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(a)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(a)lists.wikimedia.org mailing list. :-)
MZMcBride
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