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Report received, and thank you

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Dear Nathalie:

We thank you for submitting this complete progress report for Quarter 2 on time, and we look forward to reviewing it soon and learning more about your activities this past quarter. Please be sure to monitor this page for questions and feedback from FDC staff while your report is being reviewed. Contact us with questions or concerns about this report at any time.

Best regards, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 19:49, 31 January 2014 (UTC)Reply

Basic copy-edit?

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Thank you for this report. But having clearly invested a lot of work into it, why not spend another 2% of effort to fix the weird language glitches? For example, what on earth is "structuration"? Is someone inventing words? It's really off-putting to readers. Tony (talk) 09:22, 1 February 2014 (UTC)Reply

Hi Tony,
Thank you for your comment (and the compliment on the work invested :)
The postmortem of our previous FDC documents (reports & proposals), regarding both the final result & our own internal writing process, led us to decide that we would first write this Q2 report in French on our chapter wiki, and resort to a professional translation service. Among other things, we figured we would thus avoid the language shortcomings of our previous documents (which you noted, if I remember correctly ;-)
We worked on a very tight schedule, with the 1-month-after-end-of-period deadline, and as the translation was expected to take a lot of time. We got the translation back a few days ago… to be very disappointed with the result, indeed. We spent quite a lot of time these past two days to fix the most glaring language issues as much as we could, and missing many others. (In this case, structuration is a calque on the French structuration = structuring)
We are currently doing the postmortem of this report writing, and will decide how to amend our process to further improve our future documents. And most certainly contract with a different service :)
Thanks, Jean-Fred (talk) 10:11, 3 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
Hi Tony. For what it's worth, and independantly from the "translation mishap" as Jean-Fred describes it, I would like to point out that no matter how well one speaks a second language, they may never ever speak it as you do as a native speaker. I am glad this report was translated by an external service that can be blamed for the glitches, because had it been translated by volunteers, as many others reports are, I would have found your remark extremely disheartening and well... "off-putting" to use your own words. Best, notafish }<';> 16:35, 3 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
Jean-Frédéric, I think it was a good process as you describe it, that yes, fell down at the end of the pipeline. A few million French-speakers could do much better than that, but wouldn't call themselves professionals. As I said before, I'm willing to go over the draft to fix it up, gratis, as long as it's not during a horrendous part of my work schedule; that's an offer I've made to no other chapter.

Notafish, I'm sorry if you find it potentially off-putting, but the language is not good enough in a competitive international forum; many native English-speakers commit horrendous sins in their own writing, so don't feel special on that count. But there's a difference between stumbling over the odd strangeness or awkward grammar and being able to make sense of it, and the use of a word that doesn't exist, like "structuration", where one doesn't know what it means. Inventing weird words is something I've seen before in WMFR; reasonably correct standard English will do (not perfect pearly prose). Tony (talk) 15:09, 5 February 2014 (UTC)Reply

Bottom line is, if Wikimedia truly is an international organisation, then we should be mindful of those who have to use English as a second, third or maybe even fourth language because some historical turn of events made English the lingua franca of the movement. I thank you for your offer to copy-edit though, that's extremely kind of you and I wish we could count on many more people who can do that. Not as much as I wish that FDC members, myself included, could actually read reports and applications in their native language though. :D notafish }<';> 16:45, 6 February 2014 (UTC)Reply
No, I'm not accepting that tired old line. WMFR is the stand-out in presenting weird English. Weird, not incorrect. No one expects perfect language, but I do want to be able to understand it. What exactly does "structuration" mean? I've no idea. Perhaps it was meant to be "structuring". Unprofessional to invent new words when your poor readers are trying to make sense of it. No way would I write that way in French. Tony (talk) 02:36, 7 February 2014 (UTC)Reply

Comments from FDC Staff on this report

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Thank you for submitting this complete and high-quality report on time! Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 20:26, 11 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

Financial summary

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  • WMFR’s spending has increased in Q2, and cumulative spending is now approaching almost half of budgeted spending for this year at about 45.05%.
  • Operational expenses are higher than expected at 67,102 EUR due to up-front costs associated with hiring new employees. Spending on staffing has now reached close to 25% for Q2.
  • A few projects have been delayed or are scheduled for future quarters (for example, territorial development and research); on the other hand, a few project budgets have been nearly spent since no more activity in these areas is planned or expected for the remainder of the grant term (for example, Europeana support).

Inconsistencies

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There seem to be some inconsistencies in WMFR’s table of expenses in the “Total” line for Q2 and as a result in the “Total” line for cumulative expenses. The expenses for Q2 seem to add up to “207,117 EUR,” and not “201,786 EUR,” as listed; the cumulative expenses seem to add up to “315,001 EUR” and “412,015 USD,” respectively, rather than “309,670 EUR” and “405,048 USD,” as listed in this table. Please check these numbers and confirm the correct totals, making corrections to this financial report as needed. We apologize in advance if we are misreading the tables and hope to clarify the numbers soon.

We actually made ​​a small mistake in the sum of expenditures. The result is indeed € 207.117. We apologize and will correct the document. Sbaijard 28 April 2014 12:35 (CEST)

Appreciation

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  • This is a high-quality report with a good level of detail, and we appreciate the engaging photographs included in this report that help us understand the results of WMFR’s work. Furthermore, we appreciate that this report is reflective and shares observations with the broader community that may be helpful to others: for example, WMFR has have shared the success of unique (or “one-time”) workshops vs. workshops that are held more regularly.
  • Thank you for providing clear metrics overview tables for each program! We are excited to see this information summarized in an easy-to-read way, and are pointing other entities to this idea. We hope (and believe!) that this process will make it easier for WMFR to compose a high-quality impact report for this grant. It certainly helps us understand how WMFR is making progress toward WMFR’s objectives over time. We have asked a few questions about how to read the tables below, but we first wanted to express our appreciation for WMFR’s leadership in this area. We also found the measurement of the re-use of content generated useful and appreciate WMFR’s efforts to categorize and track content over time.
  • We appreciate WMFR’s flexibility in re-shaping and adapting the timeline of the Territorial Development program based on what WMFR is learning, and we hope this re-shaping leads to the results Wikimédia France would like to achieve. We also appreciate that WMFR is willing to share when some programs do not go as well as planned or when some targets are not met because they may not have been realistic. This shows how WMFR is learning from its experiences.
  • We like WMFR’s emphasis on volunteer engagement that was presented throughout the analysis of various programs. We appreciated that this was a constant theme and that WMFR is both recognizing when it is going well and looking for opportunities to improve it where that is needed. Wikimédia France is becoming a leader in this area. By the way, congratulations on the strong volunteer involvement in some programs, including the Dissemination program, Recruiting new contributors, and Increasing the free content.

We would like to learn more

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  1. WMFR reports that it did not achieve the expected level of progress on its programs this quarter because of efforts related to its operational work. Is a change in focus expected in future quarters or will this be an ongoing challenge throughout the funding period?
  2. We want to make sure we are correctly understanding the metrics overview tables. A few of the tables show only amounts for Q2 and do not show any cumulative amounts. Should we assume the cumulative totals are the same as the Q2 totals in these cases?
  3. Please tell us more about the monitoring group for territorial development! How will the group increase member involvement? What benefits will member involvement bring to the program overall?
  4. Congratulations on achieving the goals for the number of microfunding requests supported and for already surpassing the goals for this funding period in terms of content supported. Does WMFR have a strategy for increasing the amount of quality-rated content to meet its goals?
  5. WMFR reports that volunteer participation in its Afripédia projects is still weak. Does WMFR have any ideas about why participation is weak, and how does WMFR plan to improve this in future quarters? How or why is volunteer participation critical to the success of this program?
  6. What does WMFR hope will be the effects of distributing booklets to secondary students? Is there a plan in place to measure this?
I have moved the answers below to show the translations as well. Jean-Fred (talk) 22:38, 29 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

Suggestions for future reports

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Keep up the good work! This was an engaging report. Moving forward, be sure to pay attention to the details. There is a lot of information presented in this report, so it can be a big effort to make sure that the metrics tables and financial tables are consistent, but it is important that both WMFR and the FDC are understanding this information in the same way. We hope that WMFR will continue to reflect on its programs and share learning with the wider movement, and continue to be open about its challenges as well as its successes.

Thanks again for this report! Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 20:26, 11 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

Answers

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