On 8/27/09 6:43 PM, Birgitte SB wrote:
I agree. Inward facing communication has long been a
problem for
WMF.
At times there have been board members that took more leadership in this
area regarding various issues, but I can't remember a time when this
hasn't been an issue. I think it is mostly a problem of WMF not setting
up the expectations accurately. In my personal opinion when
communicating with the community; surprises are bad. Even good surprises
are bad.
Indeed, good surprises are *worse* than bad surprises, because the
resulting confusion can taint how the community perceives a project,
plan, or person introduced this way.
Rest assured that we're talking internally about how we can improve
coordination between the board, staff, communications team, and other
key parts of the community on these sorts of decisions and
announcements, and I hope we'll all be much better prepared for the next
good surprise!
We are still in the middle of our big annual conference, so please bear
with us if we're a little slow and distracted in responding to
everything just yet.
Fulfilling expectations on the other hand is good. It
seems to
be better received by the community when WMF fulfills a modest
expectation than when it reveals a wonderful surprise.
Under promise, over deliver. :)
-- brion vibber (brion @
wikimedia.org)
CTO & Senior Software Architect, Wikimedia Foundation