Hi Dariusz,
I want to share with you the following relatively scattered thoughts and leave it to you to decide how to continue engaging with us. :-) I hope you find them helpful:
* BoT has been too silent, given the state of matters. I'm much more worried about our volunteers when I say this, than the WMF's staff (which I'm one of).
* You engaging in this list has been a breeze for me. I know at least someone from the BoT is reading these emails and is engaging. Thank you for that. :-)
* Because of the lack of clear communications by the BoT, I'm uncertain whether there is an acknowledgement by the BoT about the issues we are facing. What can assure me at the moment is to see a list of items the BoT sees as problematic, and a plan for addressing them, and a schedule for when we should expect seeing them addressed. (Half-jokingly: maybe we need a phabrictor board for the BoT to track specific tasks that can be shared publicly and their prioritization).
* Although I really appreciate you engaging in this list, I see that in the absence of more frequent official communications from the BoT, what you say in this list is interpreted as a strong signal from the BoT, and it is held to the standards we expect to see when we communicate with a Board member. This means that if you are not specific and even more careful with your choice of words, you will hear strong criticism, just because words/statements can be interpreted differently depending on the context we are operating in.
* I'm asking you to continue communicating with us in your capacity as a Board member, and I'm also asking you to be very very careful with your choice of words and statements. Trust me: I know what I'm asking you is extremely hard. So, here is what I offer you: I assume good faith in what you say and please reach out if I can be of help.
Ido, Ori, thank you for your emails. They help us be stronger, and move in the right direction.
Leila
Leila Zia Research Scientist Wikimedia Foundation
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 11:03 AM, Dariusz Jemielniak darekj@alk.edu.pl wrote:
On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 1:56 PM, Casey Dentinger <cdentinger@wikimedia.org
wrote:
and in technology we're years behind the curve
I think this is a reductive view of the technology at WMF. It is true that many systems have been around in name for a long time, but that doesn't mean they haven't been evolving under the hood (as Ori describes) to scale with demand at the same (or better) pace as our trendier peers (who are often married to fly-by-night technologies). In an era of 10s pageloads hauling megabytes of trackware, WP's stats are actually pretty stellar.
True, by all means. But my point (clumsily phrased) was that we will not likely be considered more technologically advanced than Google or Apple, while we really ARE more proficient in terms of the social systems and community collaboration. My only regret is that we way too rarely reiterate how amazing we are. The fact that we do a lot of great tech stuff, too is a reason to celebrate (and my apologies to anyone who read my comment as disparaging our work there).
Let me put it this way: it is great we have the tech as robust and advanced as it is. This is awesome. Let's also recognize the fact that our communities, working together with the WMF, is something unique, to avoid the narrow vision of "evil foundation" vs. "unreasonable and random crowd".
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