On Feb 24, 2016, at 7:01 PM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
George, the WMF, particularly under the Sue/Erik regime - but as best as I can tell from its very beginning - has had a propensity to privilege its view of what's best over the community's view. Superprotect. Visual editor. When the community has pushed back at WMF behaviour that suits the WMF, that the WMF thinks helps them in their mission, the WMF has historically just gone ahead and ignored what the community sees as being in the encyclopaedia's best interest. This bunch of tech geeks and silicon valley entrepreneurs holds the whip hand in this relationship. It really should be the other way round. Denny's model; Sarah's model. I don't really care. But this tail-wagging-dog thing is just not right.
There are several ways to look at this. One includes the view that the Foundation and Board exist to protect and encourage the Movement, not just the loudest editor communities. And that there are wider issues for the Movement, including things for users, things keeping users from editing, and things pushing people out of active editing that the Board and Foundation rightly should be paying a lot of attention to.
There are both valid issues the editor community has objected to, and things the editor community (enwiki at least) is grossly dysfunctional about that the Board and Foundation must still focus on. Both separation for perspective and feedback and relationship care are needed.
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone