Kropotkine_113 wrote:
Thank you very much all of you (Brigitte SB, Ting
Chen, Mickael Snow and
others).
To close my participation in this thread I just add three points :
...
- Even more important point is the cultural gap
between Foundation's
intentions and communication, which are very "north-american slanted" (I
don't know how to say that), and its perception by a very multicultural
community. The gap is particularly large concerning financial/executive
power relations. You have to be very careful about this and to be very
pedagogic when you report such decisions, because when the story will
appear in french village pump (for example) it will be hard tuff for
chapter's members to explain it correctly (if possible). The answer
often used is : "It's not evil, it's just the way american people deal
with it every day". Just let me tell you that's not a sufficient answer
for many people (like me ;)). I think that a non-used but very efficient
solution would be to share informations before the official report and
to work closely with local chapters ; but this is a more wide problem
and slightly out-of-the-scope of this thread.
Kropotkine_113
Using the chapters as intermediaries between the Wikimedia Foundation
and the communities is actually a solution that has been used in the past.
It certainly feature a certain efficiency (proximity with the community
and common language).
However, I am not convinced it is a good idea to go this way.
First because it requires the chapter to actually agree to a certain
degree with the action of the Wikimedia Foundation. Which requires
internal discussion within the chapter, information of all board
members, agreement over the action, and planification over the
communication need. In itself, that's quite an achievement.
Even if there is no clear agreement, it seems very odd that, say, the
chapter would somehow give arguments to justify and explain something
done by WMF to editors, whilst it does not support this action. In case
the WMF does something that the community does not like, there is little
reason for the heat and light to fall on the shoulders of another
organization.
That's WMF responsibility to assume their decisions, to inform
stakeholders of their decisions, and hopefully to offer channels for
stakeholders to give their feedback.
I am not convinced it is within the role of chapters to be the
intermediaries. And doing it regularly would possibly mislead WMF to get
further apports from contributors.
Ant