Talk:Funds Dissemination Committee/Call for Volunteers
Cart before the horse?[edit]
I like Wikipedia, and would like to help Wikipedia more than I do. I already do a small bit of editing, but... I absolutely don't feel like I want to tell anyone how to spend OTHER people's money, and especially not when I don't have any vested interest in the outcome. In some ways I think the funding model is somewhat broken, and this may reflect problems in the way the governance model works, too. It seems increasingly clear that Wikipedia is driven by people who have axes to grind, but I think there are a lot of people like me who have various knowledge but don't want to drive things...
Let me make it concrete in this case. If you offered some projects and let me contribute to those projects, then I might vote with my wallet. However, if you want to do BIG projects, then either you need LOTS of small donors like me, or you have to get a few BIG donors, and in that case you're going to wind up doing what those donors want you to do. I think you should help people prepare the project proposals and then have a kind of virtual stock market 'charity shares' in those projects. When enough people agree, then you spend the money (which you would already be holding.
Various ways to do it, but the latest version I wrote up is called "reverse auction charity shares" because it includes a kind of viral marketing mechanism. Popular projects would actually get lower share prices because more people want to support them...
Anyway, I wish Wikipedia well, and I think you have a kind of monopolistic position for the time being, but I have significant reservations about how the increasingly large amounts of money are twisting the idea. Shanen (talk) 02:08, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
(:])『 thanks jumbo. so sorry! good things for all people.
Strong supportI think the person is a good production even if it is not a saint. In order to achieve the noble mission, I will always be done for. Will always take it in good faith. However, if you have a job, money is wanted as a reward legitimate!God bless you and all wikipedians.--MOTOI Kenkichi (talk) 13:59, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
The cart without the horse?[edit]
I guess Shanen is taking the matter too seriously. The project is set up (for what I understood) for suggesting through consensus how to spend the fundraised money and not to "tell" anyone how to spend "other's people money". Some detachment is needed in order to participate to wikipedia even for editing. What about being a tax-payer then? Aren't we all tax-payers and haven't we all got the right to make suggestions how public-tax-raised-money should be spent? Who pays very little taxes because they have low income has exactly the same rights to express his views like who earns (and pays) trillions. Please take it easy. Maurice Carbonaro (talk) 17:43, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
Confusing committee name?[edit]
The committee is about evaluation and review more than 'dissemination'. Dissemination is just the context in which it made sense to improve and organize our review of annual programs. There was talk at Wikimania of improving the name; is that still on the table?
I revised the language so it wasn't focusing primarily on "how to distribute funds". I think the list of criteria for being a volunteer are clearer about this than the language on this page was. (Staff of both the WMF and chapters know how to handle that. It's the program evaluation that matters. We also need to be evaluating programs that don't have major financial components... But this committee is focused on slates of programs that require significant funds -- for now, a crude proxy for the foundations & chapters doing the most extensive collections of program work).