On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 12:00 PM, Jimmy Wales jimmywales@ymail.com wrote:
On 2/26/16 10:39 AM, GorillaWarfare wrote:
frankly, Vibber's communications with the Wikimedia community outside of the Foundation have far surpassed yours in clarity and transparency. I
hope
that you will improve upon your messaging, but I would like clear reassurance that you realize this is necessary.
Yes, this is necessary. I'm continuing to push for more disclosure and more openness.
Who's resisting?
In particular, as I have been reflecting on all this, I realized that I was much closer to Sue and much more involved in her "on boarding" and learning about our culture. I think I failed Lila in this regard - we talked from time to time, but I didn't do enough to help her understand.
Don't beat yourself up over it. Unlike the days of Sue's onboarding, when Lila came in there was an abundance of experienced staff with significant community experience to help immerse her in the culture and to continually offer advice, guidance, or point out pitfalls. This was readily and repeatedly on offer. It was repeatedly rejected outright, and occasionally heard out and ignored, apparently without rationale. (I think it's absolutely fine, of course, to hear out the advice or perspective of experienced staff and to decide to act otherwise, with rationale -- even if not stated explicitly.) I can supply concrete examples, but at this point, it is done, and it would be better to focus on principles and on rebuilding.
I can't speak for Lila, nor should I try. But I know that for people new to our world, it's really quite confusing. You hear a lot of voices and if you've been around for long enough, you get to know which ones are important and which ones are going to complain no matter what, with little substance. If you listen to those who are going to complain no matter what, you can end up fearful and burned by communication. If you don't listen to those who are only going to complain when it matters, you'll miss important things. Knowing the difference is... well... ambiguous even in the best of times.
That's certainly true. But again: help with that was available. It was discounted.
So to go back to your question - what can be gained from my visit to San Francisco... it's only for a few days, but it will be followed by more visits in the coming months. And part of what I want to do is get a better understanding of the specific concerns that serious people have, so that I can be more helpful to whoever ends up being the interim ED, and whoever ends up being our next permanent ED.
Excellent. I encourage all my colleagues to make the most of this opportunity. I think it would be ideal if, in addition to allow people who strongly prefer that to meet with him 1:1, we strive to meet with Jimmy as teams or otherwise as groups, both to optimize time and make sure almost everyone can be heard, and to create multi-perspective conversations accompanied by note-taking.
I look forward to seeing you here soon, Jimmy.
A.