On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 2:37 AM, Anders Wennersten mail@anderswennersten.se wrote:
Thanks Siko, also from me.
I do hope that you use this time to really learn of the dynamics of grants/impact, by following up of earlier experience and also in defining expectations targets etc in a specific area
For me an eyeopener was a program run in Sweden by WMSE to get more female contributors. It was funded from outside WMF and primary involved workshops for Wikipedia writing, in a form we are all familiar with. The workshops was run in different middlesized towns and got a very limited attendance, 3-15 persons, whereof only a tiny fraction stayed on as Wikipedians after the workshop. I got annoyed at first noticing it cost something like 100-200 dollar per participant, and 20 times as much to get the one among them who stayed on but only making some 50-100 edits. I saw it as a truly waste of money (not WMF though).
But then I learned that those activities attracted more media attention than any other program having been run by WMSE, there must now be between 30-50 coverages in local and nationwide papers and radio stations. And the funding body saw this as a thundering success, and has given even more funding for a second year. And then something happened as a result from this media coverage, more female editors has now a year later turned up!
Anders
Thanks for sharing this example, Anders. We're definitely going to learn a lot from this experiment, as I am from this discussion, and will be sharing back findings too :)
Your point about media interest as well as longer term impact is super important. While we do need to be able to demonstrate some short-term impact, I also think that for many of the grants we make the impact can really only seen much more clearly in the longer term. So following up well after the pilot is over will also be important.
I don't usually think that media coverage alone = thundering success (like you, I'd probably have been disappointed at first with the early outcomes you mentioned). But I do see that one possible outcome for campaigns like this is increased media coverage which in turn could result in longer term impact by bringing in more people to the projects. Will be on the lookout for this - glad you mentioned it!
Siko
Chris Keating skrev den 2015-01-06 10:53:
Thanks for the details Siko!
Going back to the original message in this thread - I would indeed be concerned if the WMF was shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no good reason.
However that's not really what's happening. It's more that non-urgent grantmaking is being postponed; and there is a good rationale for it (one more about wanting to experiment with grantmaking styles, than about the gender gap being a special case).
Makes sense to me.
Chris
On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 6:59 AM, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
Actually, the experiment is whether such a campaign would drive more
successful grants, as I understand it. It works from the assumption that such grants would have a positive impact. I'm happy to go with that assumption though.
I still strongly disagree with this initiative, but especially the way it is executed. I'm glad to hear that all time-sensitive requests can still apply during this period - that would probably be quite a few requests.
I'm still in the dark as to why this has to be a three month program (that is a very long period of time to put everything on hold for an experiment) and not just 2-4 weeks. Then you could actually commit to quicker run-through times in the program, etc. Reducing the time frame would reduce the damaging side effect significantly.
Lodewijk
On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 6:47 AM, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
Did you not see the bit about "experimental"?
Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto: wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Bjoern Hoehrmann Sent: 06 January 2015 05:48 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF is shutting down grantmaking for good projects for 3 months for no reason
- Siko Bouterse wrote:
Why the gender gap? Although we’ve committed to supporting and increasing gender diversity, so far these kinds of projects haven’t emerged organically at any meaningful scale. In the first half of this year, IEG and PEG have spent only 9% of funds on projects aiming to directly impact this gap and less than ? of our grantee project leaders
have been women.
Without taking time to focus on increasing gender diversity in our content and contributors, this trend is likely to continue.
What evidence is there that spending more on "gender gap" will have any measurable impact on "gender gap"? I also note that you say "projects" have not "emerged". That sounds like people do not actually have ideas
how
to "impact" "gender gap" with money. Could you identify a couple of projects that would have considerable "impact" on "gender gap" but that have been refused funding in the past due to a lack of "focus" on "gen-
der
gap"?
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de D-10243 Berlin · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de Available for hire in Berlin (early 2015) · http://www.websitedev.de/
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