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(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedia-l(a)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(a)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