[Foundation-l] Re: Grants -- a proposal

Mon Jun 20 21:12:28 UTC 2005

Tim Starling a écrit:
> Anthere wrote:
> 
>>
>>Angela a écrit:
> 
> ...
> 
>>>Isn't there a danger of this leading to huge resources for the English
>>>Wikipedia and not enough for the rest of the projects and languages
>>>simply because more people visit that and therefore decide to put all
>>>their donations towards that project rather than the Foundation's
>>>wider goals?
>>
>>
>>I do not think so. By projects, it does not mean "money for english
>>wikipedia" or "money for the japanese wiktionary", but rather "money for
>>the ultimate wiktionary", "money for wikimania", "money for bambara
>>development", "money for a wikijunior set" etc...
> 
> 
> If the pet project of a Board member isn't supported by the donors, it
> shouldn't be paid for with the donors' money. The "Foundation's wider
> goals" were set by Jimbo when he wrote the bylaws, to date donors have
> been told they must fund all of these goals or fund none of them. This
> is certainly part of the reason why I have never donated to Wikimedia,
> and by extension this initiative may lead to increased donations generally.
> 
> The Board may be anxious about losing control over part of their
> funding, that's understandable. But this could be considered a form of
> direct democracy, and as such, desirable outcomes depend on the
> competency of the donor to make budget decisions. The Board could take
> on a role of persuading the donors that certain projects need funding,
> rather than simply dictating a budget as they do now.
> 
> -- Tim Starling

I am not sure why you make such an overgeneralization, since Angela is 
apparently not very supportive of this proposal, I am supporting it to a 
fair extent, and Jimbo did not comment yet :-)

I do not feel though that there is "anxiety" of losing control. On the 
contrary, I fear that Angela and I might both be slightly too anxious to 
push to spend money in a direction where we feel editors might be upset.

I do not know for Angela, but as for myself, a problem I meet is extreme 
difficulty to estimate whether a spending would be approved or not 
generally (I refer to unusual spending). I feel I lack 
information/feedback from the community. I would welcome any suggestion 
of how to get this feedback (while avoiding a plain global vote... which 
is frankly not something I find a great solution).

Ant