Hello,
If you feel a strong urge to reject the text, there is obviously nothing preventing anyone from creating a Meta-Wiki page to that purpose. However, I would first ask to reflect on the process, its outcome, and where it's going.
Strategy is complicated. Building a movement strategy even more so [
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/05/19/wikimedia-strategy-2030-discussions/ ]. One person's serious issue may be another person's slight preference. People's serious issues may be at odds with each other (and I can tell you from experience that they are indeed). Balancing all those priorities is a difficult exercise, and I certainly don't claim to have done it perfectly. But I do think the outcome we've arrived at represents the shared vision of a large part of the movement.
As I was writing, rewriting and editing the text of the direction, I did consider everything that was shared on the talk page, and the last version is indeed based on those comments, as well as those shared during multiple Wikimania sessions, individual chats, comments from the Drafting group, from affiliates, from staff, and so on.
While I did consider all of those, I didn't respond to every single comment, and there is little I can do about that except apologize and endeavor to do better. I should have set clearer expectations that not every comment would be integrated in the text. I ran into an issue all too familiar in the Wikiverse where one person had to integrate comments and feedback from a large group of people at the same time.
High-level vision and strategy integration isn't really something that can be spread across a group of people as easily as writing an encyclopedia article, and so I ended up being a bottleneck for responding to comments. I had to prioritize what I deemed were issues that were shared by a large group, and those that seemed to be more individual concerns.
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not the "everything must be positive, fantastic, yeehaw-we-are-number-one" type. If anything, I'm rather the opposite, as I think many Wikimedians are. If we had unlimited time, I'd probably continue to edit the draft for years, and I'm sure there would be other perfectionists to feed my obsession.
However, others in my personal and professional circles have helped me realize in the past few weeks that even getting to this stage of the process is remarkable. As Wikimedians, we often focus on what's wrong and needs fixing. Sometimes, our negativity bias leads us to lose focus of the accomplishments. This can clash with the typical American culture, but I think somewhere in the middle is where those respective tunnel visions widen and meet.
One thing I've learned from Ed Bland, my co-architect during this process, is that sometimes things can't be perfect. Sometimes, excellence means recognizing when something is "good enough" and getting out of the asymptotic editing and decision paralysis loop. It means accepting that a few things annoy us so that a larger group of people is excited and motivated to participate.
From everything I've heard and read in the past two months, the last version of the direction is agreeable to a large part of individuals, groups, and organizations that have been involved in the process. Not everyone agrees with everything in the document, even within the Foundation, and even me. But enough people across the movement agree with enough of the document that we can all use it as a starting point for the next phase of discussions about roles, resources, and responsibilities.
I do hope that many of you will consider endorsing the direction in a few weeks. While I won't claim to know everyone involved, I think I know you enough, Ziko and Fæ, from your work and long-time commitment in the movement, to venture that there is more in this document that you agree with than that you disagree with. I hope that the prospect of moving in a shared direction will outweigh the possible annoyances. And so I hope that we'll endorse the direction together, even if it's in our typically Wikimedian begrudging fashion.