Pradeep's post brought up some immediate and broader questions for me, which I've put up on his blog. Also reproducing them here, simply because I don't think we should under-estimate what his post means. That someone who was such an integral part of the Mumbai and India community and the wikimedia movement feels despairing enough to retire - over the 'politicking' - is not a good sign. *Reporting* *How can we ensure that such reports are based on consensus, so that those who've been vital parts of such community events do not later feel alienated by the reporting? *How can we ensure that such reports represent the perspectives of many of those involved in such events, rather than a singular perspective? One way to do so is to involve all 'teams' in writing their parts of the report - eg Scholarships, Programs etc, getting internal consensus within each team, and then providing it to the core team. *How can we ensure that such reports are constructive, rather than destructive, in their criticism, and steer clear of name calling or singling out individuals? *How can we ensure that such reports 'look forward' to helping future community teams that organize such conferences, rather than backwards at pinpointing perceived errors of omission and commission? *How can we ensure that such reports have a helpful problem-solution approach, eg "this was the problem, this was how we fixed it" to supplement the documentation of processes leading up to an event? That would really help future teams. *Broader* *How can we retain the sense of fun that is so much part of - and integral to - a volunteer movement? *How can we create a sense of togetherness, a sense that we're all working towards the same shared goals? *How can we ask the tough questions that are needed to make constituents accountable to a larger community while ensuring that we are not unduly politicking or undermining trust in the process? And how do we know when enough is enough, that it's time to stop? Many other questions, but I'll stop here for now. I forgot to put some of these up on the blog, they occurred to me while I was writing this. Best Bishakha _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 2:28 PM, Theo10011 <de10011(a)gmail.com> wrote: Not sure what you mean - could you clarify?

Hey, I'm never in favour of whitewashing, ignoring or turning a blind eye to shortcomings - but it is important to be constructive in giving feedback and to take personal responsibility as well. I'm totally in favour of all that, as is evident from my questions. Certainly not advocating 'no reporting'; I'm in favour of strengthening the reporting. If, as Srikanth suggests, others who worked on WCI 2011 write in with their comments and suggestions, this would help greatly in analysing what worked, what didn't, and what we can carry with us to the next conf.