[Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community engagement

[Romaine Wiki]

Hello Nathan, 

I have no anti-Americanism, I only notice some differences in the culture how communities from different continents work and to me that is natural. The only thing I say is that an organisation for a worldwide movement should reflect more that diversity. Not only in people, but only in ways of thinking. 
Before you wrote this mail I already knew where they were from, but people easily take over the culture of the organisation they work for.

There is a big protest and much critic on three major Wikipedias on how WMF handles the development and roll out of the VE, and as this seems to be not the first time the way of acting is worse, I try and would like to find out why this happens. Too often people from local communities do get the feeling they are not listened to by WMF, and I think that is terrible for an organisation that is there to support those people. I am certainly not surprised that less people participate in elections for board and so, people are demotivated on several ways.

If you have a better explanation please tell us, as it is good to name the problems and try to find solutions for it.


> and you should retract it so that others will
> continue to take your feedback seriously.

You make wrong conclusions out of the words I said, in a way you twist it so it doesn't match any more they way it was intended. (And you should know that I like the VE very much.)
How can you ask to retract it if you do not take it seriously already? You twist my words, you gave it a meaning which it originally did not had, that is what you consider as taking someones feedback seriously? No thank you. 

The past week I have been working on the localisation for Wiki Loves Monuments, and with that I see the differences between countries and between language areas. I like those differences, I try to respect them and try to take them into account. They have all the same goal in creating an encyclopaedia, but are all a bit different as no culture, language or country is the same. They all have a different history and way of looking. I think the best known situation where this appeared was the image filter, but there are many more smaller situations that differences are playing. For example on the Dutch Wikipedia there are every year discussions on how nl-wiki differs from other Wikipedias like en-wiki, and I see that happen on more Wikipedias. 

Sorry Nathan, I am disappointed that this reaction is the only thing you take out of my reply. Maybe my expectations are too high, I really thought serious feedback is appreciated, it is not me who experience this, but many others as well. What I would like to see and what I strive for is a better cooperation between WMF and communities.


Romaine

 
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 09:11:06 -0400
 From: Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com>
 To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for
 community
     engagement
 
 On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 2:08 AM, Romaine Wiki <romaine_wiki at yahoo.com>
 wrote:
 > In my opinion the liaisons failed very much with the
 VE, as they act like a car salesman who gives much the
 impression that communication is only in one direction: the
 community. They said they send our feedback to WMF but we
 haven't seen any results at all from that. After a month
 still all feedback was untouched, nothing was changed on all
 subjects we have given feedback on. Even critical bugs. I
 sure believe that the liaisons do their work, and that the
 problem lies in WMF itself, but still the liaisons became
 very much annoying. It is like they got a training to talk
 everything right or minimize the serious critic. I really
 hate such behaviour, to me and the rest of the community it
 is a signal that we aren't taken seriously. I consider the
 liaison involvement as a failure, certainly not recommended
 to repeat that in future this way.
 >
 > Besides that, with previous software changes we have
 had technical ambassadors who maintained mostly the feedback
 between developers and the communities and that worked well
 so far I can see. I seriously do not understand why they
 ignored them with the VE and instead hired liaisons which
 behaved more like staff of WMF with the agenda that they
 must sell the car, than neutral people who are involved in
 the local community. That is not the way how communities
 should be approached.
 >
 > Perhaps the gap between communities and WMF, already
 there in 2007, still hasn't become much closer since. I
 think the problem lies in the idea that the WMF is thinking
 top-down, while the communities work bottom-up (they do the
 actual daily work at the end). Also I notice for years that
 there is also a gap between North America and the rest of
 the world in culture, or at least certainly between North
 America and Europe. Both are part of the western culture,
 but still the way Americans deal with things is not the way
 Europeans would deal with. WMF seems to be too much America
 based and doesn't internal reflect enough the worldwide
 movement the whole Wikimedia community is. As I see a clear
 gap in culture between North America (including WMF style)
 and Europe, I guess such gap is also there between North
 America and other parts of the world, but I do not have a
 clear view on those areas.
 >
 > Romaine
 
 I think your anti-Americanism is misplaced. Let's look at
 some of the
 key people involved in the VisualEditor project. Erik is
 German, James
 F is British, Roan Kattouw is Dutch, Timo Tijhof is Dutch.
 If you were
 to skim the list of the engineering staff, they are
 extremely diverse,
 with many remote employees throughout Europe and a number of
 relocated
 Europeans (and others) working in San Francisco. So I think
 your
 implication that the VE is some element of arrogant
 American
 imperialism is false, and you should retract it so that
 others will
 continue to take your feedback seriously.
 
 ~Nathan