a question that we been asked
> by the WMF of how many people with SLR cameras came to our photo tours)?
> Should we start chasing just after numbers?

This is a big point. No, you should not start chasing numbers. In
short I think that focusing only on raw numbers alone is naïve (please
refer to the discussion on the evaluation of scientific research for
an analogous discussion). Reminding of Asaf from the "Global South
Strategy" presentation at Wikimania, we have for sure a lot to learn
about how to do better the things we do and we woud also like having
some research on the matter. This also includes evaluation, I think.

Furthermore, we should be aware of how most of the chapters work: they
are associations. In my feeling we like them to be participated, to be
democratic and we like them when their goals are set through careful
discussions, with contributions from everybody interested in the
community (aka the "stakeholders"), so we have to keep in mind that
these assemblies are setting the direction. Volunteer  engagement in
the process is paramount also because is a little bit hard to do
anything if you can not engage the people who are *your* volunteers.
The point is that, instead of chasing numbers, your chapter should
start a discussion to set his mid and long term goals and then focus
on them and on keeping to engage its members. Of course the WMF
strategic goal are a good path and example, and more generally
everybody in the movement is in charge to ensure that what we do is
compatible with the Wikimedia vision.

2013/10/4 Chris Keating <chriskeatingwiki at gmail.com>:
[...]
>This will inevitably highlight differences of opinion and approach,
> but where those differences happen it's even more important to articulate
> those  views respectfully. There's been much less of a sense of "us and
> them" recently and let's keep it that way.

+1, I hope that working togheter throughly in occasion of the FDC
process (and also the GAC, etc.) will help  us getting better and
better on this matter.

Ciao,

C