I've been reading sections of the strategy document with a couple of
thoughts in mind.
* The relatively decentralized nature of the community makes
negotiations challenging, both within the community and between the
community and WMF.
* Clashes between the community and WMF are usually lose-lose
situations. Even for the side that eventually comes out on top, I
think that there is a lot of stress, a lot of time lost, a lot of
damage to assumptions of good faith, and a lot of unhappiness.
In my brief search of the strategy document:
* I think that the quality of the strategy document is more uniform
than the quality of the working group draft recommendations, and the
document is generally readable. Thanks very much to the people who
contributed time and effort to produce a generally coherent document
that can be used as a basis for discussions.
* I have seen some descriptions of problems that I think are generally good.
* I have not seen proposals that I think are likely to result in
significantly improved relations between the community and WMF. There
is some discussion of improving the efficiency of global discussions,
but that would be difficult to do and is a separate issue from
improving relations between the community and WMF.
* There are multiple calls for changes that would cost many thousands
of hours of volunteers' time to design, even assuming that there was
consensus that the changes should be made. I think that the ambition
here is unwise.
* There are some proposals which are unlikely to get consensus. Even
assuming that there is consensus in principle, getting consensus on
implementation would be difficult.
The best way forward, I think, would be to have the community as a
whole and individual wiki communities adopt portions of the
recommendations as they think best. There may be a few proposals which
the community is willing to adopt globally through requests for
comment on Meta. Proposals which are not adopted globally may be
adopted by local consensus so long as they do not conflict with global
policy.
The WMF Board may want to adopt portions of the document for WMF's
use. At this point, I would encourage WMF instead to wait to see what
the community does with the recommendations. When the community
decides to move forward with portions of the recommendations globally
and/or locally, WMF can then offer to support those initiatives in
ways that have community consensus. Patience will be required, but I
think that this path will lead to the most harmonious and sustained
progress. The alternatives involve more opportunities for chaos,
frustration, and WMF-community conflict; please, let's not go there.
Pine
(
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )