[Foundation-l] Are we a club?

[Birgitte SB]

--- Mike Godwin <mnemonic at gmail.com > wrote:

>I speak as someone who worked to develop other
>communities -- the  
>WELL, cyberliberties activists, and others -- so I
>worry that Birgitte  
>is interpreting my anti-club remark as an
anti->community remark.

Sorry about your name ...

I thought your comment was not *against* community so
much as narrowly focused on this "meta" community that
is more removed from the wiki's and more outward
facing today, than it has been before.  What
proportion of the volunteers creating and managing the
content WMF’s support do you believe understand "free
content" and how a viral license like the GFDL works? 
How many editors understand the underlying reason to
create a NPOV encyclopedia rather than seeing NPOV as
simply th method that was chosen to settle disputes? 
How does this proportion change outside the top ten
wikis?  

These are issues that have been topics of discussion
to some degree in the past.  Today, it seems to me,
that promoting "free content" means partnering with
outside organizations to work on the goals of larger
free content community rather than working to educate
the people who have already invested their time in
Wikimedia wikis.  It seems more and more goals and
initiatives are outward looking.  And the effort to
ensure that those who drive the whole process are
on-board is missing.  Not just missing, but not even a
topic of discussion.  People who dedicate a great deal
of their time to the wikis mostly request WMF deliver
features and straightforward advice.  I think they
want WMF to look inward at how to help wiki’s that are
struggling to deal vandalism, copyright, and pushing
the limits of MediaWiki. Not that working to
standardize CC and GFDL licenses is a bad thing, but
that sort of initiative is not balanced with anything
more inward looking.  In the past, any complaint about
WMF's focus or decisions was answered with the
suggestion that a representative of the complaining
community should join foundation-l and keep everyone
updated about important issues.  Recently more
discussions move away to private lists and most input
is compiled from people who spend most of their time
working on foundation issues rather than people whose
work is focused on the wiki's, especially the smaller
ones.  Do I think this is evil and a conspiracy
against the undefined "Community"?  Of course not.  Do
I think this is wise? Definitely not.

In full seriousness, as long as WMF has the support of
developers I think it will be able to do whatever meta
people like.  The developers are the demi-gods of the
wikis.  But wouldn't it be better for WMF’s
initiatives to have the informed support of thousands
of people who volunteer their time to Wikimedia?  To
have these people as stakeholders in what WMF is
trying to do rather than simply be the passive and
sometimes grumbling mass behind WMF's claim to being a
top-ten website. 

I hope the Wikicouncil intiative can change things and
make more people stakeholders in WMF.

Birgitte SB



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