James Hare wrote:
For the record, I'm asking about an apology for
the poor communication,
because that -was- rather minimal communication prior to the ad.
Others have said it already, but since I'm the chair of the
Communications Committee, I think it's appropriate for me to add my
apology for the difficulties in communication between the Wikimedia
Foundation and the community. It's clear that the level of communication
is not adequate, and I share the frustration that I think many of us
feel. Because of the scope of the problem, I think it's worthwhile to
explore it at some length.
Part of the problem is a lack of resources, both human and technical, in
the communications area as much as in any other. That sort of thing is,
of course, exactly what this fundraiser is trying to address. As has
been noted, we've barely managed sufficient communication to merely
coordinate what we're going to do, let alone communicate those
intentions more broadly. Although there has been some previous
communication that produced disappointingly little discussion. The
community seems much more inclined to give feedback when the Foundation
does something as opposed to when it talks about planning things.
Some of that feedback is over the issue of advertising, with various
attempts to draw lines in the silicon and declare them crossed or not
crossed. Honestly, it reminds me greatly of a typical dispute over
competing points of view on a Wikipedia talk page. It is not resolvable
by simply insisting on a particular interpretation, and in the meantime
the Foundation has to make decisions in order to continue operating.
Wikimedia is committed to maintaining a neutral point of view, as is
well known, and I believe that value has not been compromised in any
material way. Perceptions are admittedly important too, but they do not
always reflect reality, as anyone familiar with the media coverage of
Wikipedia can tell you. What is advertising and whether we should have
it are important considerations, and have been debated at length, but
it's not a fundamental value in the same way that free content or
neutrality are. Anyone who's convinced that our actual content has been
compromised already by the recent decisions is welcome to try and
demonstrate how that's the case.
A wise person once told me that basically all longstanding members of
the community are outliers on certain issues. I know that it's true for
me, and I'm sure that it's also true even of people closer to the center
of Wikimedia, including Jimbo himself. There will always be some matter
on which your personal viewpoint does not prevail, even though you think
it's an important point and use your most persuasive arguments to get
that across. In any group project that consists of more than just your
ideological clones, this is something we have to deal with. Here we do
share a few fundamental goals, and hope that people can put aside other
agendas to work on them. If upon closer examination you find that you
cannot adopt these goals, or that the path to them includes elements
that you absolutely cannot live with, then we wish you well in your
other endeavors.
Meanwhile, we have a number of communications needs, and some go beyond
communicating just with the immediate community of Wikimedia projects.
I'd like to mention some of those to remind people of the many tasks
being handled, often unseen and unappreciated, and invite additional
help. We have the general public to communicate with, for example
through the volume of email Wikimedia receives, which many volunteers
take turns responding to (some of you may know this as the OTRS system).
This is frequently overloaded, especially in English, but through a
valiant effort we actually cleaned out the backlog about a month ago. Of
course, over the holidays the emails have built up again, and we need to
renew the effort. Anyone willing to help with this for a few months,
please contact UninvitedCompany, the chair of the OTRS subcommittee, or
else the contact for your particular language. Good customer service
skills are a key here.
Communicating with the project communities is also a challenge, because
they are so widely distributed. There is no central place to reach
everyone, and many differing expectations about what "affects" the
community and how it should be notified. (I use quotes because
everything affects the community, but notice doesn't seem to be expected
every time we buy servers, as long as the site runs.) The solution is
for the community to help spread the word about anything that might be
of importance. Some people may be familiar with The Wikipedia Signpost
on en.wikipedia, or the Kurier on de.wikipedia. These are community
efforts to grow and build on, and more like them should be encouraged. I
know the TIME honor is so last year, but "You" are the only way
Wikimedia can ever communicate with its projects. Contributions like
Walter's Wikizine or Improv's LSS are invaluable (and as we regret the
latter's departure, thanks to BirgitteSB for committing to keep it going).
Returning to the public side, the Wikimedia Foundation gets a number of
requests to provide speakers at various functions. Some want Jimbo, but
he's not able to fill them all, and many of these requests would be
happy with community representatives. A few of these may be large
conferences that can offer to cover travel expenses, but often it's a
smaller function simply hoping that someone local would be available to
meet with them. We're looking for someone who can volunteer to
coordinate public speaking assignments, both handling requests and
organizing a pool of available speakers. If you're interested in doing
this, please let me know (in the meantime, if people who have presented
on Wikimedia subjects can
update
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Presentations it would be
appreciated).
--Michael Snow