Hi Jane,
Read! https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2014-December/00760...
From February 1-April 30, PEG will only accept proposals as part of the gender gap campaign, with the exception for urgent requests.
This means regular projects will not be accepted. That is effectively shutting the grantmaking down. Of course we will not let WLM to be shut down. But this grantmaking shutting down is very demotivating and discouraging, for many organisers.
This is also counter productive in solving the gender gap problem.
Romaine
2015-01-03 18:10 GMT+01:00 Jane Darnell jane023@gmail.com:
Teemu, Of course! Not only that, but I think that an internal survey already shows that WLM attracts a higher percentage of female contributors than any other project that measured it. Don't assume by the subject heading of this thread that any WLM project is being shut down. In fact, nothing is being shut down. Jane
On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 6:03 PM, Leinonen Teemu teemu.leinonen@aalto.fi wrote:
Hei,
5 cents: would it make a difference if the Wiki Loves Monuments / Art project plans (and others) will explicitly promise that, for instance,
the
gender (f/m) balance of the participants (n 500) will be 40/60 and +50%
of
them will be new editors?
This would be meet the strategic objectives.
-Teemu
On Sat Jan 03 2015 05:27:47 GMT-0500 (COT), Romaine Wiki 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:
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