--- On Thu, 8/27/09, Kropotkine_113 Kropotkine113@free.fr wrote:
From: Kropotkine_113 Kropotkine113@free.fr Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, August 27, 2009, 7:53 AM Thank you very much all of you (Brigitte SB, Ting Chen, Mickael Snow and others).
To close my participation in this thread I just add three points :
- My question about the wikimedia membership criterion
wasn't very important, but just-to-know ; thanks for your explanations.
- The communication process on this whole story has been
disastrous ; this, added to the fact that Wikis, Q&A and help pages are not up-to-date or are confused, tranforms a maybe-good-decision (I have my own opinion on this point ;)) in a too-weird-to-be-good-decision ; the "NOMCOM disapearance in vacuum" is a good example. It doesn't worth 10Mo discussion threads, I think you are aware of this.
I agree. Inward facing communication has long been a problem for WMF. At times there have been board members that took more leadership in this area regarding various issues, but I can't remember a time when this hasn't been an issue. I think it is mostly a problem of WMF not setting up the expectations accurately. In my personal opinion when communicating with the community; surprises are bad. Even good surprises are bad. Fulfilling expectations on the other hand is good. It seems to be better received by the community when WMF fulfills a modest expectation than when it reveals a wonderful surprise.
- Even more important point is the cultural gap between
Foundation's intentions and communication, which are very "north-american slanted" (I don't know how to say that), and its perception by a very multicultural community. The gap is particularly large concerning financial/executive power relations. You have to be very careful about this and to be very pedagogic when you report such decisions, because when the story will appear in french village pump (for example) it will be hard tuff for chapter's members to explain it correctly (if possible). The answer often used is : "It's not evil, it's just the way american people deal with it every day".. Just let me tell you that's not a sufficient answer for many people (like me ;)). I think that a non-used but very efficient solution would be to share informations before the official report and to work closely with local chapters ; but this is a more wide problem and slightly out-of-the-scope of this thread.
I don't completely understand what you are talking about here. What is the "american way" ? And what do you mean by "pedagogic"?
Birgitte SB