On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 7:40 PM, Gregory Varnum gregory.varnum@gmail.com wrote:
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
A big +1 to everything you've said above, varnent. Thanks for the lovely example for how events like Wiki Loves Pride could get involved.
And just to underscore again what you, Sydney and all have said in this thread:
For those who feel strongly that they can't or don't want to pick up this focused challenge, and who do still have a time-sensitive funding request, please do reach out to Alex Wang or myself directly so we can work with you.
We've heard from a number of chapters/groups so far that are excited about the campaign and are wondering how to help. We've heard from only a few people so far about specific time-sensitive requests of concern, and we're really quite open to continue working with anyone who needs support in this regard. I'm not going to engage in broader theoretical discussion on this list about whether or not the gender gap warrants focused attention, and I tend to think experiments and new data can be the best way to help drive more useful future discussions and decisions, but I and my grantmaking colleagues are absolutely on hand to help solve specific, actionable problems! Please keep bringing them to us.
On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 6:33 PM, Sydney Poore sydney.poore@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@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
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