Michael, thank you for weighing in. Your background in the movement and perspective is unique and valuable. (For those who don't know, Michael was an early WMF board chair, and also the founder of the Signpost newspaper.)
I'll respond to everybody in this thread, but I want to start with Michael's comments.
On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 6:11 PM Michael Snow wikipedia@frontier.com wrote:
I think [Pete's closing point] overrates the effect of the individual Executive Director/CEO on what are, after all, institutional and collective processes. While I recognize the importance of the role in heading the organization, that person may try to shape the overall culture, but they are not really the source of it.
This is a valid point, but I was trying to look at this from a broad perspective. I think the source of any dissonance is this:
Institutional memory is important BOTH to staff of WMF, AND to the volunteer community.
I think both you and I, Michael, have blurred these two issues to some degree. It would be possible for (a) WMF to fully and privately document the relevant history (which could be a function of top-down leadership and/or staff culture), and for (b) volunteers to fully and publicly document relevant history (growing out of volunteer culture, presumably with some input from staff). To some degree this already happens. It would be worthwhile to discuss the possible benefits, and the possible design, of a system that facilitates those things happening in a mutually supportive, or even merged way; I expect you and I have probably both explored that to some degree in the past. But, getting into that would substantially expand the scope of the present discussion, and I'm not going to assume we, or anyone, want to go there right now.
In my message, I was only addressing the WMF's *institutional* memory (a).
Just consider what
transpired between the two Executive Directors mentioned above; while that was a difficult time and the organizational culture suffered significantly, I would argue that the underlying culture at the community/staff/"grassroots" level is what forced the organization to reconsider and change directions.
Well, this illustrates the point I was making rather nicely: In order to consider it, wouldn't it be nice to have an existing summary or two of facts that allowed you and me to assess whether or not we share an understanding of the facts, and permitted those unfamiliar with the facts to catch up and follow what we're saying? (Maybe that exists, to some degree, in the form of the volunteer-built Knowledge Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Engine_(Wikimedia_Foundation) article on English Wikipedia. But for many other topics, that are vitally important to our history but have not attracted independent journalistic inquiry, we have no such Wikipedia article.)
WMF staff actually attempted to do much of that at the time. The transparency gap https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_transparency_gap page on Meta Wiki was started by WMF staff. I think it's an excellent example that a unified "culture" of the staff and volunteer community has often existed, and can produce valuable documents. But as far as I could tell, it has never attracted significant notice from the WMF board or executives. If there were directed outcomes from this body of work, in terms of changing the policies or high-level practices of the organization, I'm not aware of them.
Grassroots efforts are valuable (which in general is why most of us are here), but when it comes to an organization like the WMF, much of their value is only realized when they are recognized, and used as the foundation for policy changes, at the board or executive level.
<snip>
Pete also offers much good advice about maintaining institutional knowledge, but I think it's a mistaken dichotomy to view two different modes of presenting information ("encyclopedic" and "communications") as if they are conflicting philosophies rather than merely separate skillsets.
My apologies if I gave that impression. I agree with you 100% that the skills are not mutually exclusive. As I have written about extensively elsewhere, I think the Wikimedia community often mistakenly sees this issue as more black-and-white than it is.
Still, I think the distinction is significant, and it does surprise me that a community that is often so deeply opposed to communications and public relations activities *outside* its own world (influencing corporate Wikipedia articles, etc.) can be so blasé about these dynamics when it comes to the Wikimedia Foundation itself. For instance, in 2017 Tony1 and I wrote a Signpost article about WMF hiring a reputation management firm in the early planning of its strategy process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2017-02-06/In_focus. That story, to which I devoted far more attention to the research and writing than much of my other Signpost work, attracted comparatively little interest. (Admittedly though, I think everyone trying to attract the community's interest to strategic matters has found it challenging.)
<snip>To the extent the Wikimedia
Foundation struggles to have an encyclopedic approach to institutional memory, frankly that problem is nearly universal among organizations. It's less the background of a particular leader than the general emphasis on "getting things done" over documenting what was done, how, and why.
Many organizations are designed to be financially competitive, and must focus on "getting things done" in service to that goal. I think we all take some pride that the Wikimedia movement has created a different kind of reality. But the WMF has not fully leveraged that advantage.
I would argue that in many cases, the urgency of the WMF of "getting things done" on a certain schedule (Vector, Visual Editor, Media Viewer, Echo, etc.) has actually set the organization and the movement back (even in cases where the underlying software was highly beneficial), while documenting the lessons of those efforts carefully would yield substantial benefits to both the community and the organization. That is a choice of the organization's *leadership* on whether to direct resources toward accomplishing technical vs. social goals. My argument is, that choice (which has been more or less continuous for ~15 years) has always been a mistake.
Going back to the earlier point, it's good to recognize Sue and Erik's leadership in an assessment that can serve as a positive model.
<snip>
I'm going to respectfully decline to further discuss this aspect. I like and admire everyone under discussion in this thread, but liking and admiring someone is not the same thing as agreeing with every one of their decisions. I prefer to talk about the decisions, not the people deciding. My comment on all the executives discussed here is pretty much the same: they've done some good things, and some things that have been harmful. I'm sure the same could be said of my own career, and most people. I'm not looking to dig into all that.
Gnangarra, your suggestion of a staff historian is worthwhile, but I think that approach also has drawbacks; if the function of documenting experiences is relegated to distinct staff or departments, it makes it easy for the rest of staff to pay little attention to the practice. I'd advise working careful debrief and post mortem practices into the work of all departments, rather than hiring separately. (But I suppose you could also do both.)
In fact (and Delphine may be interested in this as well), the challenges of separating the function were visible in a consulting engagement I had with WMF in about 2012. The then-Talent & Culture executive hired my company to design a program around onboarding and institutional memory. We did all the preliminary work, but when the time came when active participation of various WMF staff was necessary, the executive was unable to get that participation. We had to end the engagement. (Others here may have a different perspective on that, of course; I wasn't in direct touch with staff beyond Talent & Culture about it.)
Finally, Delphine, I am pleased to learn that you have been hired to do this work! Your history in the movement and your strong understanding of community dynamics will surely serve the WMF well. My experience suggests that your job involves moving mountains, but if anyone can do it, I have faith in you. I wish you the best.
Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]