On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 1:53 PM, MZMcBride
<z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote:
Theoretical overlap, perhaps. People in the role
of "Community Liaison,
Product Development and Strategic Change Management", a title Orwell
would be proud of, are not doing what's being described in this e-mail.
The current community liaisons are really paid advocates and they're
tasked with shilling bad products. This isn't the fault of the people in
these roles, many of whom I know and respect, but we should be honest
that their role is much closer to that of a marketer or public relations
person.
You're being a jerk in this paragraph, Max. There is a huge difference in
attitude, skills, and experience between marketers/PR people and the
Wikimedians that work in the community liason role. The community liasons
put in a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to advocate not only *to *the
community, but *for it* within the Foundation. They do this quietly, often
behind the scenes, and with little praise. If you know and respect these
people, the respectful thing would not be to reduce their very hard jobs
to a pithy but inaccurate summary for your rhetorical purposes.
Blood, sweat, and tears? A very hard job? I'm not sure we're talking about
the same thing. Being an emergency room doctor, for example, is a very
hard job that involves blood, sweat, and tears. What you're describing
doesn't seem to match reality. Some might even describe it as rhetoric.
I'll stand by what I said previously. The community liaisons (two Is) are
currently in the role of trying to sell the community on bad software.
Good software, surprisingly, doesn't need hired "community liaisons" to
roam around the large wikis to explain and defend its virtues. If you
want to respond to the substantive point, please do. Otherwise, I don't
really think it's fair nor productive to simply make appeals to emotion.
MZMcBride