Talk:CIS-A2K/Reports/Community Mid-Year Reports/1st & 2nd Half 2011

Do share your comments on this page. --Hisham (talk) 07:40, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Question RE Plans 2012

I would like to ask you 3 questions based on what I read:

• Given that one of the major complaints of the community with India Programs in 2011 was that it was not involved in Strategic decision making, whiles framing "Plans 2012", have you involved the community in any way?
• How exactly do you propose to implement "Plans 2012" (some level of detail rather than generalisation would be appreciated). Again, have the community been involved in the framing of the implementation strategy?
• Trust operations - you mentioned on the mailing list a while ago that the trust has been registered. Now you mention further regulatory requirements, so what is the current position? Have IP employees been transferred to the trust or are they still foreign contractors?

Im hoping that there will be more transparency and accountability this year and that IP proves to be successful from the community pov. Cheers, AroundTheGlobe (talk) 08:52, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

• I have an alternate opinion on your characterisation of community involvement in strategic decision making. The plans for India Program were developed in collaboration with the community on meta around March 2011. Please refer this email sent by me to the India mailing list on April 4th 2011 for context. We are continuing the task of implementing this. I had shared the report for 1st & 2nd Half 2011 precisely with the objective of getting additional inputs from community members, as well as to update the community.
• What I have outlined in Plans 2012 are areas of direction. The community determines the subsequent stages. Initiatives (even if small) being undertaken by individual community members or small groups of them - with active advice and support from us - will hopefully build into pilots. The community is integrally involved in what initiatives to run and the finer details of such initiatives. As we progress things, this will get fleshed out and as I mentioned here on point 4, we will start publishing more detailed program design documents. This will provide greater clarity on the specifics of the projects. However, I will point out that the initiatives will continue to be owned by collective community members - as is right. We will provide all the support that is asked for.
• The IP team are independent consultants to the Wikimedia Foundation. There are regulatory aspects that are being considered and evaluated. (I haven't understood the term "foreign contractors" that you used.)

Having said this, please do share any specific ideas you have on Plan 2012 or specific ideas on the implementation elements. Hisham (talk) 03:28, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

• Can you please point out where on meta did the community discussion for plans for India Program take place? This email from a community member suggests that there was lack of coordination with the local community and that the local community was not involved in IP projects.
• We keenly await that.
• IIRC, when you hired Nitika and Shiju, you told the community that they are consultants with the foundation but once the trust is registered they will cease to become consultants and will then be employees of the trust in India. The trust has been registered for a few months now (as per your own email in November to the community), why are IP staff still foundation consultants?

Iv given details some time ago (when there was a public request) that IP has not bothered to look into, why should I waste my time giving further inputs? AroundTheGlobe (talk) 07:02, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Causality

FYI readers: This report contains information which is out of date. Material developments have taken place till date including the hiring of a new consultant for communications – [1] – and the report by Tory Read. Only mentioning this because the report was posted onwiki two days ago.

• This report attributes the flaws of the system of education in India as the chief culprits behind the failure of the India Education Program (IEP) rather than address core issues with lack of due diligence and the flawed design, planning and execution of the IEP. These issues have been extensively discussed on the wikimediaindia mailing list. See the "Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot -- #DelayedMail" thread posted in November 2011 – [2].
• Please clarify whether 2012 India Education Program will be another pilot like IEP v0.1? If it is indeed a pilot then this report needs to clarify that the WMF India Programs team is still in the realm of experimentation after thirteen months of operations.

— Nearly Headless Nick {C} 14:20, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I started the post of this report stating this was originally posted to the community on January 15th 2012 - so you are right that developments have taken place since then.

• Not sure which report you are referring to in your first point because in the 1st & 2nd Half 2011 report, there was no attempt to blame the Indian education system. In fact, my specific line is, "I am aware of the many of the issues and I/we have very deliberately made sure that this learning is reflected in all work that we are doing and will do (including and beyond education.) These include improving involvement of the respective language community, driving stronger program design, operating only at a scale that can be managed, as well as providing adequate training and support to newbies. It is important when you try and fail to have the humility to learn and I/we are doing this."
• Programs like IEP are complex and we have learnt many lessons. IEP v2.0 is also going to be a pilot because I am quite sure that - despite the very best planning, communication, design & implementation - there are going to be improvements that could be made to this. India Program is going to be in the "realm of experimentation" for a very long period - by the very nature of our work. Community building is a very complex task and requires us to try many different things out - based on the specific needs and context of community members. Aspects like online outreach or exploring a CRM solution or exploring the potential for subject specifc translation such as medical translation are all aspects that we are experimenting based on discussions and interest of our community. None of these were part of the initial plan - but have evolved because of the need of the hour (and remain comprehensively aligned to the task of community building.) We must retain a strong spirit of innovation in the work that we do - and we will continue to do so. There are no silver bullets. There are only painstaking initiatives that need to be undertaken carefully.

Please do share specific suggestions and ideas on the priorities for 2012 outlined in this report or the areas of emphasis for March. Hisham (talk) 04:44, 13 March 2012 (UTC)