In the interest of creating *informed* discussion, please note the publication of Episode 82 of Wikipedia Weekly - an interview with Matt Halprin.
In this, at timecode 9:15 he is specifically asked about the issue of the donation+board membership.
http://wikipediaweekly.org/2009/08/28/episode-82-matt-halprin-interview/
Best, -Liam [[witty lama]]
On 8/28/09, Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 8/27/09 6:43 PM, Birgitte SB wrote:
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.
Indeed, good surprises are *worse* than bad surprises, because the resulting confusion can taint how the community perceives a project, plan, or person introduced this way.
Rest assured that we're talking internally about how we can improve coordination between the board, staff, communications team, and other key parts of the community on these sorts of decisions and announcements, and I hope we'll all be much better prepared for the next good surprise!
We are still in the middle of our big annual conference, so please bear with us if we're a little slow and distracted in responding to everything just yet.
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.
Under promise, over deliver. :)
-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org) CTO & Senior Software Architect, Wikimedia Foundation
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