Grants talk:APG/Funds Dissemination Committee

Propose move

Currently this page is at Grants:APG/Funds Dissemination Committee. In 2012 the FDC was imagined as a committee of the "annual plan grants" scheme but in practice it has always been more. For example, the FDC as a group has made a range of statements on the funding policy of the Wikimedia Foundation. Whatever the case, it does not seem to report to WMF staff managing APGs.

I propose to move this page to Funds Dissemination Committee so that it becomes more clear that documentation around this group should develop with the group itself at the focus, and not as a subtopic of APGs. It has been since 2012 and there seems to be no talk page for the committee except this one that I am making now, so obviously, something odd happened because there should be a communication channel here based on the precedent of other less influential committees attracting comments.

Any comments from anyone? Does anyone have any concerns about links or translations breaking? Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:25, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Hello @Bluerasberry:! Thanks for thinking this through. At this stage, we're in the process of renaming/dusting/reorganizing all of the Grants Program, the committees etc.. As such, the FDC might change names, Annual Plan Grants will become something like Annual Grants, simple APG has been introduced, and so many other things that I forget to count. In this context, I would suggest that we hold off on any reorgnizing until we've actually figured out how we want to go about the big picture. I reckon we'd be finished with that reorganization in September, ready for the new APG round to start. So I propose we hold off any renaming/moving (and yes, it will break a LOT of things, because this whole Grants:APG space is intricately woven with templates that spring out of nowhere, self creating pages and funky buttons ;)) until then. I'll make a note to ping you then and continue this conversation. Does that work for you? Best Delphine (WMF) (talk) 10:50, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Delphine (WMF) Waiting until September works. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:25, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks @Bluerasberry:! I activated my pinging machine ;) Delphine (WMF) (talk) 12:34, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Hello @Bluerasberry:! Guess what.. my pinging m achine has been bugging me to come back to this, so here I am. Now that's I've been in the job for a while, my take is that yes, to this day, the FDC *is* part of APG and we should keep it that way in the way we name pages. This of course does not at all preclude us from thinking about what role the FDC or any other body could take on a much larger role of, as you note. Also, APG does not pertain to staff, nor the fact that the FDC page is under APG means that staff are "over" the FDC in any kind of way. The APG program is strongly supported by staff, and is run thanks to quite a large number of volunteers, especially those in the FDC and the simple APG committee, but also anyone who joins in the public discussion around it. As such, the naming scheme should remain for now. Hope this makes sense to you! Delphine (WMF) (talk) 07:32, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Delphine (WMF) It makes sense to do it as you described, and reasonable to keep it that way. I have another question which is sort of related.

The publishing structure here is still strange. It confuses me, and it must have confused others because the archives are not in place, which is really strange. This page was made in 2015, but the FDC was established in 2012, but the pre-2015 discussions about the FDC are not tied to this talk page. Are you able to surface whatever page or place was the primary forum for APG discussion in the 3+-year period before this page was placed here? Category:Funds Dissemination Committee does not seem to have an obvious page. I know Wiki people made something, because everything has a page and especially something this big does.

Other weird things - an FDC page was made in 2012, but only as a redirect to FDC portal. In 2014 that page was made a redirect to Grants:APG/Funds Dissemination Committee, but then someone did something out of process because the current page (this one where we are now) was made in 2015. Also, I cannot find the old FDC Portal, which seems to have been where discussion was until 2014. I doubt anything was deleted but there is no record of where the archives were in history logs and I also do not see them in the category tree. Based on this strange moving, I think the FDC has had at least 3 primary discussion forums and none seem linked. If I had to identify the cause of this, I would say that the reason is that the organization has never been named "funds dissemination committee", but instead has always been sorted as a subcategory of another topic. I do not know how to track where moved pages have gone because this is not tracked in history logs. What do you know about this? Can you find the discussion logs (talk pages, like this one) for pre 2015? The usual way to keep pages like this is in one place, with a rolling discussion which gets archived.

Thanks for whatever you can do. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:02, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Hmmm. interesting. I know many pages have been renamed (Many of the FDC Portal/subpages have, for example, as Grants:APG/subpage). Here is probably what was one of the first pages ever: Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Framework_for_the_Creation_and_Initial_Operation_of_the_FDC, dating back to 2012. Maybe it's a good starting point? I'm going to activate my pinging machine again to take some time to look at this one day, but I don't promise anything. If you feel like being the archeologist, I am happy to assist and discuss :), but I can't devote too much time to this right now... Delphine (WMF) (talk) 14:57, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Delphine (WMF)

June 2012 - July 2012 - Grants talk:APG/Funds Dissemination Committee/Framework for the Creation and Initial Operation of the FDC

July 2012 - December 2015 - ???

It is a start. No one necessarily needs to be archaeologist, but also, until and unless someone sorts this out, there could be a diffusion of labor as people fail to find what they need and bring discussions to other places. There was a powerful drive in the past to make every Wikipedian learn the concept of the FDC and recognize its role and significance, so it must be an oversight that the documentation of all that attention is misplaced. Some weird decisions were made here and comments by several hundred people on various topics are missing. Perhaps things will proceed from here without a problem or perhaps in the future someone has a growing mess to clean. It does not seem urgent to address, and the issue can hang indefinitely, but it is odd. I do not think that you or anyone in particular has the responsibility to address the matter, if it even merits a response, which it might not. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:34, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Bluerasberry, There is this... Delphine (WMF) (talk) 10:35, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

June 2012 - September 2012 - Grants:APG/2012/Historical_development

Thanks. I do not mean to put you out of your way with this. But this is a mess. I would like to raise the issue that there is a request that the usual community sorting is not happening in this case. Some history is misplaced and I feel that present and future conversations might similarly not be archived in the usual way.

The most obvious fix to me would be a rename to "Funds Dissemination Committee" then have everything that needs to be a subtopic of that go under that top level heading. This can wait, and this is not urgent.

You mentioned that there could be a rename of "Annual plan grants" to "annual grants". If that happens - and if there is any other kind of restructuring - then at that time I would like the proposal raised to simplify as much of the odd naming in place as possible to usual sorts of wiki naming systems. Until then, perhaps this is more work than the current need merits. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:09, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Legend is not showing on the page in ja

@Delphine (WMF): Hi, could you please advise me on how we will recover a detail? The translation here, or to be specific details for a chart legend seems to me it is not showing on the translated page (ja). Also, we miss one phrase, maybe 'Legends' for the detail we discuss here? Thank you for your time in advance. Cheers, ----Omotecho (talk) 17:41, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Hello Omotecho and thank you for looking at this translation. Unfortunately, I am not sure at all how to make the legend appear. It seems to be part of the graphic/timeline (you can see the legend when you try edit the page and it is not flagged for translation. The only way around this would be to take the legend *out* of the graphic and put it in the text so it shows up on translations. Let us ping for example Base who knows his way around the translation stuff. I don't! Delphine (WMF) (talk) 06:08, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, it (moving legend outside the graph) looked like the only way for me too, as it is not likely that those graphs are to have support for Japanese and Arabic (and perhaps other) scripts provided ever. --Base (talk) 07:14, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you both, @Delphine: and @Base:, yes, now I understand how it works, and that's alright with me. Changing the subject, I see the title of the graphic as white lines in square shape. Am I missing something, like need to check my fonts/language setting or such? Sorry bothering you, regards, -- Omotecho (talk) 18:51, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Page needs updates?

I think this page never featured a link to Wikimedia Foundation elections/2017/Funds Dissemination Committee, and you probably want it to, even though it's over. Best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 18:29, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Travel question

I just had a thought about scholarships for attending conferences, but I do not find where to voice this thought on-wiki.
I often found that WMF scholarships do not include the transport to the airport in your own country, just flight, hotel and food on site. But imagine the following: There is a flight from an airport 200 miles away for 200 US$, but it costs 60 US$ to go to this airport and back, which the recipient has to pay her-/himself. There is a flight from the local airport for 600 US$. It just costs 10 US$ to go to the local airport. The recipient of the scholarship, being poor, what option would she/he chose? I suppose that this here is the wrong place for voicing my thought. Could you please direct me to the right place? Thanks. --Gereon K. (talk) 07:49, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the retrospective

@DSaroyan (WMF): thanks for updating w/ this brief summary. Was there a more detailed retrospective, including what made it hard to continue, what it cost to maintain, and why the decision was made to stop the program? This would be particularly useful for groups now considering revisiting funds dissemination. –SJ talk  19:50, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Sj, thanks for the ping. I did not work on the retrospective; I supported the team to publish it on Meta. I'll let them know about your question and get back to you. DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 09:29, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. Obviously there's no need to repeat the interviews that were included here. But I believe the decisions not to continue the committee's work (stretched out over a few years) were mostly made by people & for reasons not included here, leading to a context gap b/t those who recall it as a success and those who recall it as a failure. Let's bridge that gap so we can learn from it! this level of informality is fine, just adding the missing input about how the Foundation made its decision & some basic stats on how this differed from the process in non-FDC years. Warmly, SJ 17:26, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Hello@Sj thank you for the question. The brief retrospective tried to capture the main lessons learned through the process. On the timeline it outlines that the FDC was put on pause in 2018 due to the Movement Strategy process. In 2022 with the establishment of the Regional Fund Committees as part of the new Foundation Funds strategy - they Board of Trustees officially resolved the FDC. KEchavarriqueen (WMF) (talk) 17:39, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks KEchavarriqueen, that part is helpful and clear! And the regional committees seem to be working smoothly. What I had in mind was more the operational answers to Qs like

• main reasons the FDC was put on hold in 2018 (and not continued during the strategy process)?
• biggest challenges from the [FDC+WMF] perspective?
• biggest successes from the [FDC+WMF] perspective -- notable outcomes that would not have happened under the previous process?
• what was the overhead of running it like? impact on outcomes, social cohesion, training?
• for each of the above: how does the new Regional Committee process compare?
• what parts of the FDC process were continued in the present, what other parts might be usefully adopted in future processes?

I write "[FDC+WMF]" but I really mean the disseminator's perspective: the funders / implementers of the model and the bodies that had to make dissemination decisions during the FDC and in its absence (which is a mix of WMF as source of most funds, WMDE and a few other chapters as source of their own funds, and recipient orgs with Annual Plans that, under an FDC, had active feedback on planning docs which otherwise needed such feedback from their members/staff).

It was pointed out to me offline that Anasuya and Katie would be good people to ask, so I may ping them too [likely won't otherwise see this]. My original Q upthread was whether there was already such an operational post-mortem that hadn't been made public, but apparently not. –SJ talk  19:31, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you again for the questions. Beyond the archived meta pages and the lightweight retrospective that was completed I am not aware of another report. The retrospective tries to capture what things worked well and what things could have been approved from interviewing committee members. There also has been reports with feedback from Regional Fund Committee members and applicants about the new process - so that we could adapt based on what we were learning. Apologies for the delay in response. KEchavarriqueen (WMF) (talk) 17:40, 11 September 2023 (UTC)