Hi all,
I think some clarification is needed by people who are in charge for the grantmaking process. There is a difference between "shutting down the grantmaking process (PEG) and (IEG) for three full months" and adding a voluntary gendergap "theme" to a project to get better funding chances.
So I really would like to see some clarifications about these leaked plans before having a propably heated debate about it.
Needless to say that adding ideologically driven must-haves to a general grantmaking process which only purpose is to serve the voluntary work on a supposed-to-be-free encyclopedia would leave a disturbing impression on many people.
best regards
Jens Best
2015-01-03 15:46 GMT+01:00 Romaine Wiki romaine.wiki@gmail.com:
There are multiple ways in how to define the Gendergap, in this case it is about female participation.
I do think it is a problem that the number of female participants is dramatically lower than those of male contributors, but still this does not give any good reason to exclude good projects who are not particular aiming for female contributors.
WMF wants to solve the Gendergap by excluding good other projects. That is a very bad situation.
Trying to solve the Gendergap by enlarging the Community Gap.
Bad idea.
Romaine
2015-01-03 15:33 GMT+01:00 Jane Darnell jane023@gmail.com:
Nope. Gendergap is about the gap in female participation, not in female-related topics. The Dutch Wikipedia has a severe gap with only 6% female participation. I would say this is a pretty urgent problem for the Dutch and Flemish community, so I was very glad to see this as a main
theme
for the coming three months.
On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 3:17 PM, Romaine Wiki romaine.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Hello Jane,
Sorry, but I think you miss the problem here.
As I said before, I am fine with more projects that improve the
coverage
of
so-called female topics, but not if this is damaging the projects which
do
not aim for such.
I hope this campaign in this form is cancelled and witdrawn and that
never
ever such situation appears again. This way of working is damaging the trust in WMF, discouraging many volunteers, worsening projects, etc.
Having a Gendergap campaign in this form is NOT in line with the vision
the
Wikimedia movement has.
The current campaign is scheduled to be one of hopefully many,
targeted
at the community in order to generate themed proposals.
If it was really targeted at the Wikimedia community, it would not have excluded other projects.
I propose everyone to refuse to take part in this as this is a move in
the
wrong direction.
And how WLM to attract more female particpation? By having a special category for pink buildings. Under this condition, a question as such can't be taken seriously.
Romaine
2015-01-03 14:58 GMT+01:00 Jane Darnell jane023@gmail.com:
As a member of the IEG committee I am happy to say that there is no
need
to
panic. WLM is highly successful project and no one is talking about shutting it down, or any other project for that matter. The current campaign is scheduled to be one of hopefully many, targeted at the community in order to generate themed proposals. The current growth
of
highly diverse and inspirational proposals takes increasingly more
energy
to manage, judge, and maintain. By introducing a three-month long
theme,
it
is hoped that the following will occur:
- Grant committee members in their voluntary role as proposal
reviewers
and community sponsors will experience less burn-out in managing
proposals
as their will be more cross pollination per cohort of proposers and
their
proposals. 2) A targeted campaign to attract proposals will enable easier
translation
across projects if the target audience can be identified in advance 3) A targeted campaign will attract more volunteer committee members
to
manage proposals, hopefully attracting local experts in various
Wikimedia
projects.
The Gendergap will be the first theme. I think it's a great idea! How
can
WLM attract more female participation? Any ideas?
On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 11:26 AM, Romaine Wiki <
romaine.wiki@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 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
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