On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:34 PM, SarahSV sarahsv.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 2:29 PM, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
I believe a high-tech organization should invest in smart people creating unique technology. But I also think it should invest in people, period. Staff and volunteers must be cultivated and supported -- that's how
loyalty
and passion are developed, and I believe they pay dividends in
productivity
and recruitment.
Brian, I'd be interested to hear how volunteers could be cultivated and supported. We felt under attack by the Foundation until Lila arrived, and I think a lot of editors are grateful to her for having improved that relationship. But not feeling attacked isn't the same as feeling supported.
The Foundation often boasts that it only has around 200 employees, but the truth is that it has an enormous unpaid workforce. Most of us don't go to meet-ups, so we don't even see travel expenses. We're grateful if we can get a free JSTOR subscription.
Sue Gardner once declared that the Foundation would never pay for content, which was a blow to those of us who produce it. Unpaid workers with technical skills might one day be paid, but if your skills are editorial, forget it. That very much supports the idea that the Foundation is a tech organization and not an educational one.
So – how does a tech organization nurture and support its unpaid workforce of mostly writers and researchers?
Excellent questions, and important ones for WMF and the wider Wikimedia movement to explore and answer.
I think first we have to ask: why did many people feel attacked or in unwanted adversarial positions before (both among volunteers, and among staff)? What sort of interactions and behavior were seen as problematic, and what led up to them?
Second we have to ask: given that several people on this list have described improved relationships with staff in the last year or so, what has actually changed in those interactions, and what can we do to make sure we keep doing well?
Third we have to ask: what do our volunteer editors, module writers, template tweakers, copyright divers, and library researchers need to further the mission that they don't already have, and what can WMF do to help them?
I know I'm answering questions with questions, but I think that's where we stand; I do not have a "do this" answer to give beyond listening and adjusting our behavior based on what we hear. I suspect that folks who have worked on the 'product' side of WMF in talking to users about our software projects have already been learning some of these lessons, but it's important that we document and retain that knowledge and make it a deliberate part of how WMF operates.
In that third subquestion is an implicit decision point, which is the crux: "what can WMF do to help them?" can only be answered within the context of what monetary and human "resources" the company has available or believes it can develop.
It may well be that the answer is "WMF concentrates on building and operating the tech that content-contributing Wikimedians use to accomplish amazing things" while things like coordinating activity in specific content areas is managed by other organizations -- I've seen people cite the Wiki Education Foundation which helps organize professor & student activity as being a good example of this sort of work going on, though I have to admit I'm not intimately familiar with them.
I would personally love to see people employed to do serious content work, and I'd rather see them supported through educationally-minded institutions than be hired by random PR firms to work on their clients' articles. I don't know whether that's politically feasible through WMF now or in the future, but I also think it's important that the WMF not be seen as the only funding game in town either.
That, too, might need further thinking about how we fundraise as a movement.
-- brion