Hello All.
Ballsy and sincere mail Pavel, thank you for that and I understand your points, however as a longstanding wikiperson actually volunteering and a believer in the open participatory model which built Wikiprojects, I need to respond and disagree with you in some parts.
I don't see that anything needs fixing here. So, what happened? The Wikimania committee came to the conclusion that the current process to select the next Wikimania host is broken (and I think the committee was right about that). So something needed to happen - and the committee did something that we see not often enough in Wikimedia-land:
they made a decision. A decision they were tasked to take: Think and decide on the next Wikimania host, and on the process to find one.
1. Except clearly at least one com member is unhappy with the process, the com was somewhat unaware of actual candidates, the decision is suspended, the change of the game terms was not communicated to anyone in public (not to mention major stakeholders like Chapters sponsoring Wikimania attendees) and the whole process is completely not transparent. We are not even sure if WMF in general (Staff? Board?) supports it.
Fun fact: we have this website thing to document processes and inform others, they call it Meta. 8-) And taking a look into https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2017_bids you don't even see any Montreal. Or info about the major change in the process.
OTOH, you could see there encouragements to submit bids.
Fun fact #2: this page has been marked as historical by JForester only minutes ago which looks like a panic management.
3. "There are two things in the world you never want to let people see how you make 'em: laws and sausages" (Leo McGarry, The West Wing, "Five Votes Down").
Actually, it was Bismarck.
And there is one thing Wikimedians in this world could not care less about: How the next host for Wikimania is found. Let's applaud the great people of the Wikimania
Committee that they took on that task, came up with a great decision for 2017 AND implemented a new (even so not perfect) process while they were at it.
Well, some seem to care, at least on these lists or fb (see Josh or Perth people).
And others care for general transparency and community involvement which seem to be noticably deteriorating, see the issues with strategic plan. Not that I require a multilevel RFCs, general venue elections and whatnots but at least simple message would be more than great to not waste time of the potential bidders.
I might be wrong but I think that volunteer-driven organizations should be careful to respect their volunteers. Here I think the ball was somewhere dropped. I imagine someone actually wanted to off-load the volunteers and make their lives much better, improve the spending etc. etc., but the communication failed at some point.
Regarding the community consultation, I feel there are some more people than "old-timers" of en.wp and de.wp, and what is more these talks are read by much more people. In many cases I think they were found crucial by WMF staff as well although I do agree we could improve here, people are often overburdened and we are running circles. But it would be very sad to turn into a yet another bureaucracy.
Tl;dr I agree with you that making decisions is important and WMF is the major stakeholder, but I would put more value into making things fair and transparent, otherwise people get angry and the decisions are more prone to fault.
Warm Regards, michał "aegis maelstrom" buczyński
P.S. Sorry for the editting, some mail client issue.
Dnia 4 października 2015 20:03 Pavel Richter mail@pavelrichter.de napisał(a):
2015-10-04 17:42 GMT+02:00 Florence Devouard :
Le 04/10/15 16:15, Theo10011 a écrit : Now, beside head rolling... (uh, ouch :)) what do you suggest to fix that ?
I don't see that anything needs fixing here. So, what happened? The Wikimania committee came to the conclusion that the current process to select the next Wikimania host is broken (and I think the committee was right about that). So something needed to happen - and the committee did something that we see not often enough in Wikimedia-land: they made a decision. A decision they were tasked to take: Think and decide on the next Wikimania host, and on the process to find one. Nobody ever said that their job was only to execute a set of old guidlines and processes (which, I guess, were never "community approved" but rather were around just for a long, long time). So, they abandoned the process, came up with a new one, and decided who would host Wikimania in 2017 (Montreal seems a great choice, btw - I mean, a bilingual city has some great opportunities for us, right?). Whats wrong with that? Nothing! Let's face some truths here: 1. Wikimania has become well too big to be run by volunteers. EVERY Wikimania since Danzig (at least) happened only because the WMF jumped in at one point of time to rescue the whole event. That is not to say that volunteers did not do a great job for Wikimania - but the job proved to be too big for volunteers, for at least five times in a row. So it was right to abandon the current process and replace it with something new. 2. The new process has a lot of problems build in - I think, for example, that the decision to exclude major parts of the world from Wikimanias (except for every third year, when regions are "up to grabs), is wrong. BUT: We now have at least 18 MONTHS to fix this (and possible other problems) - thanks to the bold decision of the Wikimania committee. 3. "There are two things in the world you never want to let people see how you make 'em: laws and sausages" (Leo McGarry, The West Wing, "Five Votes Down"). And there is one thing Wikimedians in this world could not care less about: How the next host for Wikimania is found. Let's applaud the great people of the Wikimania Committee that they took on that task, came up with a great decision for 2017 AND implemented a new (even so not perfect) process while they were at it. 4. I think with a lot of things in Wikimedia-land, we need MORE bold decisions (by whomever), and LESS "community consultation" that only leads to some old-timers in en.WP and de.WP voice their anger and concerns, but rarely solves the problem that needs solving. 5. Dear Wikimania Committee: Your communication of this whole thing sucked, big time. Consider yourself scolded. Move on. Cheers, Pavel