Grants talk:PEG/WM CZ/Mediagrant/Report/2011/08

Thanks for this report.

Please clarify a couple of things, below. Ijon 08:34, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Tracker

Why are you considering development of a custom tracker, with so many free and open-source issue trackers already readily available? Is that a good use of our donor funds? Ijon 08:34, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

The reason is that the information you care about when you're gathering bugs in a software product and fixing them is fundamentally different from those you care about when you have volunteers gathering media and getting reimbursed. I have worked with Bugzilla, Mantis, Trac, Request tracker and OTRS, and none of them seems quite fit for the task. For example, for most of media gathering topics, I'd like the volunteer (who has already spend day or so taking the pictures, editing them and uploading them to Common) to fill in a form with field for selecting one or more topics that his trip covers, adding links to the pictures, and how much it all cost, preferrably in a usable way that would later allow us to create reports from this information. I don't know of any software that supports that, or can be easily customized for it. --che 11:12, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Developing software by a paid contractor is very expensive. It seems to me that it is better to either look harder for a suitable existing tool (even if you have to spend some time customizing it, or just ignore some irrelevant fields), or to change your requirements. Or find a volunteer developer for the non-prototype, of course. Ijon 07:18, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

According to information from Danny B., it has been agreed with WMF that we will have a budget of around 3000 USD for the tracker. I don't know if you were personally involved in these initial discussions, but since most of the foundation people, as well as two member of WMF "eye" committee (Danny B. and Chmee2), it might be best to discuss this with them in person. As far as I know, WMCZ board is waiting for the input from WMF/Wikimania for their decision about what to do with the tracker. --che 14:36, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Paid employee

As you say about the photos, "none have arrived yet". I would like to suggest that it is very premature to hire an employee to handle a non-existent workload. What reason do we have to expect the workload will suddenly increase to the point where it cannot be handled by the board or its appointed volunteers? Ijon 08:34, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Just to know. By the means of money spent it was intended to hire volunteer (means pay volunteer money, not normal employee money). And it will be probably less, than 1/2 part time job. But it depends on the amount of operations. Now we are already having some in CMP.--Juan de Vojníkov 17:40, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

We have already done projects like Czech Municipalities (which already has expenses that should be merged into Mediagrant), so we know that part of this project involves activities like collecting receipts from the volunteers, and keeping track of what has been done and spent. The general idea that has, as far as I know, been agreed upon with the Foundation is that there aren't many volunteers who enjoy collecting and organizing expense receipts, and that it makes sense to keep this workload off them, so that they can focus on our core goals instead of accounting.

Nevertheless, you're completely right in saying that there's little sense in hiring a person we don't yet have any work for. I guess this would have come up very early in the selection process. One option that comes into my mind is to pay the employee by the hours they actually do the work for us, which shouldn't be a big deal as he will most probably be a part-time student working from home. Anyway, I will bring your concern to the board, and I trust they will handle this issue appropriately. --che 11:12, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

So this is off the table for now, right? Ijon 07:18, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Reimbursement

Please provide details, in the main Mediagrant grant page, about your reimbursement policy of volunteers. Ijon 08:34, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

The policy is in Czech kind of detailed, so I wrote a rough English summary at Grants:WM CZ/Mediagrant#Reimbursement policy for volunteers. In case this is not enough, we can translate the whole document, but that would take some time. --che 11:12, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Could you explain how the figure per km was arrived at? Was it done with any reference for gas/petrol prices? Ijon 07:18, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

This is actually one of more controversial issues in Mediagrant. We have originally we set it at 2.80 CZK per kilometer, which was based simply on petrol cost of 35 CZK per litre and consumption of 8 litres per 100 km. This decision has caused uproar in WMCZ community, as it was less that was originally set for Czech Municipalities projects, and some members claimed that this will not cover expenses of their travels, and that they will not work on these conditions. Currently WMCZ board is deciding about a new figure, which will likely be adopted for all car-travel expenses in the chapter. The two options they are considering is 3.30 and 3.50 CZK per km. The official reimbursement set for business trips by the Czech Government for this year is 3.70 CZK/km. --che 14:36, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

It looks like I have confused the government regulations a bit. Apparently, the 3.70 (or 3.80, depending on year) per kilometer is only a minimum "basic rate", and per §157 of Czech labor code, the official reimbursement is set to be this basic rate plus the cost of fuel. --che 14:27, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Ijon 08:34, 5 August 2011 (UTC)