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From: Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thu, February 17, 2011 11:23:27 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criticism of employees (was VPAT)
One suggestion I made was that, since communication between office and community is so critical, it might be worth the foundation employing one person at the office purely for community/office liaison (via this list, on Meta, etc). In other words their role is to be at the office and responsive to the community on lists and wikis, ensure community questions and concerns are addressed or not lost, where other staff may not be able to do so as fully as some would wish. It'd cost, but it may well be worth it. Worthwhile? Or wasteful?
FT2
Yes, worthwhile, although this list would be only a minor part of such monitoring. An experienced Wikipedian needs to monitor the mailing lists, Village Pump, requests for arbitration, and the administrative noticeboards regularly and prepare a brief summary for staff daily. Emphasis would be on issues which have potential to or already affect public relations or Foundation resources.
You are really off-base with that suggestion. Community-wise the staff exists to support the Wikimedia communities in fulfilling the vision that the community members developed for the WMF before there were enough staff to have anyone assigned to a "Community Department:" department. Their role is not to enable enWP to overcome its unique brand of dysfunction, nor to enable any of the communities with each of their unique dysfunctional aspects.
Experienced community members need to monitor their local wiki community pages (maybe the Village Pump, maybe the Scriptorium. maybe Talk:Main Page), any noticeboards that exist locally, any misc governance activity. Obviously in most cases their will be many members doing this rotating in in out of various levels of activity over time. These people need to work to ensure local concerns, especially uniquely local concerns, are resolved locally.
However whether causally or in an organized fashion, that group of experienced community pulse keepers would be wise to make certain they have at least one person who is both assertive and comfortable with communicating in English subscribed to Foundation-l. In large communities that have a great deal of mistrust at least one experienced member of each quasi-faction should probably do this independent of the other quasi-factions. Ideally these subscribed local pulse-keepers should be able to keep the pulse of WMF solely by subscribing here but it may be a good idea to watch-list certain pages on Meta with email-alerts. Currently Meta-Wikimedians are very good at alerting local communities to anything relevant, but that always could change. Foundation-l is very bad about alerting local communities in a timely fashion. Often someone will post a decided opinion on the local wiki when the thread is in its death-throes here. This is just as much the result of the mailing-list moving very fast as is due any lack of sensitivity among subscribers. Since more sensitive people tend to move even slower than those who less thoughtful of their tone, the first contact invariably ends up being from someone who is more oblivious as to the effect the tone of their communication will have in the local communities. So there especially a need for pre-emptive subscription. So the experienced members of local communities really need to subscribe and keep the local communities informed of any WMF developments that may impact their communities while people are still open-minded about the issue. They also would be wise to try and judge what local concerns seemed to be common across the many communities plugged into foundation-l and decide if bring outside attention to such concerns will do more help than harm.
I suspect that just like I did, many of the people here who resemble that description of "pulse-keepers" have joined this list after someone with strong opinions posted a notice locally about what they believed foundation-l had decided was wrong with the way their community had been handling some issue. In my case, the thing which made me realize I needed to join list or else see en.WS interests being trampled without much thought was David Gerard's posting his take on the copyright considerations at en.WS with regard to the UK law prohibiting Fox Hunting link to the foundation-l archives. Of course everyone at en.WS thought he was someone kind of official from the foundation, that the discussions on this list were binding, and while being a little cross at the tone complied right away with a swath of deletions. Later we realized that he was not so official after-all, nor is what is found in the foundation-l archives any sort of edict, nor was the particular interpretation he espoused for the copyright issue the complete story. Many works were restored, people for a time were very bitter and mistrustful towards outsiders and wanted more than anything be non-communicative of local questions with WMF, as it seemed encouraging *them* to ignore *us* was the best that could be hoped for from dealing with WMF. I joined foundation-l to advocate for en.WS interests, to act as an early-warning system for the community when en.WS was receiving attention, and because I wished help create a framework where en.WS being ignored (i.e. left alone) was not the best that could be hoped for from WMF. After a few more experiences similar to the Fox-Hunting edict debacle I came to realize we were still largely under-estimating how unofficial everything regarding foundation-l really was and I became determined to do my best to advocate for all the communities that have yet to discover how badly they will be trampled if they do not keep the pulse of WMF for themselves.
There are certainly other things which foundation-l could be very useful for. Many of them. But the bridging issue is one that is rather hard to replicate without foundation-l. In some cases, where the correlation is strong chapters have stepped in. But universally speaking that is no more workable than asking WMF to employ staff to track on the local discussions, noticeboards, and governance pages on every project in every language. I truly believe the mis-communications that occur without such bridging does more damage to WMF than anything else I can think of. It is what led to the Spanish fork and it is why people are laughed off of en.WS for attempting to directly tell us how to handle an issue of almost any kind.
When people using the title of Wikimedian and referring the possible actions they will have WMF take to ensure they are listened to have forced massive changes in the communities . . . When community leaders coax, prod, and use every bit of political capitol they can muster to get their community to buy into said changes. . . When dedicated people leave or simply lose their previous level of dedication over such changes . . . And then it is discovered the changes were unnecessary and may be reversed at will. And this happens once, twice, three times. That damage is immense. I joined this list because the sheer waste in cleaning up the first round of damage in a community I loved made me quite angry . . . The guilt over falling for the same false arguments a second time made me nauseous , , , And the derision shown toward outsiders who tried to use those false arguments yet again made me pity them. I have always felt I was running interference here. On one hand trying to prevent my community from being trampled by some blind elephant and the other trying to keep the elephant from stepping in the pile of shit one of their herd-mates deposited they last time the herd was in our vicinity. That is what the WMF loses when they decide they would rather ignore troll-l. They lose the help of thoughtful people who can see the big-picture and are willing to run interference to protect WMF. Because it neither in WMFs interests to trample its own communities nor to have its associates step in a big pile of elephant shit. But such people can be of no use when there is no warning given of what is upcoming.
The occasions were I was unable to be of much use in a protective role were more recent than not and didn't move through foundation-l. Whether they incubated on some closed list , on a wiki I merely don't frequent, or they ran straight through the gossip network to spring into life formed like Athena, I have no idea. But the incidents were ugly all around and no one walked a way happy. In regard to how much damage unofficial Wikimedians can manage, I think things have gotten significantly worse. When there is so little transparency over what positions WMF is developing *anyone* can go to an unfamiliar communities and convincingly claim that their pet decisions will be backed by a board resolution if they really must go get one or that the wiki will be shut down by WMF if the community does not adopt their pet reforms. Such misguided Wikimedians can actually believe these statements to be true. I have heard both kinds of statements more than once from several different people who were neither stewards nor staff, in completely different circumstances. I have no doubt that those making such statements sincerely believed they could achieve what they stated if it was really necessary. That is how opaque WMF operations and developing positions are and how very long a time they have been opaque. Reasonable, caring, intelligent dedicated, Wikimedians can be that misguided in how things work. They can truly believe that there can be no relevant information that they are missing. That there is no argument nor explanation an unfamiliar community could present that would shift anyone's opinion in an open discussion. That they believe the outcome of the dispute is so completely certain that the community need not waste time further educating itself about the dispute nor explaining their position to them, but just comply. It would be funny if it were not so unbelievably sad.
For the record how things really work, when things are working well, is as follows. There is valid process. All stakeholders understand the methods of this process and have access to those who are responsible for implementing the chosen method. The issues working their way through the process are consistently advertised and updated through the same reliable channels. In order for the process to be a valid process all advertised outcomes are possible results. (i.e. if anyone could truly know the result before the process is applied then it is not a valid process). Whether that options are that all content classified as Foo is prohibited or accepted or accepted after special review, that Bar is banned from Wikiland inclusive overriding local communities or not, or that X number of WMF offices will be opened in cities within either A, B, or C. No results that WMF is unwilling to accept can be offered as part of the process and no results that win through the process can refused by WMF. If that process is that everyone has three weeks to privately email Sue Gardner their thoughts on five different proposals and then she sits down on Friday morning with her notes and picks and announces whichever proposal she judges best by noon; that is a valid process. Having a valid process doesn't mean having a poll or a public discussion or losing control over the decision. Just setting up basic expectations and conforming to them.
A valid process can be as simple as a dictator deciding, but what makes the process valid is that everyone understands *who* the dictator is, *where* the dictator can be reached, *what* the dictator is pondering, and *when* the dictator is going decide the issue. Notice I left out why. That point is relatively unimportant and does not need really need to be explained when there is a valid process, narrow the choices by weighted point system and then flip a coin if the top choices that fall within a single point or be moved by passion and organization of one particular advocate's email campaign. It really doesn't matter so long as the other information given for a valid process is accurate and upheld. People always say they care most about why when there is no valid process, but they are mistaken. People really care most about feeling that they know who is in charge, that they have been heard, that their preference had a chance of winning, and that they can have confidence in when they will know what is going to happen in the future. Satisfy those criteria without even explaining why and the largest majority of criticism will evaporate. I don't mean to say why does not matter at all. But none of us would be if we where not committed to a large number of the same basic principles. So given the common ground within Wikimedia, the why of decisions are relatively unimportant. Since they are the most sensitive pieces and often impossible to be 100% transparent about in public without disrespecting people, voiding contracts, scaring off partners, etc., it is best to ignore that aspect beyond the general answer (i.e. Why-to fulfill our mission provide the sum of all human knowledge to everyone on the planet) Focus on easy aspects of the process the bring no ugly unintended consequences and watch the criticism of decision making evaporate like morning mist.
And I am not recommending a dictatorial process. First and foremost dictators don't scale, so huge inefficiencies abound. But the point is that if a dictator can be set-up in a way the satisfies the *how* criteria of a valid process . Any *how* for making decisions can be set-up as a valid process, different ways of deciding different categories of decisions can all be set-up as a part of valid process. The point saying a valid *how* could be a dictator or flipping a coin, is to show that WMF does not need to give up any control over decisions to institute a valid process. WMF only needs to plan and document whatever decision process they are comfortable with to have a valid process.
Sorry for the massive soapbox here. I don't know how articulate this really turned out I have gone over it too many times now. I wanted to offer my experiences and observations. I realize they are extremely subjective. I don't pretend that the samples of incidents I used to illustrate how my experiences led me to hold the positions I do can only be seen in the way I have interpreted. I wrote what I recall, based most strongly on what I recall *feeling*, about the events. I did not check histories and verify things. I do not mean to suggest my viewpoint on these incidents is the authoritative account of what happened. I have merely described one of, surely, many valid viewpoints of these events; the viewpoint that most deeply influenced me. I know people had good intentions and no one set out to cause the any harm. I don't mean for anyone to be embarrassed if they recognize themselves at all. I don't know if I should have taken out your name, David. I thought about it after I realized I never recalled as much detail about the other examples. But I left it because I am so certain that you are thickly skinned. I guess just natural that you remember your first rude-awakening to some discrepancy between the world as you initially imagined itt and, as I have seen on blogger name it, "Objective Fucking Reality" much more strongly than the incidents where the discrepancy is repeatedly confirmed. Even if the other incidents are more egregious.
tl;dr
WMF making use of foundation-l to develop upcoming positions gains all parties an early warning of problems and a chance for thoughtful people who care about the big picture to help make mutually beneficial adjustments. . . Merely announcing fixed decisions makes it more likely the WMF will commit itself to some deeply flawed framework which the communities will fail to ever flesh out, . . And hands the dialogue directly to the elements of the communities who have quick, strong, and negative reactions to the decision . . . And empowers misguided Wikimedians who are confident in their desired result and blinded by short-term considerations to damage unfamiliar communities that do things differently than such Wikimedians would prefer..
Plus this copied from above
For the record how things really work, when things are working successfully, is as follows. There is valid process. All stakeholders understand the methods of this process and have access to those who are responsible for implementing the chosen method. The issues working their way through the process are consistently advertised and updated through the same reliable channels. In order for the process to be a valid process all advertised outcomes are possible results. (i.e. if anyone could truly know the result before the process is applied then it is not a valid process). Whether that options are that all content classified as Foo is prohibited or accepted or accepted after special review, that Bar is banned from Wikiland inclusive overriding local communities or not, or that X number of WMF offices will be opened in cities within either A, B, or C. No results that WMF is unwilling to accept can be offered as part of the process and no results that win through the process can refused by WMF. If that process is that everyone has three weeks to privately email Sue Gardner their thoughts on five different proposals and then she sits down on Friday morning with her notes and picks and announces whichever proposal she judges best by noon; that is a valid process. Having a valid process doesn't mean having a poll or a public discussion or losing control over the decision. Just setting up basic expectations and conforming to them.
Birgitte SB