Delphine Ménard wrote:
Treating the user community as the enemy is going to seriously cause problems in the future if it is not addressed right away. And some recent comments on this mailing list have made me feel like just that.
In the end, I find it rather amusing that it is always the *poor community* (of which I feel a member, just in case that is not clear) that is being treated as an ennemy. After threads on end on the subject, it rather looks to me as the Foundation is the one that's considered the ennemy.
I believe I have always been an advocate of stronger separation (read: make sure everybody knows exactly what they have to do, what they are responsible for) AND better communication and collaboration.
It seems to me an easy exercise to talk of *the community* when nobody seems to have a real understanding of who/what *the community* is. Is it you? Is it me? Is it us? And if it is us, who is *us*?
Delphine
I hope this last comment doesn't get out of context here. I was not trying to imply that you, Delphine, are considering the group of users contributing to Wikimedia projects to be the enemy. However, I have seen this sort of attitude in many different situations, where indeed this is the case in terms of actions and words spoken by those in leadership or authority positions. This is the same as police officers seperating themselves from the citizens they serve, never trusting a person that comes under their gaze and thinking everybody is a criminal suspect just waiting to do them in. Or perhaps a fast-food burger restraunt employee who doesn't reall care about the customers and does all kinds of things like serve frozen patties and spit into their drinks. This is a danger in almost any situation and something to constantly be under guard to watch for and avoid if possible.
As far as who is "The Community", I hope I answered that in my previous post, and you did respond to that somewhat, Delphine. Thanks. I was trying to note that there have been some situations where the Village Pump on en.wikipedia was considered to be the final word, especially for setting preceedence. While some issues do seem to come up on en.wikipedia before they hit other projects and languages simply because of the sheer size of that community, other approachs and solutions to some of those problems have come up on the other projects (including other languages) where the solution is quite a bit different in the environment of those other projects. And bottom-up solutions to many of the problems for Wikimedia projects can be found, where micromanagement is not necessary.
Here is a summary of what I consider the "community" to watch for:
1) Editor/Contributors of Wikimedia projects, including all sister projects and in all languages, and projects like Meta, Commons, etc. 2) Software developers for MediaWiki software and related systems that help run the interfaces and equipment hosting Wikimedia projects. 3) Volunteer system administrators of the physical equiment (not always the same as #2, although there is some significnat overlap here) 4) Readers and consumers of information produced by Wikimedia projects
That is a very tall order to fill, to take care of all of these groups, and in that sense you are correct that the board represents much more than just the Wikimedia editor/contributors, who are likely to be the most vocal and active of the above four categories in term of policy decisions. I've seen Wikipedia quoted in my dead-tree local newspaper (by the newspaper editor!), so the influence of readers is much more diverse and widespread than most people even on this list are willing to admit. Obviously some decisions are going to, by necessity, be made that one of these groups, the editor/contributors, are not going like or approve of.
A "fifth" component of the community that may or may not be established but also watch for is the professional staff that is likely to develop with the Wikimedia Foundation. There already are some employees of the WMF, and they will have a very different perspective on how things should operate as well based on their own experiences and dealings with the rest of the Wikimedia community. The WMF board is also going to be made aware of the needs of this group as well, although how much weight each group is given is going to be up to the temperment of the members of the WMF board.
I am not implying that the current board is out of touch. Far from it. Just that this is something to be ever vigiliant about and to remember and watch for, to see that it doesn't get unbalanced.