On 27 April 2014 15:00, Cristian Consonni <kikkocristian(a)gmail.com> wrote:
2014-04-27 19:49 GMT+02:00 Risker
<risker.wp(a)gmail.com>om>:
Well, no, I'm not misunderstanding. If a
staff assessment is needed,
then
it needs to be done by staff.
You are suggesting that the staff assessment of the WMF proposal has
to be done by WMF staff, i.e. by the very same people who drafted the
documents in the first place?
I think you misunderstand who drafts the budget for the WMF, if you think
that Anasuya and her department are 'the very same people who drafted the
documents". At best, they draft the recommendation for their own
department - which includes the FDC budget so your reviewing it is a
conflict anyway.
The FDC doesn't have the authority to
delegate that, either.
We are aware that evaluating the WMF is in many respects different
from evaluating other entities, so we are trying our best to adapt the
existing process to the new situation. Why? Because having the WMF
going through the same process as all the other entities seems fair
and reasonable and add steps for community review that are not
available now.
As for authority to delegate, yes, we did not make any formal request
to change the process but I am pretty sure that the board is aware of
what we are doing.
There is a commonly used term for this: "normalization of unsafe
practice", also known as "something must be done, this is something,
therefore it must be done". It is accepting an assignment knowing that it
cannot be completed without significant aberration from standard and safe
practices, just to get it more or less done in some fashion, even if it is
done suboptimally. In this case, there's not even a recognition that this
is an undesirable practice.
There's no reason why the WMF proposal cannot be reviewed outside of the
FDC framework.
The WMF is different in that it is the parent organization. It exists
separate of all of the affiliates and would continue to exist if all the
affiliates disappeared tomorrow. The affiliates exist at the pleasure of
the WMF Board, and the Board could decide tomorrow that it will no longer
support affiliates or allow other entities to use its trademarks or
copyrights. They are extremely different creatures. Now, it's not likely
the Board will pull the rug out from under all the chapters, although it's
done so in the past, and had to take a very hard line with others as well.
So yes, they're different.
> > particularly when there are obvious
conflicts of
> > interest involved. The lack of recognition of that conflict of
interest
> on
> > the part of the FDC is a very serious matter, and raises doubts about
the
> > impartiality of the FDC as a whole.
>
> In my personal opinion, WMDE has no more a COI here than the WMF/FDC
staff
> has when they do the staff assessments of the
other FDC applications.
> Remember that WMDE/WMF aren't in direct competition for money from the
same
pot
here.
There's no money involved in this proposal, in case you haven't noticed.
Your job isn't programmatic review,
Actually, besides the lack of an amount, it is: «[FDC job is to make]
an assessment of the extent to which requested funding will enable
those entities to have an impact on realizing the mission goals of the
Wikimedia movement.»
(
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/Frequently_asked_questions#missi…
)
and you should have rejected the
request. If you can't do it right, don't do it at all, and tell the WMF
to
go to the community as a whole, or recommend to
the Board that a
completely
independent party do the programmatic review.
The amount of feedback
that
is coming in for WMF proposals under the FDC is
significantly reduced
from
what happened when they went to the community.
I don't understand, WMF plan is *now* available for the community to
review; the request of having it published and going through the FDC
has *added* a moment where the community can comment on the budget
that was not previously available, this is IMHO an amelioration with
respect to the past.
You see the words "...extent to which* requested funding...*"? The WMF has
not requested funding. Therefore it is out of scope for the FDC.
And really, it's unreasonable to expect
another
organization to take on a very time-consuming and technical process for
which they have no experience and expect them to do so without payment -
but the FDC doesn't have authority to spend money in that way.
There is no payment to WM-DE for the assessment they are doing, if
this is your question, nor it has been an option, ever.
I think this may be a misunderstanding. These assessments will take their
staff time away from other tasks that are expectations of their own
organization. There is an actual cost to the WMDE to carry out this
assessment; the cost will be higher for them to do it because they are
unfamiliar with the rubrics. The FDC has no ability to pay for this; it's
outside of your scope to do so. Thus, you're imposing a cost on another
organization to do your work.
If supplicant groups are one
seat short of a majority, it seriously affects the ability of the
committee
to consider big-picture issues from a
non-affiliated perspective;
[citation needed], we also have a community election, by the way.
And in any case you are counting people wrong: Arjuna, Ali, Anders,
Dariusz, Delphine, Mike, Yuri and myself (that is 8 people out of 9)
have some affiliation or background with chapters.
I was counting the four that are affiliated with entities that are eligible
to make funding requests from the FDC. I was aware that 7 of 9 were
affiliated with chapters, but did not realise that Dariusz was as well.
This probably explains the FDC's difficulty in thinking outside of the
chapter/WMF paradigm. It seems to me you are suggesting that the FDC is
now completely captive to affiliations. I hope that isn't what you
intended.
With the
Board's resolution restricting the total value of FDC grants in
the coming two years, and the proposals being made by affiliates
routinely
seeking increases in funding that very
significantly outstrips the
limitations set by the Board, the FDC will very soon be in a position
where
they are not just assessing proposals on their
own merits. In the near
future, the FDC is going to have to say "no" to full funding of good
proposals because the total cost of good projects is higher than the pool
of funds the FDC has to dispense; the FDC will have to weigh proposals
against each other, so that any member who has a conflict of interest for
*one* proposal will have a conflict of interest for *all* proposals they
are considering within a round (and possibly within a fiscal year).
I think that the most worrying issue is the possibility to have to say
"no" to good proposal. Full stop. If this is the case then the answer
should be asking to the BoT "please increase the pool of funds". My
personal opinion is that the FDC should be able to make their
recommendations even if the total allocation recommended exceed the 6M
cap, then would be the BoT to decide if they should increase the pool
of funds or do something else.
And this is what is most worrisome to anyone who believes that the WMF must
be a fiscally responsible organization. Not everything can be done at
once. Being able to tell affiliates that it is essential that they
prioritize their goals and objectives and identify which ones they feel are
most important is part of the proposal assessment process. The FDC has a
specific amount of money it can give out; the Board has already given you
the marching papers on this, and provided support to the FDC in making
these hard decisions by telling affilliates that there is a limited pool
and they cannot grow by 30% per year.
Risker/Anne