[Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

[David Gerard]

On 15 September 2011 19:26, Thomas Morton <morton.thomas at googlemail.com> wrote:


>> Thirdly, there never has in the past been *any* hierarchy in
>> wikimedia, that is the beauty of it. And any attempt at empire
>> building, now, or in the future, is doomed to fail. There is a
>> governance structure, but that should be ring-fenced away
>> from the community. What we have here is the governance
>> structure trying to leap over the fence. We simply can't have
>> that.

> We have mini-empires at just about every level of the foundation and
> communities - at least on en.wiki. Those empires are pretty well entrenched
> by now that any differing view barely gets a look in.


Indeed. It is important to remember that there is *always* a hierarchy
- the difference is in whether it is explicit or implicit. c.f. "The
Tyranny of Structurelessness" by Jo Freeman, an essay every Wikimedian
sufficiently interested in the nuts and bolts of the Wikimedia
movement to, e.g., read foundation-l should reread on occasion.
http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm


>> What is needed here is not a prostrate leadership, but one
>> which acknowledges what happened, and offers a crisp
>> plain apology. That wouldn't repair the damage, but it sure
>> would staunch the bleeding.

> If only... as I recently commented at the London Wikimeet; for an
> organisation that is ostensibly at the bleeding edge of disseminating
> knowledge and openness we have a disappointingly standard/closed higher
> organisation. You can hardly tell it apart from the bazillions of other
> NFP's....
> So: I wouldn't hold out hope.


It's important to note that every person involved is a digital native
who deeply understands how Internet and volunteer things work, and is
proceeding completely in good faith. And all are ridiculously smart
and knowledgeable, too. That things appear hideously broken anyway is,
I suspect, par for the course when humans are involved. "None of us is
as stupid as all of us."

(This means I may disagree vociferously with many of you but love and
admire you all nevertheless!)


- d.