I hoped that after the discussions on the wiki loves monuments mailing list, someone of the grant team would have proactively informed the wider community in an earlier stage. I hope that the fact they did not do this, means they are reconsidering the way this campaign is shaped.
As indicated before, this 'shutdown' (or focus) of Individual Engagement Grants as well as Project and Event Grants was confirmed https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007600.htmlby Alex Wang. She referred in that email to this onwiki description https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Inspire_Grants_%E2%80%93_Gender_gap_campaign. I should also emphasize that Alex indicated that they don't expect this to impact WLM-related grants (because they expect teams to request funding much later in the process https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/007603.html - not before june/july, an assumption I disagree with), and she also suggested the closing was not as hard as it sounds, as she's willing to discuss problems (she emphasized this in her email).
I don't want to reiterate all discussions about whether gendergap is the problem or a symptom (we have many gaps in our community, of which the gender gap is the most visible and easiest to measure), but I do feel uncomfortable with this campaign. I have asked around a bit in the past week and only received negative feedback on the campaign - with people confirming my fear that this will likely undermine the community support (or at least support by the 'organizing community') for gendergap-related projects in general - be it out of frustration, compensation or jealousy. I called it a 'negative campaign' in my emails because the focus is not about actively boosting one type of requests (which is the claim), but rather about making it harder to do something unrelated to it in the hope that people instead will choose for the easy way, and organize a gendergap related event.
What I also fear, is that people will just give their request a tiny bit of 'gendergap'-paint, make up some way how they help reduce it (which is basically true for almost any outreach event aiming at a group with less than 90% men - i.e. almost any group aside from Wikipedia or catholic priests). I'm confident that most of our outreach projects, including Wiki Loves Monuments, could claim to reach relatively more women than the editor population contains. But I am very unhappy if we start distributing grants on such shaky grounds - those projects often are much stronger in general editor retention, which happens to be relatively more women. The focus of the projects would be unnaturally shifted in the grant request compared to the actual activities.
Again, I hope that the decision makers involved here will reconsider the way this has been shaped, and frame it more in a positive way, focusing on supporting efforts in a thematic direction, rather than discouraging other thematic directions. And as I have said elsewhere: I would be similarly against this, with any other theme - I wouldn't be able to stand the idea to focus entirely on photo-events only for three months...
Best, Lodewijk
On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 3:59 PM, Jens Best jens.best@wikimedia.de wrote:
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:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe