Grants:APG/FDC portal/Comments

The FDC process is meant to be community led, and the community is encouraged to actively participate in the funds dissemination process. If you have a question or feedback that you would like to provide,

please do it here.

Ask specific questions

1. Give context How big is the total budget; what percentage is under consideration; how often does this occur; where do funds to WMF USA/WMF USA projects go. Then,
2. Ask specific questions Ask some pointed questions; and focus the responses around the questions that the FDC need to help them make their final decisions.

Hope that helps, —Sladen (talk) 12:02, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

donen a wikipedia

IS a very good tool not only for students but also for people who learn nesecitan an author, works, locations, etc..

Web Cite?

why no one think about helping webcite, while we do not have any useful alternative for saving dead links? (Idot (talk) 15:13, 26 October 2013 (UTC))

It depends on anyone's interest in taking on the job. If you know someone who would like to propose this as a funded project, write it up at Grants:IdeaLab, perhaps seek a chapter affiliation (any country) to oversee the project, and request what you need to develop this. There is funding available for community requests but this project may not be mission-oriented enough for the WMF to take on at this time so it really depends on community management like so many other things here.

If you propose it at IdeaLab then the project will be there for everyone to see. If someone has an idea for making it work and community support for it to happen then the community there will recognize the plan.

Funding individual projects is different from funding chapters, but chapters definitely do manage a lot of individual projects with their funding. No chapter has spoken up about wanting this project at this time. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:04, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

There is no need for WebCite any longer; see Talk:WebCite#Proposal superseded. You may want to ask legoktm (mentioned by the Internet Archive) if he needs help with his bot, though. --Nemo 14:22, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

no longer?! how about links that ARE ALREADY DEAD and saved on WebCite? if WebCite is closed, that links will lost too! (Idot (talk) 14:20, 29 October 2013 (UTC))

Policing "Professional Editors"

No funds for policing paid "professional wikipedia editors" seems evident. Why this question? Because it is rapidly becoming clear that one can buy a series of edits to make self/business/product etc as perfect.

"Proposal form" and buttons

People are being sent to this page out of the blue with banners like this: [1]. Two suggestions:

• rename "proposal form" to "proposal text", because otherwise it's impossible to understand where one can find the actual proposal one was supposedly invited to comment;
• remove the "please comment" buttons from this page and move them to the proposal text page: the only thing one knows about the proposal when clicking the button is the amount (from the banner); I clicked the button assuming I was going to be presented with the proposal to review and instead I got a section=new edit link to a random talk page I knew nothing about with a long text of instructions which says nothing about the most important thing i.e. what is the proposal?!?.[2]

--Nemo 11:31, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Nemo. We intend to find better ways to set these things up between this round and the next, we can think about renaming things at that time, thank you for your suggestions. I believe the second point has been addressed. heather walls (talk) 22:47, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Nemo: Thanks for the good suggestions regarding the buttons. I hope the new setup is a bit more clear. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 01:00, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Dearchived my comment because it still applies for FDC portal/Proposals/Community/Review: there are two (sometimes three?!) links for each entity and again this silly "proposal form" which means nothing for people other than those filling it. --Nemo 08:34, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Deleted some empty FDC category

FYI. List of deleted pages. They were empty. PiRSquared17 (talk) 04:11, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

FYI they are replaced with "APG" instead "FDC" as a general rule (I guess the new categories will be created soon). ~ Seb35 [^_^] 16:04, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Glossary - terminology

I created a glossary for the grants and particularly the FDC process. It’s on Glossary/Grants. It can be used for future translations in order to have standard translations from one language to an other. ~ Seb35 [^_^] 17:07, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

I just found it was already existing: Grants:APG/Funds Dissemination Committee/Draft FDC Proposal for the Board/Glossary. ~ Seb35 [^_^] 16:07, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Extensive feedback from WMDE to the FDC process

We have just posted an extensive feedback from WMDE on the FDC process here on Meta. The statement was drafted by WMDE's Supervisory Board and Executive Director. We are very much looking forward to a discussion and would like to encourage everybody to share their thoughts. At the same it would be great if we keep the discussion on Meta so that we have everything in one place. --Nicole Ebber (WMDE) (talk) 16:50, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Editnotice

FDC proposals should not be edited efter deadline. I suggest (as I recall doing before) adding an edit notice to explain it.

I tried something at User:Jean-Frédéric/Editnotice, adn be happy to hear your thoughts. If that’s okay, I shall ask a Meta admin to implement that.

Cheers, Jean-Fred (talk) 19:18, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Ping Wolliff & Heatherawalls. Jean-Fred (talk) 08:34, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the mention and reminder and apologies for the late response. I have adjusted the text you created, and would be happy if you would contact an administrator to put the edit notice in place on all of the proposal form discussion pages. I think it would help also to place the notice on some of the supplementary documents, and in particular this one: Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/Wikimedia_Foundation/Proposal_form/Ongoing_work_areas. Thanks once again and let me know if you need any help or support in moving this forward. It is a very helpful suggestion indeed. Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk 23:06, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the answer. I asked for advice & help on the best way to implement this to the Meta sysops here: Meta:Requests_for_help_from_a_sysop_or_bureaucrat#Editnotice_on_FDC_proposals. Jean-Fred (talk) 15:55, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Wolliff: This has been carried out by Glaisher − thanks to him! Jean-Fred (talk) 18:07, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks to both Glaisher and you, Jean-Fred. This has been helpful! Cheers, Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk 04:08, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Synopsis Of Each Proposal

Can you please provide a short overview of what each proposal is and what each proposal plans to do? This could be one or two concise sentences on the [|welcome page] . Then, if people want to read the grisly details, that's their option. The rest of us are more likely to vote on the proposal that seems the most sensible at-a-glance, then skim over the details as time allows. Thank you. 10:19, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

This is a great suggestion. This is what we intended the very first question in the overview section to provide, although in a few cases organizations have entered longer responses here. We hesitate to reframe or summarize the proposals, which is why we asked organizations to provide a summary in their own words. Do you think it would be more helpful if we used some sort of infobox template to make this section more obvious to readers? Would it help to have this at the top of the proposal, before the TOC? Cheers, Winifred Olliff (FDC Support Team) talk 23:09, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

¿como se sabe que propuesta es la que encojen?

Feedback: please allow exceptions for 'international service projects'

Participating in the FDC process currently means that an organization is no longer allowed to request funds in other grant processes by the WMF such as the GAC-process (or what's it called now?). In general, I think this makes sense, but there are a few cases where it has some (I suspect) unintended side effects, which I would like to propose to mitigate.

One of the problems I experienced is that projects that chapters organize to 'serve' other projects are the first to be cut out of the budget when they feel it might touch the guardrails for budget growth, or when the international nature requires more preperation time to be able to estimate truthfully a good budget than the FDC cycle allows. I'm talking about projects that are international of nature and that have as primary purpose to facilitate other international projects or an international team of volunteers that need a 'home chapter' to support them. Examples could include the international team of Wiki Loves Monuments/Wiki Loves Earth, the Affiliates Meeting and the GLAM-Wiki toolset project.

My experience is that it is often desirable to have these 'international service projects' facilitated by an experienced chapter (likely an FDC applicant). Some affiliates have a better framework in place for this than others. In the current infrastructure, there are a few solutions:

• Include in the FDC-proposal of the ideal chapter - disadvantage is the timeline that is huge, and that it'll be among the first to be cut out, as it does not directly benefit the national activities.
• Get a little bit of money from multiple organizations - disadvantage is a complicated governance and reporting structure, as well as increased insecurity over longer term.
• Install a 'fiscal sponsorship' construction where a team of volunteers request a grant in their individual capacity, and a chapter is fiscal sponsor. - This was done for WLM2013-international, and has as major disadvantage an unclear coordination structure, more bureaucracy and more personal financial & legal risks for the volunteers.
• Use a non-FDC chapter - these are often less mature or for other reasons unpreferrable
• Found a separate organization, i.e. Wiki Loves Monuments Inc. - the best 'solution' so far, but adds a lot of unnecessary overhead and actually something the board tries to discourage at this point.

These five 'solutions' that are currently existing all have significant drawbacks. Therefore, I would like to suggest to allow in the future some exceptions for a specific group of 'international service projects', and give a chapter that is willing to execute such a project permission to request a grant through the GAC for this.

This would allow them to use a different (more flexible) timeline for those projects that allows more efficient allocation because they can communicate better with other affiliates that want to use this service or not (i.e. participate in Wiki Loves Monuments) and may or may not reserve budget for it in their FDC requests. Also, it would make it less of a competition between projects that only impact a single country and projects that are primarily a service to affiliates in other organizations. There are probably several other good reasons though, feel free to pile on :).

The exact shape such an exception should take is still fluid to me. Some questions to consider:

• Should there be very specific criteria to fulfill, or could FDC and/or GAC be granted an authority to make an exception on a case-by-case basis?
• How much in advance should these exceptions be announced? (ongoing, in advance or after FDC round approvals?)
• Should there be limitations to the amount?
• Should these exceptions be stimulated (and therefore international service projects), or rather discouraged?
• Should this decision lie with FDC or GAC?

I'd like to hear your thoughts! I hope the FDC Advisory Group can consider this in their next meeting, this May. If you have other suggestions to solve this particular problem (or if you think I'm seeing a problem where there isn't any), that would be interesting feedback too. (this proposal is in a strict personal capacity) Effeietsanders (talk) 14:57, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Pinging Pundit to respond to the above. --Pine^✉ 07:20, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

I've added a link to this from Funds Dissemination Committee Advisory Group/Meeting 3 - the AG's probably the better body to consider this than the FDC itself at the moment. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 07:44, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

This idea has been discussed for quite a while and I definitely believe that there should be channels for cross-country initiatives. As a matter of fact, I was advocating for this solution to two Board members. Pundit (talk) 11:07, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

No reference to this request was found in the Advisory Group recommendations. Could someone confirm if that was because it was forgotten, not deemed relevant for the advisory group or simply a bad idea? Or did I miss something? (poke Anasuya) Effeietsanders (talk) 20:58, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Effeietsanders, the reason it didn't come up at the AG meeting is because this suggestion has already been incorporated into the FDC Framework last year; I did so in September in fact. :-) You will find that in the exceptions listed for project grants vs. annual plan/general support funding, there is now a section which states: 'While entities are encouraged to plan in advance, a second exception may be available for grant requests to the Wikimedia Project and Event Grants Program to fund opportune movement-wide events, such as the Wikimedia Conference.' The first exception is, of course, for grants for political and legislative lobbying purposes. I'm sorry I didn't see this set of comments earlier, but your overall reasoning was certainly part of the rationale we used to add this exception into the Framework: if a chapter hasn't already budgeted for this kind of cross-movement work, the actual work shouldn't suffer as a result. I hope this makes work at the international level easier. ASengupta (WMF) (talk) 02:17, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the response, ASengupta. It is surprising to me that this exception was already added - I discussed this with a number of people, and nobody mentioned it. However, the language as used in the text you linked to is quite vague as it unclear if it would also cover international projects that are not for the /whole/ movement (but, for example, "only" in a number of countries). Clarification would be helpful. I'm also a little confused how you could decide not to discuss this, without seeing this discussion page - but soit, so be it :) I'm glad to hear it's already part of it and I'll take your word for it that it is fully incorporated (including international but not fully movement wide) in the rules. Effeietsanders (talk) 17:22, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Effeietsanders, the exception was added not based on this conversation, but on some of the discussion coming out of the international WLM grant last year as well as the need to support the Wikimedia Conference and so on. We purposely left the criteria somewhat open because we weren't sure what the range of actual cases would be, and we certainly want larger organisations - and the movement overall - to continue to plan ahead, not see this as a default option. As we go through another year, let's see what comes up and we can clarify further based on that (now that the FDC is likely to continue to exist!). Btw, I did make the announcement to Wikimedia-l when I made the change, but I suppose no one caught it at the time. :-) ASengupta (WMF) (talk) 01:18, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Navigation

I find the FDC portal extremely difficult to navigate -- e.g. finding out which entity got how much money for what proposals in a given year is extremely difficult, or at least the information is well hidden. The closest approximation is the calendar page (which is linked at the very bottom of the page, and itself links to category pages instead of regular summary pages). --Bence (talk) 13:48, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree with this. Let me hijack the thread a bit: I was searching for the membership of the FDC, going to FDC and being redirected to a "portal" in Grants namespace whose talk page redirected me to this subpage called "Comments". That's quite unintuitive given how other pages about decision-making bodies etc. on Meta are structured. Then, this "portal" also uses a weird look (tabs??). The closest thing to a membership list, which I found after clicking through ~3 pages, was Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_members/2012-2013_round1, which is however clearly outdated, since it doesn't yet know about the 2013 election. Is there anything like Template:BoardChart for the FDC (in maintained form; a timeline is also on the page I linked)? --MF-W 21:48, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Bence and MF-W, thanks for these comments - and yes, we do know, and are sorry it's taking a while to revamp the portal. Important things like wiki-babies took over our team's attention for a while, but Katy and Heather are working pretty intensively on making sure we have an easy to navigate space coming up. Thanks, ASengupta (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Format of table in "Global metrics overview - all programs"

I don't know where to ask questions; I was redirected here from Grants talk:APG/Reporting requirements. We are working on Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round2/Wikimedia_Italia#createbox. In Grants:APG/Report preload#Global metrics overview - all programs, if I read correctly, we are asked to provide those 6 numbers for each of the programs. We calculated 6 more metrics in addition to the 6 you ask, can we make a single table with 12 columns and 1 row per program (plus totals)? Federico Leva (WMIT) (talk) 11:23, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

This consolidated approach sounds fine. Thanks for checking, Federico. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 07:23, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

To be clear, Federico Leva (WMIT), are you saying you will do one table for each program, with 12 rows of metrics each? It's great to hear you have identified and tracked 6 other metrics on top of global metrics. Please do include a consolidated table too, that includes global metrics + the others (if you choose) for all programs totaled together. If this is unclear, let me know! KLove (WMF) (talk) 08:30, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, there is one (sub)table for each program with a separate figure for each of the 6+6 metrics, plus the totals. Federico Leva (WMIT) (talk) 12:01, 29 January 2016 (UTC)