Board candidate platform...
Sigh
Ant
Erik Moeller wrote:
On 6/7/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
I'd like that you make the effort to recognise that we are acting in good faith
This is not about good or bad faith, Florence. Of course the SP committee is acting in good faith - I never denied this. The point is that a 5000 EUR project that was essentially OK'd by Kennisnet in February is still not ready to go by June. The point is that at this organizational efficiency, we need not even dream of realizing any real grant proposals that are brought to us from the outside. I'd like _you_ to make the effort to recognize that the organization needs to fundamentally change in the way it does things if it does want to fulfill its charitable mission.
I am very, very concerned that our promises about helping children in Africa are going to sound rather cynical when actual African projects (and InstantCommons is one) do not happen because the organization is so ineffective. _Especially_ in an all-volunteer organization, the approach which is currently taken -- a small group of people must make all the critical decisions, and new members are only recruited if there is consensus _within_ that group (_and_ ideally the Board) -- is not scalable. And it's certainly not scalable for a top 16 website with over a million registered users and hundreds, thousands of potential "special projects". Not to mention other projects besides Wikipedia which are badly in need of innovative thinking and creative partnerships. Not to mention that we're supposed to be multilingual.
I have not seen a single announcement on this mailing list for an open SP-related meeting. Most of the discussions you need to have can be open without leaving a permanent record on the web -- publish edited logs or summaries where confidential information is concerned. You can accept advisors without even voting on them. And the core voting members should be those who do the most work of actually planning, coordinating and realizing projects as this becomes visible in a larger group.
The notion that every contract has to be between the Wikimedia Foundation and another organization is also unnecessary -- contracts can be between volunteers and grant-giving organizations, if the grants are small and having the contracts managed by Wikimedia only adds unnecessary bureaucratic overhead. This way, Wikimedia adds organizational credibility for volunteers who deserve it.
This could have been done with Kennisnet in February or March. Don't be overly afraid of outcomes -- just dissociate yourself from projects which fail, and highlight those that succeed. And for Christ's sake, don't worry all the time about legal risks. Legal risks can be addressed as a project develops. Wikipedia is an insanely bad idea from a legal point of view and would never have been started through _any_ process which we are actually using in our organization to start things.
Build _many_ relationships with people you can trust, instead of building _few_ relationships with people you'd like to take out for dinner.
We are under no obligation to spend hours studying your proposals
How about you start _trusting_ me, Gerard and other volunteers when we come to the Foundation and say: "This here is a moderately cool project that these people over there are willing to pay for, but they'd like to get an OK from the Foundation." Again, I ask: Why could the SP committee not simply have sent the authorization to Kennisnet, and let the contract side of things be handled between Gerard and them? Again, not a single valid reason has been given for excluding a person like Gerard from the committee. This is not about him personally -- it's about the _process_.
You accuse me of assuming bad faith. Yet you are treating me as an outsider after 5 years of working with and around Wikipedia which has included more "special projects" than I care to mention (which pay my salary, I might add). There are large grants I am associated with which I wouldn't bring even anywhere _near_ the Foundation because of its current state. Your point above seems to be accurately summarizable as: "Erik, please be nice to us, because otherwise we'll just ignore your ideas."
Not a single part of my e-mails was personal criticism, an assumption of bad faith, or deliberately insulting. I have been very careful to focus on the issues, using InstantCommons as an example of failure. I am doing this publicly not to humiliate you but because I know from experience that otherwise I will just be silently ignored. Instead of actually trying to resolve the problems I pointed out, you posted a new thread with the upper case title "INCORRECT", accusing me of spreading false information. When the information turned out to be correct, you accuse me of not being nice. How about, instead of accusing me of something, you try to actually answer to my points above? How is the Foundation going to scale to the size of problems it faces?
I would be very happy to serve with you on SP and to work with you to reorganize it in such a fashion that it can handle grants and projects efficiently and effectively. The question is, do you acknowledge the problems there are, and do you want my help to solve them? Or are you hoping to pull a miracle CEO out of your hat who will solve global hunger?
Kennisnet is just one random (if important) organization from the Netherlands we happen to have a good working relationship with. There are thousands of Kennisnets out there, thousands of organizations and companies and institutions who would be happy to support us in a myriad different ways. Heck, some of them have already sent the Foundation product samples.
I have no doubt that the SP committee will initiate a dozen or half dozen projects from within its own ranks in the coming months. However, Wikimedia's ambition is not "to start a dozen or half dozen interesting projects". Wikimedia's ambition is:
"Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." http://wikimediafoundation.org/
The first version of this statement was drafted by Jimmy and me at the WOS 2004. I would say it's about time we get serious about it, or drop the rhetoric. Wikimedia is turning into a "who likes who" club rather than an organization centered around goals, objectives, and qualifications. Jimmy says he doesn't want the organization to be run like a college club. Then it's time to get rid of the bullshit politics. Get Gerard and me on SP. Let us identify other people who can help. Allow us to bring our existing collaborations into the WMF. And let's broaden and open up the organization in ways which will amaze us all.
This is not about "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" philosophy, about applying wiki ideology to areas where there are "tried and tested" ways of doing things which are preferable. This is about learning from great thinkers like Douglas Engelbart, Ted Nelson, Howard Rheingold, Frederic Vester, and Tim Berners-Lee. This is about running Wikimedia in accordance with the laws of thermodynamics: only open systems are survivable. The last thing our planet needs is more politics and more bureaucracy. What it does need is smart people collaborating, building global networks, and overlooking their personal differences, before our civilization collapses under its own weight.
Erik