Hi David,
I hear you.
I live in that part of the world where getting any job and earning money,
by any means possible, is the topmost priority of life, as unemployment and
corruption has become intimate part of most of the people. Involvement in
volunteer works with no personal or financial gain, is not appreciated at
all and sanity is frequently questioned even by family members and close
friends. The real life is far more harsh for us than the issues we face in
Wikipedia.
But, I have seen people, who have fought against all extreme odds to create
contents in Wikimedia. I met an Wikimedian, who would have no food or money
for the next day to survive, if he didn't go and look for some labour work
and earn some money for his family, yet learned advanced computer works
from scratch with the help of a Jurassic age broken laptop gifted by a
well-wisher and built the most impactful project in his language, believe
me, I have seen that laptop with my own eyes. I know someone, very close to
my heart, who once spent the small amount of money he had with him, to pay
the cyber cafe, he went almost everyday to edit Wikipedia, even if he knew,
that the money he was spending, was his last resort for that day. These
Wikimedians are no less than a legend to me and whenever I feel frustrated
and burnt out, I remember them. I am pretty sure, everyone in this movement
knows someone amazing.
You are absolutely right, people who build Wikipedia from their core of
their heart are not heard or appreciated in larger Wikimedia world, some of
them are silently contributing forl a long time , without any expectation
from anyone. On the other hand, I have seen loud mouths with almost no
substantial or impactful contribution at all, being featured everywhere on
a regular basis. That's an unfair world we everyday deal with and Wikimedia
is not an exception.
I will totally support you, if you create a meta page for these silent
volunteers, who needs to be seen.
Best,
Bodhisattwa
On Sun, 10 Jun 2018, 01:56 David Cuenca Tudela, <dacuetu(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Aubrey,
You speak so much truth in your words that I'm feeling overwhelmed right
now. Because like a doctor who cares about his patient, you have just very
lovingly and figuratively told me, "you are deeply sick". It hurts, I
struggle accepting the truth, but deep inside I know that the only thing I
can do is to acknowledge your words, and as every human before of me ask
the perennial questions: "why me? what could have I done differently?"
You are right, I put my whole being into this project, I have seen it as a
way to find purpose, meaning, liberation, and instead what I have found is
the emptiness, my own and that of the people who are in the same situation
as me. Maybe they also need the same things as I do, but we never talked
about it so I don't know what they need, they never told me. Unlike other
people, however, I do know what I need to find purpose here.
To me purpose comes from the mutual acknowledgment with my peers that we
are here for something bigger than ourselves. We might never achieve those
dreams, but being next to someone who understands you because they are in
the same situation, makes life more bearable. But do we share the same
dream or aspiration at all? Has anyone ever take a collective vow to show
to themselves and to others that this is what matters in their life, and
that they are committing to it? I do not think anyone has ever done that.
You say that you have given up, but I do not want to reach that point. I
feel I want to try to build a real community environment and give everyone
a chance before giving up on them.
My desire as I was typing my email was to be seen, to be recognized by who
I am, to be understood even. That is something that only a true friend
could do for me, but as you say we are not good friends even if we did some
cool things together. We want to collect "all human knowledge", but what do
we actually know about each other? Is that not valid knowledge or what? In
my opinion the knowledge about the people in this movement, what they do,
who they are, what are their dreams, their aspirations, should be collected
with at least as much interest as we collect all other kind of knowledge.
Yet nobody does that.
If there is no collective information about who I am and what I have done
these years, how can I expect other people to value me as much as I want to
value them? I am as guilty as anyone else for not caring about my fellow
volunteers in this project, but that doesn't need to continue being that
way, it can change. I can commit to write a page on Meta about any
volunteer who wants their work on this project to be seen and recognized,
and of course anyone can do that for me to. We only need the will.
You say that that WMF bears responsibility in the "failure" of our
Wikisource community project, and that it is not important now. I do not
agree about the timing, I find it is very relevant now, because the same
pattern that has happened before, it is happening again now. And the
pattern is that of the individual voice vs. the organization. We are like
ants next to a giant, we complain and say what we need, but we are so
little in comparison that our voice doesn't reach any ears. For Wikisource
we thought, ok, if we are not being heard as individuals maybe we'll be
heard as an organization, but that didn't happen either! So now that I have
this issue about the Wikimedia Blog and I complain about it, I feel
helpless because it is again an individual standing up against a behemoth
that will not listen neither to myself as individual nor to myself as an
organization. What is there for me left to do?
The only thing it is left for me to do is to question the legitimacy of the
WMF as the leadership organization of the Wikimedia movement, understanding
leadership as the capacity to listen to many individual voices and act in a
way that is beneficial to all of them. If the WMF is incapable of listening
to my individual voice, then I want either a reform in the WMF to include
people who are able to listen at the top of the hierarchy, or a new
organization who can listen and create a common vision out of what it
hears. Things like the Strategy process are supposed to help with this
goal, however I feel it doesn't offer the space for day to day activities
or to challenge participants with new ideas, then it has no use for me.
So yes, I will follow your advice and I will pick my battles, putting
myself first. In this case my battle from this moment on is to recognize
the authority of the Wikimedia movement as a whole, and build leadership
legitimacy for me and all those in the movement who are able to listen. I
do believe that such people exist in our movement (I know a few), and that
they have a very high capacity for listening, but they themselves are not
being heard, and that is extremely unfair, and it is something I would like
to correct because me and the movement would benefit greatly. And as you
said money is necessary, so it has to be paid.
@SJ: as you can see from my email, there are deeper issues than just the
blog.
@Pine: Thank you for our conversation this morning. I learnt a lot from
hearing your perspective, and I felt heard by you because you gave me the
opportunity to voice my concerns, and you asked me questions about them.
@Frederick: Yes, money is an issue that has to be discussed with the
community broadly. I think it might be too much to elaborate about it now
on this conversation, but it can be the topic for another thread.
About volunteer burnout, I feel many of us feel underappreciated because
there is no space in our projects for appreciation. For now the only
proposal I had in mind is about creating pages on Meta for volunteers, so
the work of individuals can be seen completely. Perhaps it needs more
discussion.
Regards,
Micru
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