Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2013/Meetings/Doc/revised-WLMi-grant
Reply to Asaf 1 (about scale down, amendment)
[edit]meta:Grants_talk:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_international_team/2013_coordination#Scale_down_needed
We have prepared and published an amendment to the grant request, resulting in a significant reduction of the budget for the international team of Wiki Loves Monuments 2013. We have considered all options and feel that in the current state of affairs it is the only possible way to make such a drastic last minute cut — with as little damage to the competition as possible.
It speaks for itself that the expectations have to be adjusted accordingly — most specifically with regards to the support that can be provided for the national teams and the transfer of knowledge to a possible future organizing team. Some part of the cuts can be justified by the delays in our timeline (partially because of our own doing, partially because of this slow process) and their negative effect stil can be avoided — but other parts will have a real impact on the competition.
Let us be very clear: we disagree with your demand, and we disagree with the process in which this grant request has been handled. While we do see that some items could be reduced a little, we strongly disagree with your decision that such a substantial reduction is necessary or even desirable.
We are especially sorry that you did not bring up your apparently strong objections to this budget earlier in the process. We discussed this quite openly with you even before the submission, yet you only bring forward your opinion many weeks after the request had been submitted — even against the advice of most of the GAC members that offered an opinion (hence it must be your opinion). You will probably have good reasons for not sharing these strong concerns earlier, but we believe that not doing so has been detrimental to the project.
In any case, we have little choice but to simply accept your decision — and have reduced the budget as demanded. We hope that this will result in a swift approval of the modified grant request so that we can organize the competition with all volunteers involved, to the best of our abilities.
On behalf of the Wiki Loves Monuments international team, ~~~~
Actual amendment
[edit]The grant request is at the demand of the Wikimedia Foundation amended as follows:
- The budget is scaled down to a total sum of €29,480. We had to reduce the grant system significantly, remove all workshops, eliminate the evaluation meeting (only leaving few funds for occasional travel) and cut back on the professional support.
- The expectations regarding reporting and evaluation will have to be lowered compared to the quality we would have liked to deliver. We cannot foresee the exact implications. It will almost certainly mean that there will be much less transfer to knowledge to a potential next international team.
- Other, related, expectations might have to be lowered as well indirectly as a result from this.
- Expectations with regards to technical and documentational infrastructure will have to be lowered anyway due to the late timeline we're dealing with, but even further so due to the lowered support.
- Expectations with regards to satisfaction of the international organization and its work will have to be lowered significantly.
- Fewer grants for local teams will be available.
- We will not amend the exact measures of success in the original proposal as that will only require further bureaucracy. Hence this form of amendment.
By making this amendment we hope to see a swift approval of the grant request, and be able to organize Wiki Loves Monuments after all, to a lower standard than originally intended.
+ Amended project budget table| Direct costs | Spending in 2012 | Budget for 2013 | Remarks | Budget for 2013 (scaled down) | 'Remarks | |
| Prizes | €3,700 € | €4‚000 € | €4,000 | Cannot be scaled down. | ||
| Calendars | €1,500 € | €4,000 | €4,000 | Cannot be scaled down, only cancelled (unadvisable) | ||
| Shipping & boxes calendars | €2,500 | €5,000 | €5,000 | Cannot be scaled down, only cancelled (unadvisable) | ||
| Thankyou & goodies | €797.83 | €1,000 | €1,000 | Cannot be scaled down. | ||
| World Exhibition | €2,200 | – | – | Discontinued | ||
| Grant system | €1,000 | €4,500 | €1,500 | If alternative is proposed, this can be discussed. | ||
| Meeting & Meeting travel | €2,494.64 | €7,000 | €1,000 | Evaluation meeting cancelled, remaining budget for incidental meeting travel. | ||
| Workshops | €750.00 | €750.00 | – | Workshops cancelled (also unlikely now due to timeline) | ||
| Professional support | €9.513,64 | €15,000 | €10,000 | Technical support only | ||
| Unforeseen | €855,16 | €4,125 | €2,650 | 10% for unforeseen expenses. | ||
| TOTAL expenses | '€24,611.27 | €45,375 | €29,150 |
On behalf of the Wiki Loves Monuments international team, ~~~~
Reply to Tilman/Asaf (about effectivity)
[edit]While I don't want to be dragged into a welles/nietes (yes/no) discussion, I would like to make a few clarifying remarks here. The blog post was planned for a long time, but Asaf and Tilman's remarks with the negative undertone were somewhat a trigger for it. My intention was not at all to give perfect numbers or a mathematical proof that Wiki Loves Monuments is a perfect project. However, what I do think these numbers show is that there definitely is a long term impact. And personally, I think 4% retention with this definition is a very nice number. I'm too sorry that you can't compare it with WMF numbers, but this is simply because of what I had available. This is easiest to measure.
It is not the goal of Wiki Loves Monuments to create data like this, but if it becomes available we surely like to share it. Yes, there's a different definition for 'active' than in the report cards - but that doesn't make it less useful. Because what it shows to me is that even more than two years later, 4% of the users logs in every 6 months to edit. Bothers to remember their password, and log in - even if that is just to correct a spelling mistake. That sounds like a big win to me. Also, the number of contributions made by these new editors is encouraging. Sure, they could be more specific, but 600.000 is more than the total of all WLM submissions together - including those by power users. Of course I'd encourage you to create better statistics to your own definitions, and compare them to a random set of new editors, or other projects (if their data set is statistically significant - i.e. I wouldn't consider the 2010 competition alone to be that). Everybody would only learn from that. (This is a personal note.) ~~~~
Reply to Asaf 2 (about infrastructure)
[edit]Thanks for the thoughtful suggestions. We would definitely encourage you to make them during the evaluation process after the competition — it might be useful if there will be a next edition. At this point in time, we don't think it would be realistic to implement your proposals in the 2013 competition.
Besides that, we do have a few thoughts about them in general. It would be good to remember that Wiki Loves Monuments is intentionally designed in a federative way, not centrally organized. We organize a few things centrally, but every country is able (and encouraged) to organize their own national competition in the way that it works best in their country. That often includes taking care of the national websites using resources the countries have at hand, and making technical decisions that work best for them.
As the international team, we have been aiming to help the national teams as much as possible, and not only have provided them with a single, volunteer-created and freely licensed website template (and support), but have also helped with day-to-day functioning of some websites during the month of September (take the Indian or Mexican national websites as examples) and organized and oversaw technical cooperation between some of the countries.
With the limited budget and technical resources we have, it is, however, unrealistic for the international team to take care of the functioning of the 40 or so national websites. Not only because we lack the required manpower, expertise and funds to take up such a massive task and responsibility, but also because doing so would introduce a single point of failure, something that we try to avoid as much as possible.
So to summarize, the main reasons why we do not provide countries with a shared website infrastructure are as follows: because every country has different requirements, because of the lack of required resources, because of the potential single point of failure, and because that would simply not fit with how WLM works. I hope that explains. Of course further thoughts on this topic would be welcome in an evaluation of the project.
On behalf of the international team, ~~~~
Reply to Tony
[edit]meta:Grants_talk:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_international_team/2013_coordination#Concerns
Liefste Tony,
First I'll reply to a few valid remarks in English, and then as requested to the rest in Dutch. The increases compared to last year are actually quite minimal — and often with good reason. For example, the technical support was introduced this year. This was mostly because this was a lesson from the 2012 evaluation — more technical support was necessary to secure a stable infrastructure. This was especially important after the very experienced and able Multichill decided to focus his attention on other projects this year.
Like last year, we also decided to include an item for 10% of unforeseen expenses. So far nobody has questioned that, and I assumed that not to be necessary. As you can understand, projects primarily run by volunteers have to be flexible. That means that funds have to be available at short notice ideally. This could mean that we budget a bit extra in every item, or that we add an item for unforeseen expenses. This is not entirely uncommon I believe, and in our case IMHO quite sensible.
Last year there was some professional staff available in the project management field. This year, due to the unfortunate circumstances of the complicated budgeting cycle (I'll spare you the details but it involved WMF policies, WMNL budget process, unexpected Italian laws and this very GAC) we didn't hire such support, but we did evaluate already in January that technical support was very much required this year. As explained also above and in the proposal.
Ook ik vond het deel over hoe het de doelstellingen ondersteunt niet de handigste bewoording, maargoed - we hebben zo goed als we konden het formulier ingevuld. Ik zou willen voorstellen dat je verbeteringen voor het formulier bij de WMF neerlegt.
De richtlijnen richting de deelnemers van de wedstrijd zijn de directe verantwoordelijkheid van de nationale teams. Weliswaar adviseren wij ze over verschillende zaken hieromtrent, maar hier hebben we geen directe invloed op. Als je specifieke suggesties hebt, stel ik voor dat je die neerlegt bij de respectievelijke nationale teams. Ik betwijfel sterk dat je alle richtlijnen in alle landen hebt geanalyseerd. Dit geldt ook voor je suggesties met betrekking tot land-specifieke onderverdelingen en categoriebomen. Ik vind echter wel dat ik op dien te merken dat je opmerkingen hierover licht ongepast zijn op deze plek. Dit gaat om de projectaanvraag, en niet de specifieke uitwerkingen. Wiki Loves Monuments wordt erg open georganiseerd door vrijwilligers, en je kunt daarin volledig je ei kwijt. Daarvoor hoef je absoluut niet je positie als lid van deze adviescommissie te mis- of gebruiken.
Je suggesties met betrekking tot het noteren van valuta zijn interessant, maar verder irrelevant voor de aanvraag. Ik stel voor dat als je dit belangrijk vindt, dat je het opneemt in de documentatie van het formulier, zodat een volgende aanvrager er zijn of haar voordeel mee kan doen. Op je uitdrukkelijke verzoek heb ik dit antwoord in het Nederlands geschreven. Ik zou Karthik kunnen vragen of hij eventuele follow-up in het hindi wil doen. (This is a personal note.) ~~~~
Meeting & Meeting travel
[edit]I'm not sure if this amount is enough!! May be we can increase this to 3.000,00.