Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-07-17/News and notes


 * Thanks for the informative article! One clarification around this statement: "What is clear is that the new Individual Engagement Grants program is expensive to run, and that the FDC is still at an early stage of development and involves intensive face-to-face interactions: "very few international foundations give individual grants, which are highly resource-intensive (of the 89 grants we gave over 2012–13, 43 were grants to individuals for projects, events and travel).""  In fact, most of those 43 individual grants were not part of the Individual Engagement Grants program (which only ran 1 pilot round so far, and accounts for 8 grants out of 43).  The larger portion of this number was made to individuals for projects and events in the WMF Grants program, and for travel via the Participation Support Program.  And for accounting purposes in closing out the fiscal year 2012/13, funds spent on Fellowships during the first half of the year were also counted as individual grants.  Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:01, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
 * +1. I wanted to agree with Siko on both the appreciation and the clarification. :-) In addition, to make it clear, the WMF bid is not excluded from the FDC _process_ (the FDC and WMF are currently in conversation over WMF's application in Round 2 of the FDC process in March 2014), but simply from the base amount projected as grants spend for this year, i.e. 8 million USD. Thanks, Signpost team.--ASengupta (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Siko and Anasuya. A complex and long story, so regrettably a few errors crept in. Fixed now, and please let me know if it's now not accurate in fact and angle. Tony   (talk)  02:44, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
 * VisualEditor will be a hot issue for the time to come. The Dutch Wikipedia is holding a vote to disable it until proven stable! They know what they are talking about, as many Dutch Wikipedians are also active on the English Wikipedia. The Banner talk 23:04, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
 * See VPT and WP:VisualEditor/RFC, and compare User_talk:Eloquence The opinions of the userbase don't matter to the WMF with this one. Adam Cuerden (talk) 23:37, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I am not saying that WMF overpays salaries, from what I have heard the salaries seem reasonable. But this point seems odd "Erik Möller's point about "fairness adjustments" does imply a recognition by the WMF that salaries have had to be adjusted upwards since the crisis hit in 2010" - the crisis in 2010 resulted in more unemployed engineers - hence I would imagine it would be easier to pick up an engineer at a lower salary than had the crisis not struck. Am I thinking of the wrong 2010 crisis? Good article and all, but this point bugs me Jztinfinity (talk) 06:03, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The external databases we use have salary data from the late 2012/early 2013 timeframe. The 2010 crisis certainly hit (I was affected by it when I was consulting), but some specific sectors/types of engineers weren't much hit or recovered pretty quickly. For instance, mobile developers and site performance engineers are in very high demand, and so the frame of the 2010 crisis in picking up lower salary employees doesn't quite apply universally. Gyoung (talk) 07:01, 19 July 2013 (UTC)


 * The article uses the word "foregrounding" which I feel is not only a regrettable piece of management jargon (I had to look it up) but also may not mean what it is being used to mean - it apparently means "Make (something) the most prominent or important feature". Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 09:03, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it did flicker through my mind. Changing to "backgrounding. Well spotted, thx. Tony   (talk)  12:11, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
 * despite (perhaps in anticipation of) the wave of technical complaints I think you mean "in a half-finished state, causing a wave of technical complaints". —  Scott  •  talk  08:01, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * " the movement seems to be on a path of rapidly creating incorporated, professionally staffed entities, and it is not clear whether that is the best path towards achieving programmatic impact." - interesting statement. Wikimedia UK seems to be a classic example of this - have you asked them for comment? AndrewRT(Talk) 21:25, 23 July 2013 (UTC) (ex-Trustee of WMUK)
 * "The Signpost asked chief revenue officer Zack Exley why the costs of fundraising will increase by some 35% (up by $1.2M to $4.6M) while the funds to be raised are projected to fall by 1.6%, but did not receive a reply." Zack Exley: fail. WMF: fail. If journalist ask something that important, not replying smacks of another Giblarpedia snafu. I am sure this is nothing as serious here, still, silence doesn't sound good at all... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 10:42, 24 July 2013 (UTC)