Hoi,
Really.
We have had a rough patch where management and people in the WMF were at
odds. We have a rough patch where people for all kinds of reason decide to
no longer be a member of the WMF board. It is no wonder that things are not
as they should be as a consequence. When you add the negativity out of much
of the community re the work of the WMF. No is the default answer,
negativity the standard attitude. I think the WMF given such circumstances
does really well.
When you want to stick to the facts, it is also how you present them. When
314 people vote, I find this almost an insignificant number given the size
of our community.
So from your position the glass is half empty, I see it is half full. I
think it can only get better and that is not how I experience your
position. In the mean time I do not see how the "community" helps in this.
For the community the board is very much peripheral to the objective and
imho too much is made of the board. As to Mr Geshuri he is not the only
person who is no longer on the board.
This whole notion of "understanding to the next decimal point" of what
happened makes us a reactive organisation and to put it bluntly that is not
what we need. We need an organisation that is proactive and that will only
happen when there is some trust. This whole drive to get more
"transparency" will only dig us a bigger hole.
So do consider what it is that we are to achieve and what your role is. My
role is simple, I want us to embrace approaches and technology that will
particularly support the other languages. I want us to do a much better job
at understanding what our readers are looking for and it may be well
intentioned but the current approach will not improve things and will only
constrain our ability to achieve our expressed goals.
Thanks,
GerardM
On 2 May 2016 at 11:21, Fæ <faewik(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Perhaps we could stick to facts?
In the very recent case of Arnnon Geshuri, the WMF board of trustees
proved themselves to be completely out of touch with the
community.[1][2] 314 Wikimedians took part in the vote of no
confidence, hardly just "malcontents", and 95% of those that took part
voted directly against the stated position of the board, who still
remain happy with their decision to keep Geshuri as trustee, and have
not apologized or even changed a single part of their governance
processes, despite vague unmeasurable offers to look into it.
With regard to "[the WMF board] delivering services that are of a high
quality", all the metrics that the WMF report show the opposite. The
WMF consistently fail to meet the performance targets they set for
themselves, as you can see from the most recent quarterly report, they
"missed", i.e. "failed", 35% of all their objectives.[3] In the
Retail
& Telecoms businesses I have worked in, a pattern of poor performance
like this would see speedy major investment in change and improvement,
including major changes at the board level.
It is an easy and lazy response to shout down objections by deriding
everyone that has a complaint a malcontent or a troll. However after a
few years of the WMF board failing to improve their self-governance or
transparency, it's time to actually change things rather than
accepting soft soap and political position statements that hold nobody
to account.
Links
1.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Vote_of_no_confidence_…
2.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35411208
3.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Quar…
Fae
On 2 May 2016 at 06:58, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi,
The most important thing about the board and the WMF is that they enable
what we do. The dependence on them delivering services that are of a high
quality is something they deliver. At the same time there is a coterie of
"Wikipedians" that want to remake the WMF in their own image. They have
proven not to be interested in our projects really. They have been
challenged to consider practical things that will deliver much better
quality for Wikipedia but it proved not to be what they are interested
in.
Arguably there is a crisis. But the crisis has less to do with the WMF
than
with some in the community. They call themselves
the community. IMHO they
are malcontents; they have no agenda but single issues that will not help
us achieve what the WMF is about.
Thanks,
GerardM
On 1 May 2016 at 23:36, Rogol Domedonfors <domedonfors(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems that the engagement between the Board and the Community has
broken
> down, to the point that there may be a crisis
of confidence developing.
> Perhaps members of this list would care to express their views at
>
>
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard#Cris…
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