I do agree with MZMcBride here. I can understand being cautious, and I can understand not having time to put out a detailed message in advance. But I simply cannot understand not being bothered to send off even a brief note after the fact, explaining why. What should have taken all of two minutes to do was not done, with the result of a great deal of needless hassle for our colleagues in Russia. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that at least a notification would be made. A great deal of progress has been made on repairing the difficult relationship between the Foundation and the community, and it would be a shame if that was undone through more moments of carelessness like this one.
Cheers, Craig Franklin
On 14 November 2014 11:16, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Geoff Brigham wrote:
In that context, we feel that laws in Russia offer a number of possible interpretations. So, out of an abundance of caution, we are not taking donations from Russia right now. If we feel the situation changes, we'll let people know.
As Lisa also said, this does and will not have any impact at all on how the WMF continues to support the Russian language Wikipedia, and its sister projects. We pool our funding and make our budget decisions independently from the geographical source, if any, of the funding.
Right, you (or Lisa) could've said these paragraphs on the Wikimedia blog or this mailing list or Meta-Wiki or anywhere really and I think you would've saved yourself trouble. Transparency is an inherent part of Wikimedia and community members appropriately place great value in it.
We hear your point on transparency and advance notice, and it is a fair one. That said, sometimes we will need to quickly pause fundraising operations in different places while we gain clarity around how best to operate. We are making numerous decisions every day to respond to a wide variety of issues and considerations. I would like to commit to advance notice, but I don't think that will always be possible given the need for flexibility and speed at times. Nevertheless, I am reflecting on how to better address an issue like this in the future.
I have to imagine that you discuss these types of issues among Wikimedia Foundation employees using e-mail. I don't really accept "the need for flexibility and speed at times." You're not faster than e-mail; you can shoot a note to a mailing list. There's even a dedicated fundraiser@lists.wikimedia.org mailing list. :-)
MZMcBride
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