Considering that the income of the Foundation is attributable to the
voluntary work of the Community, perhaps some of the potential $2.5M
projects could return some of the benefit more tangibly. Let me suggest
1. Fully-paid bursaies to Wikimania 2017 for one person from each of the
250 largest projects;
2. Purchase one reference book or similar for the 30,000 most active
content contributors;
3. Purchase a one-year JSTOR subscription for the 10,000 most active
content contributors;
4. Local travel bursaries to Wikimedia meetups and conferences for 50,000
members of the Community;
5. An office with ten staff paid for a year to resolve the requirements for
improved tools from the Community Tech programme.
One could imagine folding some of these into the endowment at 4% as follows:
1'. Funding for 10 Wikimania bursaries per year for ever;
2'. Funding for 1,000 books per year for ever;
3'. Funding for 400 JSTOR subscriptions per year for ever;
4'. Funding for local travel for 2,000 people per year for ever.
Considering the enormous surplus value accruing to the Foundation as a
result of the work of the Community, any or all of these suggestions seem
to be to be quite modest returns to the Community for that work.
"Rogol"
On Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 3:59 PM, James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I was very glad that the Foundation decided to extend
the fundraiser.
I think adding projects outside of the lengthy, formulaic,
overly-committee laden, but necessary in part FDC funding process and
getting a head start on the endowment is essential for retaining the
soul of the Foundation's traditional agility and creativity. Sure, it
made a liar out of Jimmy and other officials this year, and they
should be commended by those of us who think the effective
non-sacrifice to their reputations is worth it.
Accordingly, I propose the following $2.5 million-range projects for
further extension of this year's fundraiser:
1. A study of systemic bias in economics articles on the English Wikipedia;
2. An extension of the (in the interest of full disclosure: my student
and my) Accuracy Review of Wikipedias Google Summer of Code Project
into a general computer-aided educational system including authentic
intelligibility remediation of spoken language skills, as proposed at
https://goo.gl/WGUIFa
3. A study of the top five endowment-grade mutual funds available for
general Foundation investments, their prospects, and opportunities for
divestments and strategic investments consistent with the Mission
broadly construed.
4. A study of the social implications of copyright law and regulation
changes in relation to the Foundation's Mission for the Public Policy
group.
That's about $10 million. What other ideas are there?
Best regards,
Jim
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