WMF 2015-2016 Annual Plan

[thekohser]

...is available.

From the Q&A page:

How many people are you planning to hire?
We plan to grow the Wikimedia Foundation staff from a projected 240 to 280, an increase of 17% over the prior fiscal year.

[Cla68]

...is available.

From the Q&A page:

How many people are you planning to hire?
We plan to grow the Wikimedia Foundation staff from a projected 240 to 280, an increase of 17% over the prior fiscal year.

We need to ask them, what will these 40 additional employees be doing, how will their performance be measured, and have their job descriptions been written yet? What are the justification statements for these positions? Can we see the performance evaluations for the past year for the other 240 employees? Were any of them paid bonuses?

[Randy from Boise]

...is available.

From the Q&A page:

How many people are you planning to hire?
We plan to grow the Wikimedia Foundation staff from a projected 240 to 280, an increase of 17% over the prior fiscal year.

We need to ask them, what will these 40 additional employees be doing, how will their performance be measured, and have their job descriptions been written yet? What are the justification statements for these positions? Can we see the performance evaluations for the past year for the other 240 employees? Were any of them paid bonuses?

They are greatly increasing the size of their PR staff, for one thing...

RfB

[Hex]

They are greatly increasing the size of their PR staff, for one thing...

I believe they're also hiring an in-house band and a deckchair maintenance team.

[Zoloft]

They are greatly increasing the size of their PR staff, for one thing...

I believe they're also hiring an in-house band and a deckchair maintenance team.

Authentic sheet music from 1912 can be pricey.

[Hex]

They are greatly increasing the size of their PR staff, for one thing...

I believe they're also hiring an in-house band and a deckchair maintenance team.

Authentic sheet music from 1912 can be pricey.

Don't worry, it's out of copyright.

[sparkzilla]

Excuse me if this is being discussed somewhere else, but someone pointed me to this page, which says that Wikipedia's fundraising goal for this year will raise to $67 million.

Most of the extra money is going on engineering salaries with an extra $7 million, with six extra staff wanted. HR and admin, which also wants six staff.

Despite wanting to increase donations by $11 million they will still have $68 million in reserve. As a reminder, the excuse that the WMF needed a reserve "to last in case anything happened" was trotted out by Jimbo after there were complaints about why the Foundation was sending out alarmist fundraising messages when it already had a huge reserve. The amount is completely arbitrary. They could easily take the $11 million from the reserve and not ask for as much donations.

In any case the reserve excuse is completely bogus. Most companies survive on very little reserves. More comments on the plan?

[thekohser]

You're writing about the "annual plan". If you use the Search function to look for "annual plan", you would find this existing thread.

This and other helpful tips for creating new threads may be found here.

Moderators will likely move this new thread to the existing thread.

Done. --Zoloft

[HRIP7]

Note that projected revenue for this financial year (July 2014 to June 2015) is over $75 million. That's $17 million more than the communicated $58.5 million target.

In other words, the targets are meaningless: they don't stop fundraising when the target is achieved. This year, the annual target was reached some time in January; they took over $30 million in December 2014 alone (the target was $20 million).

The fundraising target for next year may be $67 million, but they will clearly try to take more: "Additional funds (see Advancement) may be secured for the endowment."

[Kevin]

I've written a few replies to this, but they all boil down to what the fuck are they doing with that money? Is it just a social welfare program for shitty developers?

[Kevin]

...is available.

From the Q&A page:

How many people are you planning to hire?
We plan to grow the Wikimedia Foundation staff from a projected 240 to 280, an increase of 17% over the prior fiscal year.

It is pretty clear that their only performance metric is staff level. They are at a size that momentum will keep it going for years, whether or not there's any positive output.


Also there needs to be a bigger facepalm smilie.

[Poetlister]

Also there needs to be a bigger facepalm smilie.

+1. This looks like the original.

[mac]

Also there needs to be a bigger facepalm smilie.

+1. This looks like the original.

There's always this:

[MMAR]

They're almost reaching the staffing levels where they could get rid of the ridiculously compromised role of volunteer administrator and instead make it a paid position. Employees must spend X amount of hours a week manning ANI and the other admin boards. Hopefully that would mean standards of conduct might eventually start to resemble WP:ADMIN, and they can legitimately claim they're leading by example. Assuming of course that hires by the WMF are remotely competent and have some level of moral fibre, which is obviously up for debate, if comments elsewhere on here are accurate.

[Randy from Boise]

They're almost reaching the staffing levels where they could get rid of the ridiculously compromised role of volunteer administrator and instead make it a paid position. Employees must spend X amount of hours a week manning ANI and the other admin boards. Hopefully that would mean standards of conduct might eventually start to resemble WP:ADMIN, and they can legitimately claim they're leading by example. Assuming of course that hires by the WMF are remotely competent and have some level of moral fibre, which is obviously up for debate, if comments elsewhere on here are accurate.

Oh, I'm sure that having those turds unilaterally run the show would solve all Wikipedia's problems...

One point for originality, I suppose... Minus six for obvious lack of efficacy and horrific unintended consequences... And the assumption you make would mean breaking new ground for WMF, truly...

RfB

[Vigilant]

They're almost reaching the staffing levels where they could get rid of the ridiculously compromised role of volunteer administrator and instead make it a paid position. Employees must spend X amount of hours a week manning ANI and the other admin boards. Hopefully that would mean standards of conduct might eventually start to resemble WP:ADMIN, and they can legitimately claim they're leading by example. Assuming of course that hires by the WMF are remotely competent and have some level of moral fibre, which is obviously up for debate, if comments elsewhere on here are accurate.

Oh, I'm sure that having those turds unilaterally run the show would solve all Wikipedia's problems...

One point for originality, I suppose... Minus six for obvious lack of efficacy and horrific unintended consequences... And the assumption you make would mean breaking new ground for WMF, truly...

RfB

Hire an experienced community manager from Blizzard or one of the other MMORPGs for a C-level or director level position at the WMF.
Give them a staff of 10 that they hire themselves.
Give them firm metrics to reduce bullshit drama, trolling and edit warring.
Put them in charge of all advanced permissions stuff on en.wp. Admins, Crats, Stewards, ARBCOM, etc, etc
In six months, all of these problems would be gone.

[MMAR]

They're almost reaching the staffing levels where they could get rid of the ridiculously compromised role of volunteer administrator and instead make it a paid position. Employees must spend X amount of hours a week manning ANI and the other admin boards. Hopefully that would mean standards of conduct might eventually start to resemble WP:ADMIN, and they can legitimately claim they're leading by example. Assuming of course that hires by the WMF are remotely competent and have some level of moral fibre, which is obviously up for debate, if comments elsewhere on here are accurate.

Oh, I'm sure that having those turds unilaterally run the show would solve all Wikipedia's problems...

One point for originality, I suppose... Minus six for obvious lack of efficacy and horrific unintended consequences... And the assumption you make would mean breaking new ground for WMF, truly...

RfB

I never claimed it would solve all the problems. Solving the most obvious problem though, that's a good start, no? Not sure what the horrific unintended consequences are - a little help? But as far as I can tell, horrific things are happening on Wikipedia every day, for the single reason that the level of oversight and review of the performance and conduct of administrators is not remotely (as in not even close) to what would happen if they were paid. As for efficacy, I'd say it would be a damn site more effective than the current system, where scant attention is paid to even the most horrific of abuses.

[The Adversary]

The other thing is: with increasing staff-membership, and fewer editors: one really has to look at how the elections are managed: today, staff are, AFAIK, given equal voting rights with editors (with so-and-so number of months and edits).

This is seriously bad.
There are a zillion NGO´s out there which supposedly exists for some wonderful worthy cause, children with cancer in Africa, or what not, ...but when you look at *where* the money ends up, it is actually with ......the staff.

May I suggest the Scandinavian model? (well, I assume it exists places outside Scandinavia, too...)
Staff are given voting rights to their own representatives on the Board of Governance, (or whatever the highest steering committee is called). How many representatives they get is decided by law; it increases with the number of employees/staff.

Typically, local Red Cross have
A: *lots and lots* of volunteer members, paying membership fees and supporting the work
B: *some* employed full-time, *some part-time", both outside and inside the country

The majority of the people on the Board of Governance are elected by people of group A, but group B has off course their representative, too.

This is a clean "division of responsibility"; the majority make sure (hopefully!) that the money/material which one dispose, is used for the propose of the NGO; while the representative for the employed make sure their legitimate concerns (for job security, etc) are heard.

(I´m feeling I am re-iterating kinder-garden -stuff, here, but apparently these ideas are unknown to WMF..? )

[sparkzilla]

Thanks Greg for the headsup. Is it going to be combined with the other thread, or shall I just post my comment over there?
Merge is complete. You can post here --Zoloft

See my post above.

[Malleus]

I've written a few replies to this, but they all boil down to what the fuck are they doing with that money? Is it just a social welfare program for shitty developers?

Seems like it.

[Notvelty]

May I suggest the Scandinavian model? (well, I assume it exists places outside Scandinavia, too...)

Most Scandinavian models don't - function outside of Scandinavia that is. Many of them fall down when exposed to cultural differences.

[Kelly Martin]

The other thing is: with increasing staff-membership, and fewer editors: one really has to look at how the elections are managed: today, staff are, AFAIK, given equal voting rights with editors (with so-and-so number of months and edits).

I used to work for a nonprofit, and as staff we had exactly zero voting rights in the organization by virtue of being staff. If we wanted voting rights, we could join the organization and obtain those rights the same as anyone else entitled to join. (However, fairly few of the staff were eligible to join, because the requirements to be a voting member were fairly inconsistent with holding a staff position. I could join only as an associate member, with no voting privileges.)

Staff had a huge degree of influence over policy, but ultimately it was the elected membership who elected the leadership, with no electoral input from staff.

That Wikimedia gives staff a vote in its elections has always amazed me.