Hi Fae,
I haven't seen a page about this on wiki yet. It appears that various
volunteers who are working on organizing are informed about this behind the
scenes directly.
It also was mentioned in a discussion about the organisation of Wiki Loves
Monuments which raised many concerns. It was first mentioned in this mail:
As I said this is not a positive campaign they intent, this is a negative
campaign as other projects are a victim here.
Yes, prioritizing is not a problem. But this does not feel good at all.
This is not good for project organizers nor for the gender gap projects,
nor for other projects.
Romaine
2015-01-03 11:56 GMT+01:00 Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com>om>:
Hi Romaine, is there a link to an on-wiki page that
states this.
Based on your email, it is unfortunate that rather than stating that
PEG/IEGs would be prioritized to gendergap proposals for a time, the
choice appears to be to reject everything else.
I am not against positive discrimination where carefully managed. A
careful approach would avoid encouraging the perception that we have
to choose between gendergap and the rest of the community.
By the way, as a member of Wikimedia LGBT, my presumption is that LGBT
related proposals would be rejected in this period as they would not
be specifically about women.
Fae
On 3 January 2015 at 10:26, Romaine Wiki <romaine.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all,
Some disturbing news entered my mailbox the past days. The grant making
team is going to shut down the grantmaking process for Project and Event
Grants (PEG) and Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) for three full
months!
They have decided that they want to focus only on a specific strategic
priority: the gender gap, and that all other good projects are refused
for
3 months (February-April).
Having more attention to a strategic priority is fine to me. Having more
attention to the problem of the gender gap, sounds good to me as such, we
can use much more projects and content in those areas. But that does not
mean that many many volunteers who are organizing other projects should
become the victim of other projects.
This is a negative signal to all those volunteers who are currently
working
on project plans to be submitted in February,
March and April. Good
projects to be ignored, just because the WMF think those are less
important. They say this is a positive campaign, but this sounds as a
negative campaign to me. This discourages many volunteers in doing
projects.
And even worse: this is only to be generally announced 2 weeks before
that
period of shutting down starts! (this sounds like
a joke, sadly it isn't)
To organize a good project volunteers (yes, we are still unpaid! and
organize these projects in our spare time!) we need the time to
communicate
well with all our partners and sponsors, and need
the time to come up
with
a good project plan with a stable basis. Rushing
a project in just a
couple
of weeks time is very unpleasant and does not
help in getting a good
quality project. And announcing it two weeks before the period indicates
that organizers aren't taken seriously (enough).
For example, we are currently planning to organize Wiki Loves Monuments
in
2015 again, the world wide contest to have a
better documentation and
better display of all the cultural monuments worldwide, recognised as
largest photo contest in the world by Guinness World Records. We are
currently working on forming a team and want to have a good stable plan
to
be submitted within some weeks, but now we need
to rush. And yes we need
to
start in January/February or it will be too late
to organize it properly.
Also all the national teams of Wiki Loves Monuments, the international
team
recommend all the national teams to start in
January/February, to have a
proper organisation together with various local partners and sponsors,
but
now all these teams are delayed for three
months.
And a personal project of mine in Belgium, I am planning to organize Wiki
Loves Art in Belgium, together with various partners and sponsors. We
intent to start in February, but now have to rush to get such done.
By the way: did you know there is a Belgium Gap? Belgian subjects are
relatively less and worse described on the various Wikipedias.
This shutting down results in:
* Discouraging many volunteers who are planning to submit good project
proposals.
* Having volunteers rushed with project plans, which lowers the quality
of
the plans.
* Having volunteers being late and delayed with projects, for no good
reason.
Grantmaking is intented to support the communities, not frustrating them.
WMF: stop this negative campaign!
And for all project teams who want to organize a gender gap project:
great
you organize this, it is very very welcome! But I
like to make a
suggestion: submit the proposal on the first day after the shutting down
period to give a strong signal to WMF that shutting down is a bad idea.
It is time for a new strategic priority: closing the Community Gap. That
is
the gap between WMF and the local communities
worldwide. It is not new,
it
exists for many years already. (It resulted also
in the drama of the
situation around the Mediaviewer in 2014, the drama with the Visual
Editor
in 2013, etc. in what WMF didn't sense well
the community.) (Maybe the
gap
is less between WMF and the English speaking part
of the world, but the
world is larger. We have many people around the world who are speak a
different language. WMF is not sensing the worldwide community well
enough.)
Finally we should do more about this Community Gap.
For those celebrating: I wish you a happy new year with great projects
that
make every single human being freely share in the
sum of all human
knowledge!!
Romaine
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