Grants talk:APG/FDC portal/Redesign

Horrible page name choices

This has to take the cake for poor choices in naming pages. First off, acronyms should not be standard - both APG and FDC should be spelled out in full words. Make the life of translators at least a tiny bit easier. Secondly, it appears that you're really trying to change the name of the FDC without going through the required paperwork, which would require a Board resolution (since the FDC is a committee that is responsible directly to the Board and is their creation). This is such an "inside baseball" action that it really leaves the impression that the WMF really cares not a bit about the community's ability to participate in discussions about how it spends tens of millions of dollars. Please stop and reconsider what you are doing here. Risker (talk) 03:50, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi Risker, the Funds Dissemination Committee is not changing in any way, name or otherwise. The difference here, is giving a name to the funds that are allocated. I don't know if that makes a difference to you, but someone involved in the decision will come give a more complete answer (although holidays might create a longer wait than normal).

Regarding acronyms, we've actually discussed this quite a bit. We came to this decision because page names become unwieldy, harder to read, and the crucial information gets cut off in various lists. Some of the names are a little strange as we make the switch from the previous portal to a revised one.

Everything we do is an effort to encourage the community to participate and to make it easier to do so. Granted, we are not always successful. Right now we are trying to make the pages and processes easier to navigate for everyone. We are happy to hear any specific ways that might help accomplish that goal. Thank you, heather walls (talk) 09:31, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Step one: Stop changing the names of things. It was hard enough to find when it was in the "FDC Portal". Now it's *exactly* the same information in a different portal, and anyone who's ever linked to an FDC page now has a broken link or a redirect. Step two: Use your portal main page as a place to hyperlink the programs that already have portals, like the FDC, and create similar "subportals" for the rest. The reason page names are ridiculous is because you insist on putting them into this otherwise useless grouping: it means nothing to anyone but WMF staff. Nobody else cares, except for the added inconvenience of having all of our links destroyed. You are not making processes more easy to navigate, you are burying them ever-deeper. It should be taken as a given that adding a layer of complexity is not normally going to be "easier to navigate". Step three: never use "we" unless you are explicit about who "we" is. So...who is "we"? Heather, it's okay to let this wait until the person responsible for these decisions is available to respond directly. Risker (talk) 11:39, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Just a small historical aparté: the naming of the APG was announced on August 4, almost without replies – it was during big threads on VE opt-out and HTTPS – but I don’t know how/where was discussed the change of the Meta pages. I aggree with Risker about the use of "we": Wikimedia has so much overlaping communities that the use of "we" makes very often (always?) difficult for the reader to figure out what the writter wanted to say. I have no specific opinion about the naming change on Meta. ~ Seb35 [^_^] 12:41, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi Risker, thanks for sharing your concerns on this change of names issue. And sorry for the delay in my response; I was on holiday. I agree that it can feel as though names are always changing, and it can be really hard to keep track of them all. I really don't want to further confuse people, and it seems that was not accomplished. One of the most critical reasons that the name of the FDC grants process was changed to the Annual Plan Grants was because potential applicants were confused by the different grantmaking programs and what they were about. For instance, the FDC and GAC both referred to the committees, without giving any hint to what kind of grants were supported, and to have a grants program named after the committee was confusing to some, including me. With the name Annual Plan Grants, I hope it will be clearer to potential applicants that these grants fund annual plans for eligible entities--as that is the critical difference between it and other grantmaking programs at WMF. As some have noted, the FDC is still the name of the committee; that hasn't changed. I try in my communications to note that the Annual Plan Grant process is overseen by the Funds Dissemination Committee, but I am sure I can improve in that area. We on the WMF Grantmaking teams have more to do to communicate the work we do and financial support and resources that are available to different segments of the movement. I'd love to know about any ideas you have in how we can reach out and make folks more aware about what is out there. And thanks for bringing this up: it's important to hear about how different people are reacting to the name change. I apologize for any further confusion or frustration that has resulted from this change. I welcome any further comments, feedback, and suggestions from you and others in the movement. With thanks, KLove (WMF) (talk) 22:28, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

• Hello! I just moved some pages from Grants:APG to Grants:Annual Plan Grants before seeing that this page was thoughtfully named. I agree with Risker that initialisms are not useful. They cannot be understood by English speakers and are less accessible to speakers of other languages. I do not share Risker's concerns about name changes; the name should be changed until the right name is found. I have to oppose the initialism and would like to be directed to whatever discussion confirmed it if it is to be used. If there is room for more talk then I would participate in further talks. I wish for the simplest most understandable names to be used and I have doubts that anyone could believe that an odd English string of letters is best for preventing confusion. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:19, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Bluerasberry, there are currently banners on all projects in around 40 languages inviting users to the community review. And the first link on that page, explaining what the FDC is, is now broken because of your page moves. And even if people find the portal page, it has now lots of redlinks, also because of your actions. Please consider reverting them immediately. Please also consider that we are talking about a system consisting of hundreds or thousands of subpages and many complicated template uses. The last move a few months ago because of the APG rename was a major operation taking a lot of effort by the Grantmaking team, and issues had to fixed even months afterwards. I don't belong to that team or the FDC support staff and myself wasn't a fan of this big rename, but your fiddling over style preferences without understanding the system is even less helpful. BTW, it should also be considered that the system already generates some really long page names (example), even without expanding the initialisms.

Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 15:52, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

heatherwalls Tbayer (WMF) Sorry for the problems. I would like to undo what I have done. I tried to do reverts but I think I have failed to do them properly. I am not an admin here so cannot execute certain moves. Could you please get someone else to start on this? I will look a bit more. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:35, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

• Grants:Grants:APG/FDC portal remove the first grants here - need someone with admin rights. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:38, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Done. Thanks! Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 20:18, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

I think that would be all. Could one of you double check? Sorry and thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:45, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Leave a redirect

For historical purposes and continuity of the various links in emails or on the Internet, the old pages "FDC portal" should redirect to the new titles. It was done almost everywhere apart on the translations (pending bug about it) – I corrected the two translations I found (Community review and Annual report) but please redirect if you find other such pages. ~ Seb35 [^_^] 13:13, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Direct link to the Exemple forms / templates

As an entity member who participate to FDC reporting/proposal, I'd like to have direct access to the last template version I will need to use. I generally import the exemples forms on the entity wiki in order to help the volunteers and staffs to prepare the reports/proposals with all the templates used on the FDC portal. --PierreSelim (talk) 09:10, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this up, PierreSelim. We want to make it easier for organizations to access the forms in a useful way, and this is something we have been thinking about too! We will be considering this as part of the redesign, and it is helpful to know that you would like to use the templates in that way. Cheers, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 18:20, 6 March 2014 (UTC)