Talk:Wikimedia Eesti/Third interim report on professionalization

Hi Tanel and colleagues

Thank you for writing this in English. There seems no practical alternative, and the challenge of reporting in a very foreign language is much appreciated. On the micro-level it's nicely done.

But my critical comments involve matters that transgress individual languages—things that would be problematic, in my view, whether in Estonian, Hindi, French, or English; my comments are largely systemic and thus directed at WMF staff, not at you the program managers.

The question is how to frame the instructions for reporting in the future. My opening assumption is that such a report is intended to be read and understood as a stand-alone document by both WMF staff and Wikimedian volunteers, and that it should provide verifiable details that enable the common reader to assess progress as it has occurred (or not) since the previous report. But without guidance to the contrary, this report has turned out based on sweeping self-judgements. The first section is a good example: "General evaluation by members of the board"—I'm unsure why this is relevant in an external report to the funding body. The only thing we can go by are external facts, not unverified opinions. It's also not clear who on the board has done the evaluating, and whether this is the result of a formal motion. (I'm not asking for this information now, but pointing out to WMF staff the issues of protocol they might consider in framing better instructions.) Here are the problematic assertions in that first section (I've underlined the subjective/unverified claims):

"In general the board of Wikimedia Eesti evaluates the process of professionalisation to be successful"
"Tasks presented by the board have been completed and the employees have continuously shown initiative, which have made great ongoing contributions to the operational efficiency of the organisation."
"The administrative capacity of Wikimedia Estonia is well on track, the documents related to and important for the activities of the organisation are prepared accurately and in due course, and glitches in the period before professionalisation are generally fixed."

They just don't help us to understand what's been happening.

The table on "restructuring of professonal positions" contains two columns: "task" and "result". Just how the tasks differ from the "planned" and "actual" tasks in the second interim report—which was proffered as part of the PEG application—is hard to work out, although there's nothing prima facie to object to in the first column. The problem here centres on the second column, "result", which is in almost all cases merely a switching around of the elements of the sentence. I could have gone through the blank cells myself, filling out each one in the "result" column as a grammatical exercise without knowing anything about the program. For example:

Task: "Charting possible funding opportunities for the projects and programs of the organization and introducing them to the Board."
Result: "Possible funding opportunities charted and information forwarded to the board."—very vague.

May I suggest an approach like this:

Result: "Funding opportunities identified for three schemes involving the local city, a GLAM institution in Tallin [name it unless you need to keep it confidential until later], and work on scanning Estonian-language documents; work in progress on applications.

And here:

Task: "After the decision of the board, creation of funding applications with all related documentation and communication with possible partners."
Result: "Funding applications created and necessary information communicated to possible partners."—very vague.

Better something like this:

Result: An EU 2015–17 small-language grant and a City of Tallin Mayor's Charity Grant, 2015 will be applied for by closing dates 3 Dec 14, and 2 Feb 15, respectively." [or you might not specify, but give the general area of the grants]

Another:

Task: "Creation of general reports of the organization (quarterly and yearly) in collaboration with the Board and accountant."
Response: "Reports accessible for interested parties and published in time."—vague; could the links be supplied? Even if in Estonian, we can struggle through them with google translate.

They all seem to be like that, using phrases such as "strategic document ... has been created" (where?), "Reports accessible" (where?), "Project team has clear tasks" (which ones?), "Organisation has clear structure" (describe what you have now that you didn't have last time). Each "result" raises the question "by whose standards, what does that really mean, and please give examples/links". While I might trust you guys personally, a written report must disregard that trust and present evidence for the public. What might be good to encourage in future reports is to dump about half of the rows (the default is that the employee has done it) and provide verifiable details, whether inline or by link, for the ones that really matter.

The other thing is a lack of succinctness and plainness: it would have been so much better to read the second one rather than the first:

Current version, like the preamble to a country's consitution: "In general the board of Wikimedia Eesti evaluates the process of professionalisation to be successful, although it admits some miscalculations in the initial planning of the professionalisation process, which are related to needs assessment of involving professional competences for an effective operation of the organisation. Namely, during the professionalisation process it has become evident that the board needs a broader support in quotidian executive management of the organisation, which initiated a restructuring process of professional positions in the third quarter of professionalisation of the organisation."
Plain version: "While the board believes the professionalisation process was successful, during the initial stages we underestimated the amount of support we required in day-to-day management. So we restructured the paid positions in the third quarter to provide that support (see below)."

The coloured schematic: hard to work out the difference between the previous and the new. I'm still looking at it wondering. (I just question the work that has gone into creating it, when words may have done a better job.)

Just an aside: the problem with the term "professionalisation"—no matter which language (German: Professionalisierung)—is its inescapable implication that volunteers aren't/weren't capable of professional standards. I know this word has been latched onto by some affiliates as a synonym for employing longer-term people, but I'd be much happier if it weren't used. Just saying (and I'm not suggesting you to change it now.)

@ASengupta (WMF): @Ijon: @AWang (WMF):

Tony (talk) 07:59, 9 October 2014 (UTC)Reply

Hi Tony,

As you know, not all of us always agree with your positions, but this time, I think the consensus on the board was that there's really a lot for us to learn from here. So I'd like to thank you for the feedback. This document was definitely not up to our usual standards (partly because it was put together under time pressure); we'll do our best to mitigate these problems and avoid repeating these mistakes in the future. - daniel charms (talk)