On Feb 28, 2016 7:37 AM, "Ad Huikeshoven" ad@wikimedia.nl wrote:
Reaching out to Brion Vibber explicitly. Brion shared some long and interesting posts last week and started a thread about what it means to be a high tech organization. My question for Brion is to share his case why the WMF should be a high tech organization.
I would argue that it has been one its entire history, with much budget and staff being in web site operations support and software development. Whether that's the best way to concentrate WMF resources or not is a question I won't try to answer myself here, but I believe we have a decade of precedence.
In the first breakdown above tech(nology) is explicitly mentioned. Is the second breakdown as
'developer
inclusive' as the first breakdown? Or would technology assume a supportive role to the leading programs reach, communities and knowledge?
I find all of these breakdowns to be vaguely worded corporatespeak and hard to devise actions around.
When I read the current statements of mission, vision, values and guiding principles I hardly get the impression the Wikimedia Foundation is a high tech organization, or an organization which employs a lot of engineers and developers. How should the mission, vision, values or guiding principles
of
the Wikimedia Foundation be amended to give due weight to engineers and developers? Could you elaborate on that Brion.
Engineering does not exist for its own sake, but to accomplish some goal.
In other words, our mission/vision/values/guiding principles should not be particularly focused on engineers it developers. They should focus on what the movement wants to accomplish, and WMF's job is to use technology and other resources to make those things happen.
-- brion