Dear David,
I'm really sorry to hear this, and feel your pain.
Having been through this in the past, I know (a bit) of how it feels.
I just disagree with your analysis of seeing money as a mere tool. It can empower us, it can destroy us. Whoever said money is the root of all evil, knew what s/he was talking about. It can disrupt the best of movements and also make us selfish.
I hope I'm wrong here.
Fredericknoronha In Goa, India. +91-9822122436.
PS: Regardless of whether it's related or not, I'd like to make a general observation: burnout over volunteer work can be a real (if unaddressed) concern for many of us. Why do so many end up feeling so under-appreciated and taken-for-granted? Are there some tools to cope with this?
---------- Forwarded message --------- From: David Cuenca Tudela dacuetu@gmail.com Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2018 at 03:56 Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Appropriation of the Wikimedia Blog by the WMF To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Since Ed Erhart didn't honor my request of posting in this mailing lists to discuss the plans to appropriate the Wikimedia Blog for the Wikimedia Foundation [1] (although I would have preferred that he had done it himself as he is the visible face behind this change, and therefore the burden of proof is on him to prove to the community that this is the right change), I am posting to this list with the hope that it can be discussed with people for whom these things matter.
The Wikimedia Blog [2] has the title "News from Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement", and in case you don't know it it is run by the WMF [3]. This blog has been operating under the existing URL for many years, and I believe there was a general satisfaction with the way is run, the quality of the stories, the amount, etc. However, as I mentioned in the Phabricator ticket [1] I find the idea of moving the blog to the Wikimedia Foundation site not adequate and not in the spirit of the Wikimedia movement.
I do not find the intention to move the blog to the WMF site to be in the spirit of the Wikimedia movement because our movement is a diverse field that is based on the idea of "commons" [4], and I feel that the Wikimedia Blog is one of those commons. As I see it now the blog sits in the middle of the community, and although it is run by the WMF, it can be seen as a shared space between the WMF, the affiliates, and the community. By moving the blog to the WMF site, the blog would lose its status as a commons and it would become "the blog of the WMF". I think that if the WMF wants a blog, they can create a new one, but they should leave the existing blog as it is, as a shared space.
Intentions like this makes me think that in the WMF there is not enough "wisdom", that strange quality that I am trying to make important in our movement without much success [5]. This lack of wisdom is not only present in the WMF, also in our movement I percieve, if not lack of wisdom, at least lack of empathy [6]. It saddens me and it makes me stressed.
Issues like this one about the blog make me think that the movement needs dedicated people that cultivate wisdom and encyclopedic knowledge about the movement (I might have the former, but not the later), and that we put the qualities of those people to the service of our community. I feel like a little kid who wants to play a nice game with his friends, and then he sees a big bulldozer coming to destroy his playing field. If it is not clear for you, the "bulldozer" is how I see the "corporate WMF" coming to destroy the soul of what I love most.
Tracking these kind of "behind the scenes" events takes me too much time. I feel that I have reached more than the maximum of my capacity as a "volunteer" (ha, what a joke of a word), and that I would risk losing my current job if I am caught again participating in the Wikimedia projects during my work hours, which I do without restrain. Not only that, it also takes most of my waking time, specially because the movement has grown so big that I feel overwhelmed in my capacity as metapedian [7]. I also feel that it has started affecting my mental health. I do not know if I am the only one, but as it is right now contributing to the Wikimedia projects is *very* stressful, and since it is my main activity, I don't have time to wind down, and since I do it as a "volunteer", I do not have free time to recover. I also fear that if I would not do it myself nobody else would do it, and if nobody would take their individual responsibility seriously, then nobody would care for the good things in this world, and if nobody would take care of the good things in this world, then we better start saying goodbye to it RIGHT NOW, because the world is a fucking mess and nobody is standing up to say the things as they are, or as they should be.
I spent 14 years of my life in the Wikimedia projects with various degrees of involvement, working for free, and receiving compensation [8], and I must say that the quality of my work has been exactly the same, my responsability has been exactly the same, and it never mattered if I hold a position of "power" or not, I always acted exactly the same, the only thing that has changed is my "awareness", and my capacity to listen, which allows me to have more effective conversations that build real consensus [9]. I say all that because many people in this movement seem to have an issue with money. Get over it guys. It is just a tool, like a computer, like a hammer, like whatever tool you want to imagine. You take it, you use it, and then you forget about it. That is the way it should be done. All the rest is stories that people have in their heads that are totally wrong and misinformed.
To go back to the topic of the Wikimedia Blog, I believe that, as one above the average wise people said, "the best that can come from it is that nothing happens". I don't think it is done with bad intentions. I trust Ed as a reputable member of the community, but I do believe that I am suffering as a result of his lack of awareness.
So to anyone that feels part of the community and is reading this message, I would like to ask you to express your view if you really care about all the things that I am saying here. If you don't have much to say, or you don't feel that you can't add much to the conversation, a simple "I hear you, I support you" or something in those lines would make a big difference for me.
Thank you, Micru
[1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193912 [2] https://blog.wikimedia.org/ [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Blog&oldid=175633... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Micru/Draft_RFC [6] https://es.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Wikiviajes:Tabl%C3%B3n_de_anunci... [7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metapedianism [8] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Elaborate_Wikisource_strategic_vi... [9] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:Lexicographical_data#Replacing_l... _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe