On 8/13/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Indeed. Well, it was such a good wheel, I think it is
still worth
reinventing. :)
lol.
So let me try a different approach. Rather than
waiting for Florence
to try again something that she and other people have tried before, or
for "the Foundation " to issue a dealdine, why don't you, Brianna,
come up with a "state of commons" that you broadcast across lists and
projects and ask for the same from other projects, just because you're
interested?
I am a fervent believer that top down has its limits, and that a call
from a "fellow community member" might be better heard altogether. My
take being that an "official" request is not always the answer to
everything, on the contrary.
Hm, well I very very much doubt that my call should be better-received
than Florence's, or another Board members'.
Well, a call from a fellow community member hasn't been tried yet.
Call from the Foundation/officials have been tried and have failed. I
am convinced that trying otherwise is worth at least the try.
Florence said "What would be real cool would be
to try to keep a
written state of each project..." Having the Board make a request is
maybe one way to make that happen. I did not intend to attack or blame
Florence or anyone else for not having done this.
And this is not what I thought you had done. To tell you the truth, I
was amazed that Florence was actually saying this, because I remember
her spending nights on end trying to stir the communities to write
something for Quarto at the time, to no avail. How one forgets...
I guess underlying this discussion is some lack of
certainty about
what is the exact relationship between the Board and the projects.
Probably all Wikimedians have slightly different visions about what
they want the Board to be or do. Where some favour a "hands-off"
approach maybe others prefer intervention.
Agreed. At this level though and for what you ask, I have witnessed
the fact that the board asking just "doesn't work". At least it
"didn't" a few months/a year ago. Maybe it would have changed today,
maybe not.
The Mission statement says "The mission of the
Wikimedia Foundation is
to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop
educational content... the Foundation provides...an organizational
framework for the support and development of multilingual wiki
projects..."
(
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission )
So is that empowering and engagement anything more than keeping the
websites up, keeping the servers running? Should it be? What is the
organisational framework?
Those are very good questions, as always with you. I am not sure
however that to "empower" entails asking the community/ies to "do"
anything it/they don't feel like doing in the first place.
In the past few months, I have observed the reactions of "the
community" at every single decision the board has made, or every
single request for comments board members have called for. I must say
that the response rate has been, at least in my eyes, rather
disappointing on the one hand, and the critics have been, at least in
my eyes, rather upsetting on the other hand.
My take at this stage, and that is a personal opinion, is that it is
high time that people like you and I, who feel they are part of "the
community", organize themselves so as to be able to present a valid
partner to the organisation.
By valid partner, I meant that saying "this is not working, fix it" is
in my opinion, not the way to go. I'd rather hear something along the
lines of "this is not working, here is how to fix it, here are the
people that can fix it and here is how much it takes to fix it. Give
us the money -- organisational framework in my acception of the term--
to fix it".
Does this sound like I am being attacky and saying
"this should have
all been done yesterday"? I hope not, because I have great respect for
all the present and past Board members, and witnessing the evolution
of WMF into a professional, powerful, thoughtful and smart
organisation. But I hope the end is now in sight for the "working
Board" (another year at most?), and that discussions about the
project/Board relationship will be welcome.
No, don't worry, you don't sound attacky. At least not to me. :-) And
please do not take any of my remarks personally because they are not
personal, but just happen to fall in this thread/conversation with
you.
Of course, we can ask the board/the Foundation to ask "the community"
to provide a "state of the projects" before the x deadline. But I
would only urge the Foundation to do so if I was certain that "the
community" will not, three days after the deadline, say that really,
the Foundation does not communicate. Communication is, and should
always be, a two way street.
My observation to this date is that the expectations seem to be voiced
always on the same side. Does that mean that the Foundation does not
need info from "the community"? I think not, Florence has voiced it
clearly in her previous email.
Mind you, this is true on different levels such as chapters not
communicating well enough, etc. I am not trying to "blame" this on
anyone or any organisation. I am just tempted to say that all of us
should make an effort not to "demand", "request" or "ask"
from the
other, but to start by "giving" to the other. I am convinced that if
information really starts coming from those who ask for it, it will
flow as it should have done from the very beginning.
Not sure I am very clear here, but I hope so.
Delphine
--
~notafish
La critique, art aisé, se doit d'être constructive. -- Boris Vian in
*Chroniques du menteur*
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