Grants talk:APG/FDC recommendations/2016-2017 round 1

recommendations for WMDE

The FDC once more shows, that the FDC is the enemy of the Wikimedia Comunities. Unbeleavable, what here ist written. So shamefull. We should think about an end of this shamefull institution. Marcus Cyron (talk) 06:52, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

I've not understood this punitive measure either. The reasons provided make little sense, in particular «have had little impact on editor decline within the German Wikimedia community - especially where there are three well-funded chapters» (as if WMF or others ever had an impact on editor decline!). Nemo 22:13, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

@Marcus Cyron: The FDC is made up of Wikimedia community members, with a majority elected by the community. Please don't post rhetoric pitting the FDC against the community, as that really isn't the case. Please instead focus on commenting on the specific issues at hand here.

@Nemo bis: "as if WMF or others ever had an impact on editor decline" - that's true, but that doesn't stop the point made with regards WMDE also being true. It's not clear whether a bit more money here will help change that. It would be good to hear your thoughts on this and the other aspects of the WMDE recommendation that didn't make sense to you?

Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:51, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Nonsensical arguments don't help either. None of the other aspects of the WMDE recommendation really make sense to me, I just pointed out the most illogical one. Of course it might be that the recommendation is still correct, I'm not saying the contrary because I didn't have time to read the grant request yet. The ship has sailed anyway. Nemo 22:00, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Besides Marcus overpassioned and keen comment, he's exactly right in his meaning. Reducing WMDE's request by ~half to a budget half the volume of WMCH or WMAT... this stupidity stand for itself. Less (50%) support for a community that is supporting/representing one of the biggest WP communities will give a very good guarantee that our authors will have again less supported (now not by WMDE probs but funding dump(ing) - WMDE support WP'ians for a 80million country, WMCH/WMAT together for WP'ians in two wonderful countries of 17million hab. - you should better claim WMDE to support the WPians better and force them and give more money comparable to Britain getting 390 kUSD. How WMDE should invest costless in an country 4 times bigger than austria and suisse together. You point out, that WMDE "has been improving through the Community Wishlist process" but like to cut the funding by half??? Your critics on WMDE is so overall and expressionless, helps nobody, and WMDE cant learn or better improve into the future. Good morning america. --Commander-pirx (talk) 10:20, 21 November 2016 (UTC) (only author, not connected with WMDE, but now thinking to stop working in WP)

Just a point of clarification, for discussions that refer to the word "half". The amount that WMDE requested in this grant application represents ~4% of the total budget, and the total budget for 2017 is also ~7% larger than 2016. The "half" being discussed here refers to half of the grant requested (~2% of the total budget) not half of WMDE's total budget. (Also, this grant is separate from funding for Wikidata - that funding does come from the WMF too, but in a different contract.)

I'm not saying this to invalidate anyone's dissatisfaction. I am saying this to clarify for anyone that is not aware of how WMDE is funded: that WMDE's size/budget (and capacity to operate its annual plan) is still going to be bigger in 2017 than 2016 - it is not going to be "half" its current size/budget next year. Wittylama (talk) 11:17, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Garfield Byrd

It states he was not able to participate in person in the deliberations. But was he informed of the recomemndation and approved it, or did he abstain from approving it? And if he abstained is it then correct state FDC approved it? would it not then be the participating members of FDC approved?Anders Wennersten (talk) 13:05, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Hello Anders. Garfield was able to participate in all of our early assessment activities and made valuable contributions, but was unexpectedly unable to attend the deliberations. He did not participate in the deliberations themselves, or the final approval. Risker (talk) 17:15, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks för answer, but then I think it is an unclear issue here. Theoreticly Garfield could have objections to the recommendation, and then it is not correct to state "the FDC recommends". Either the text in the recommendation should be "the FDCmembers particpating in the deliberation recommends" or Garfield should here on the Talkpage state he is fine/has no objection to the recommendation.Anders Wennersten (talk) 18:52, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Is there a quorum for FDC recommendations, or is there an expectation for unanimity?--Schreibvieh (talk) 20:34, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

• Thanks for all of your comments. The FDC makes its decisions on a consensus basis. Funding recommendations are made by those who are present at the meeting scheduled for making decisions, with the exception that members may recuse from a specific deliberation and decision. The absence of any one member does not change the mandate of the committee members who are present to carry out the deliberations and make recommendations. The written commentary may include observations made during the pre-deliberation period as well as the (publicly available) staff assessments; because Garfield did participate in the pre-deliberation activities, we felt it important to include him by name in our report. Risker (talk) 23:03, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
  • +1 to Risker's comment. Technically, the quorum for the FDC according to the FDC framework is five voting members. It would have been good if Garfield could have been involved with the approval of the recommendations before they were published, but unfortunately this wasn't possible due to the circumstances of his absence. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:37, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

During a deliberation 2013 Yuri was unable to participate in the in-person deliberations but he was called up at end of meeting and gave his blessing to the recomednation before it was published. So while your interpretation of the framework is reasonable, I myslef see that we interpreted it differently 2013 and also that your comment for Garfield is not as clear as it could be.Anders Wennersten (talk) 07:59, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

"conflicts of interest"

In the interest of improving movement understanding of the (governance, not content) notion of conflict-of-interest, I would like to recommend that the phrasing "conflicts of interest", in the section on WMCH, be amended to "badly-managed conflicts of interest" (or whatever qualifier the Committee feels more comfortable with).

We have been trying (for instance, in affiliate board trainings at the Wikimedia Conference) to inculcate a mature approach to conflict of interest -- which sometimes is unavoidable, and often is perfectly manageable -- to move away from twitchy "OMG COI! Run for your lives!" responses to a more nuanced ability to identify and manage COI.

Thank you for considering this. Ijon (talk) 18:30, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

@Ijon: I'm fairly sure that the amendment you've suggested is what we were meaning when writing that sentence, so I've clarified it accordingly. I'll double-check this with the FDC, and if anyone objects then I'll revert my edit. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:57, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, @Mike Peel:. Ijon (talk) 23:12, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

After contemplation, we've made this edit to the COI point to hopefully make the point clearer and to avoid misunderstandings. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 13:31, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

WMCH response to some points mentioned in the FDC recommendation

Please find below the quotes from the FDC recommendation to which the Wikimedia CH team wishes to address some points:

• However, in this application the links and priorities between activities and results are not clear. Also, although the budget is broken down by project line, it was not detailed enough to understand the impact between the spendings and the each of the activities within those projects. As such, the Committee found it difficult to entirely understand the plan.

WMCH did its best to work on a strategic plan that ensured a continuation of already ongoing projects and allowed room for new ones that were brought up by the community. As you know, over the past years, activities in CH were often projects/programmes which were not sufficiently tied together and ensuring sustainable impact was thus more difficult. WMCH has now tried, to the best of its abilities, not to re-invent the wheel but to give clear impact directions to activities that were already in the pipeline, packaging them in a way that makes sense and paving the way for the future. We are indeed ensuring that there is a connection between the different impact directions and are going to make an effort to highlight this in a clearer manner within our reports. Some of our activities are merely seeds, testing out the market, some others are already ripe for harvesting but all are thriving to achieve the necessary impact and visibility here in Switzerland.

• WMCH's software development plans are rather opaque. Although the organisation has a history of successfully developing software, primarily Kiwix, its plans for future development work are unclear. Kiwix is currently organising as a separate organisation, with some funding through the WMF project grants; although mentioned in the proposal, it is unclear how much development WMCH will continue to do. The GLAM stats tool development is particularly lacking transparency. From the proposal, it is difficult to understand what the project is, the status of it, and whether consultation with other movement stakeholders has taken place. Although this improved through documents provided offline to the FDC very late in the process, this results in a lack of confidence about whether the program will be developed in a transparent and consultative way with the community, and this approach is likely to result in poor outcomes.

Wikimedia CH’s intention has always been to be completely transparent and accountable. Its new CEO, puts a strong emphasis on sharing information and collaborating wherever it makes sense. Unfortunately, several items and decisions were still pending in September when WMCH had to submit its annual plan and strategy, therefore concrete information was not available at that time. In the specific case of the GLAM tool set, the documentation of the software followed specific requests of the final users, i.e. partner institutions in CH. As soon as everything was available, WMCH has provided the documentation, i.e. as soon the requirements were stable and defined.

In 2017, as you know, Kiwix is going to become a separate entity with specific goals etc. WMCH has been providing input into Kiwix’ Strategy and will start discussing a binding collaboration contract later this month. As WMCH, we feel that it is important to support Kiwix deployment and development; several of its components/projects are thus included into WMCH’s Impact Direction “Education”. However, being accountable to our donors and community, WMCH could not justify spending half of its project money available on Kiwix software development alone and thus encouraged, helped and supported Kiwix to submit a grant directly to WMF. So for 2017, we will be working hand in hand, being closely tied together and benefiting from Kiwix’ impact on certain projects as will Kiwix benefit from its close ties to WMCH. However, other programs in CH will also be pursued, as stated in our annual plan and multiyear strategy.

• Projects are often driven by one person, such as the ongoing program around the visually impaired, which leads to concerns about how stable these programs will be in the long run. There are a lot of projects under the Community program and effort needs to be made to make sure that these are projects that will lead to long-term impact in a stable way, and also that these programs are not splitting staff time across too many areas.

As a chapter based in a country with four national languages, splitting staff time is inherent to who we are. Our various language communities are well aware of this challenge and appreciate the efforts the chapter is doing in order to provide the best support as last year’s community results highlighted. Whereas in the past WMCH had several projects (bottom up) which "only" took place in one language region of Switzerland, we intend in the future - and are already starting with GLAM - to go more into a direction where we have nation-wide projects/programs in order to have a wider impact although the metrics will still be spread out across several Wikimedia projects and language versions. Please note that in Switzerland’s case, nation-wide projects are normally more complex because of multilingualism. The upcoming Swiss Archives day in June 2017, where WMCH is working alongside the association for archives in CH (VSA-AAS), is a good illustration of this attempt as events will take place and will be supported by volunteers across Switzerland.

• The FDC is uncertain of the expected response to the banners encouraging editing of "female-specific content". The FDC also notes the intention to continue work on the project to support visually impaired users, and encourages WMCH to share the results of its research throughout the Wikimedia community.

The FDC mentioned its uncertainty with regards to our planned banner-campaign which encourages the editing of "female-specific content". We would like to take the chance to point out that we are not introducing something new but we are building on the success of the “Wikiproject: women in red” and “les sans pages” projects. We follow these initiatives closely and regularly communicate about these to our communities.

• One of this year's grantee-defined metrics, the "number of people reached", is a collection of disparate methods for interaction, some of which are very difficult to measure. This metric would benefit from clarification or simplification. The FDC notes that new partnerships do not normally illustrate impact; focusing on both results (e.g., number of documents scanned, number of images used on Wikimedia projects) as well as the potential for additional results may provide better information on effectiveness and impact of the partnership.

Concerning our grantee defined metrics in terms of “ umber of people reached” please find herewith some more info. All important newspapers and magazines in Switzerland are measured and identified by Remp, an independent agency that guarantees the quality of our media and accurate statistics. We chose to use a widely used metric to measure how successful our initiatives and outreach is (which is not easy in communications as you will appreciate). The "number of reached people” or “readership” indicates the average number of readers for one specific media. To calculate this, Remp has developed an indicator based on a thorough study that is published twice a year. The study contains a survey based on 19’000 interviews of representative people living in Switzerland. It remains the most accurate tool to estimate media impact and readership for Swiss media and foreign media available in Switzerland as per today.

Remp calculates and analyses the readership via the following tools and methods applied to each media in order to ensure comparability:

• MACH Basis: national study about the readership including analysis of the penetration and the users’ structure for more than 400 media titles. It is considered as the basic tool for media planification in Switzerland.:
• MACH Consumer: permanent study about media consumption in Switzerland. It associates consumption habits with media utilisation. It is also the most used tool for marketing plans aiming at targeting specific consumption groups.
• MACH Radar: combines the demography analysis of DemoSCOPE (Swiss leader in market studies) with information about media and consumption. Products, brands, services, sales channels and media positioning are represented on psychographic maps. The study also shows the potential of existing consumers’ systems of values.
• MA Leader: media market study focusing on a specific target group: leaders in the French and German parts of the country. It shows how they use selected newspapers, magazines and websites and is completed with additional information about their professional activity and their consumption habits.

Those tools are the most precise and widely used in the country, allowing a high level of knowledge of the media read in Switzerland.

Concerning the the new partnerships, we will thoroughly evaluate which new collaboration we start as it needs to be aligned with our fundraising and overall strategy. Many different possibilities exist: whereas we agree that GLAM would be potentially measured by the number of uploaded or scanned documents, other partners, such as like-minded organisations etc. won’t benefit from such a metric. Here, it will be important to see the final goal (i.e. reaching public policy goals, becoming more visible in terms of brand, generating ear-market project funding etc.). Metrics will be linked to impact directions and strategic orientations depending on the nature of the partnership. Effectivity is hence to be interpreted along those lines.

We much appreciate the opportunity to grow and improve over the years. We are looking forward to our future collaborations with the community members, institutions, chapters as well as the Wikimedia Foundation for the year 2017.

This list of answers is the work of the WMCH team and is submitted by: --Gabrielle Marie WMCH (talk) 09:27, 8 December 2016 (UTC)