[Foundation-l] Re: Bounties and expenses

Tue Jun 22 15:16:40 UTC 2004

Viajero wrote:

>In the past, I've been involved in a number of EU-funded projects among at times quite disparate participants, and it was always a given that such projects -- after being approved for funding -- got off to a start with a meeting with everyone involved. Sometimes this was the only time the participants met; they then went back to their respective countries and spent the duration of the project working in their offices and communicating by email and telephone. But that initial face-to-face was critical; it isn't something that can be measured in cold person/hour metrics but rather reflects some as yet not entirely well-understood psychological truth: long-distance, distributed projects work better when the participants have first met. 
>  
>
It is possible meetings can sometimes be helpful.  However, they can be 
helpful in a number of cases:

* Wikipedians collaborating on writing an article meet to draw out an 
outline, or hammer out differences, or otherwise work on the article in 
person
* Wikipedians researching an article visit national archives, national 
libraries, organizations' offices, embassies, or various other sources 
of information
* Developers installing a new set of servers visit the colocation 
facility to do so in person
* Developers working on software meet to draw up a design over a 
weekend, rather than back and forth over email
* The board of trustees meets, as discussed

Of these five possibilities, which are only five of many, I don't see 
the last one as the most important, yet no one so far has proposed 
funding any of the previous four.  Given that our primary project is 
currently an encyclopedia, I think if we are to fund any travel, it 
ought to first be that travel that contributes most directly to 
producing a high-quality encyclopedia.  Therefore, if we are to have a 
travel fund, it ought to pay researchers and article writers.  (The 
details, of course, are subject to debate.)

-Mark