On 6/1/06, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
"I have never seen the WMF foundation asking the communities for anything besides money and trust. I believe the communities have much more to offer. "
You probably have limited memory. I remember explicitely calling loudly for help for many topics and various skills. Hell, I remember distinctly I called *you* Birgitte to help for setting up decent rules for new languages creation. Hardly a month ago. On this list. After I asked you help, you basically answered "errr, not now. Sorry ".
Yes you did. I was more thinking of asking across projects not just asking people who already are in contact with the mailing list. A site-wide note similar to fundraising, but a call for volunteers. With a page asking for people with specific skills sets or experience. To bring in people who have not already sought out the Foundation themselves
[snip]
I am very sorry my email upset you. I do not mean to imply in any way that I felt my help was unwelcome, or that my help was not asked for. I was really not talking about me or any one who's name you might recognize from this list. I meant a direct appeal to all the people out there who do not know what the Foundation is doing much less what it needs doing. I meant recruiting from the untapped reasource of people who use thes projects. Recruiting. Not asking people who have already show interest.
I am do not mean this to be taken so critically. Trully it is impressive what so few people have accomplished here. And also did not mean that I thought no one should be hired. Just that hiring professionals is not a panacea. It will take a very special sort of professional to work in this enviroment. I really want to see a middle ground. I am not against things being closed either. It is just a matter of degrees.
Birgitte SB
Yes, if I may just chip in at this point, I think that your point was taken unfairly, Birgitte. I agree with you that we need to better seek out and recognise the talent/initiative we have within the community, and use this as best we can for the furthering of our goals, which we are achieving through the organisational front of the Wikimedia Foundation (including its chapters and committees). Obviously, we have achieved so much, as individuals contributing to our projects of passion, but many of us do other work besides all this - writing grant proposals, answering OTRS mails, evaluating and answering proposals from external businesses/charities, addressing legal concerns/threats, organising conferences - to name just a few activities that are going on. These are jobs that are being done by *community* members, who have volunteered themselves or themselves been volunteered by other people ;-). Essentially, my point (echoing Anthere's) is that some of the people who complain that the organisation is moving on without them, either haven't bothered to get involved (yet), or don't know how. Possibly we need to have something like a page on Meta which outlines what our talents/expertise/interests are, so that, when the need arises, they can be called on to help out? Dunno, maybe somewhere like: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_volunteers (?)
Cormac