When I first heard about the idea - I was timid and concerned. However,
after reading the responses - I am not sure that everyone is looking at
this the right way. My concerns have been addressed, largely by the
commitment to accept time-sensitive requests and the description of the
idea.
It has become increasingly common for grant organizations to encourage
applicants to focus their programs on target areas - sometimes that
requirement applies to the enter year. However, that generally does not
mean you cannot submit your usual programs and ideas - it just challenges
you to expand them in a particular focus area. Given the focus on gender
gap work in the tech sector, starting with that during a trial run seems
logical.
It seems to me that this would be a good excuse for events like WLM, Wiki
Loves Pride, Wikimedia Conference, and others possibly planning during
those months to consider how to increase the focus on the gender gap.
Promoting themes that encourage articles about women (we already know there
are huge gaps in a lot of professions), Pride could give prizes to great
articles about lesbian pioneers, or WLM could promote photos of female
inspired or involved architectural projects. With the possible exception of
things like specific tech development projects, I think most outreach
projects could be challenged to find a way to include addressing the gender
gap into their plans for work that would be funded during those months.
I'm not sure that this threatens gender gap projects after that period, or
threatens projects that are not traditionally seen as gender gap focused.
If it does, then we will know it didn't work. But I would encourage folks
to think of this as a challenge on how they can help include addressing
gender gap in their programming rather than viewing it as an obstacle to
funding.
Plus, it sounds like the underlying message remains what it always is - if
you have an idea and are concerned about the timelines - contact the
grantmaking staff or volunteers to talk it through.
-greg aka varnent
On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 6:33 PM, Sydney Poore <sydney.poore(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Values. It is a matter of values.
If you believe, as I do, that lack of diversity of Wikimedia projects is
seriously compromising the content of the projects then designing a
campaign that addresses one or more aspects of this concern is a reasonable
top priority even if it displaces other interests/values.
It has become pretty obvious that funding the interests/values of existing
community members through regular channels is not creating content free of
systemic bias in general nor closing the human gender gap. (I say this as
someone who has read all types of WMF funding proposals and evaluations of
for several years now.)
Temporarily doing a 3 month targeted Gender Gap experimental campaign is a
modest approach to take in addressing one of the biggest weaknesses of
Wikimedia Foundation projects. The reaction of some members of the
community was predictable, because it is evident in the majority of
previous and current funding requests that increasing the diversity of the
larger Wikimedia movement is secondary priority of most existing people and
organizations. (Of course there are other wikimedians who also share my
passion. I greatly appreciate your work!)
My inspiration for continuing to do volunteer work for the wikimedia
movement has largely come from the people inside the parent WMF and the WMF
Board. Despite the constant criticism from "the community", I find the
folks employed at the WMF to be hard core believers in the Wikimedia
movement and share my value of increasing the diversity of the community
and content, and working to eliminate systemic bias in content.
So it is not surprising to me that there is disconnect between "the
community" and the WMF staff and Board around supporting current volunteers
and recruiting a more diverse community.
I appreciate the WMF grant team for doing this type of experimentation, and
encourage other WMF affiliated organizations (chapters, thematic
organization, and user groups) to not be timid in addressing all types of
diversity and systemic bias by narrowing their focus in order to get the
best results.
I sincerely apologize if some people reading my comment feel under
appreciated and become dispirited. But creating a diverse wikimedia
movement in order to eliminate entrenched systemic bias is a stronger
value for me. I hope that hearing from someone like myself who is inspired
by the experiment will change the minds of some people.
But even if that doesn't happen it is important to me to speak out in
support of the Inspire Gender Gap campaign and the staff & volunteers who
share my vision of collecting and disseminating free content to everyone in
the world.
Warm regards to all people everywhere in the wikimedia movement!
Sydney
Sydney Poore
User:FloNight
Wikipedian in Residence
at Cochrane Collaboration
On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 5:26 AM, 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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