This draft WMF annual plan was first published on Meta on the 25th.[1] It
was then announced by the mailing list late on the 26th. Yet the document
itself says, "The comment period for this version will close May 29, 2015".
This gives approximately 3 days to engage in community consultation on the
WMF annual plan (value: $67M) because it is important that "[we] make
certain that we have community feedback on this initial draft" and because
"we value this input".
I recognise that the deadline of the WMF Board of Trustees needing to vote
on this (June 15) is looming, so the timeline is short. I am sure the
original *intention* was to have a longer time period but that due to some
delays in preparing the document for review the time just slipped away.
Nevertheless, three days is not stakeholder engagement - it's just ticking
the box of "inform the community" before sending it to the Board.
The WMF talks about "eating your own dog food"[2] in terms of engineering,
but it would be good if something similar would take place in the annual
planning too... Chapters are required to submit their annual plans to a two
*month* period of quite thorough public review before the FDC gives its
recommendations, and then there's a further period before the actual
decision/appeals.[3] Some of these annual plans are also considerably more
detailed than the WMF's, while asking for a considerably smaller amount of
money.
It would be good if the WMF would *try to set a good example* by following
the rules that it sets for others, itself.
- Liam / Wittylama
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Pl…
[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Information
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