Hoi,
There is one big hole in this comparison. We are a movement, the Foundation
is the material part of it. It is responsible for all kinds of everything
but we, as a community do not pay for a roof over our head.
We are represented on the WMF board. That is it.
Arguably, the employees have a bigger stake in the Wikimedia Foundation,
they are not even represented. This whole fracas is largely about trust and
relations between the employees and the ED. Other shit happened as well and
as has been argued over and over again, much of that, particularly the
"search" issue is not al all the issue.
Several people are so absorbed in their ideas of what the WMF should be
that they lose sight of what we are about. We are not about the WMF. We are
the Wikimedia Movement. The proposal is imho brilliant in that it puts
trust in the employees. It recognises their ability to keep the ship
afloat. When the "C-levels" (whatever that means) are indeed capable to do
good we should rejoice and let them get on with it.
Going back to the analogy, when they keep the ship afloat and the employees
are pumping, the water accumulated will get out of the ship. The weather
forecast is positive, so the holes in the roof can be fixed for now, the
engine can get emergency repairs and the ship can sail on towards its
destination and if need be it may take a dry dock to fix things properly.
The best thing we can do is do as a movement is do what we are about. Build
content, maintain relations in our community and not throw mines overboard
in front of the foundation.
Thanks,
GerardM
On 5 March 2016 at 16:54, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
There's less weakness in admitting a failure
honestly, retreating and
regrouping, than in powering through when knowing oneself unprepared.
After months of complaints from tenants and from a few neighbors, the
landlord of a large building decides to replace the roof of the building.
In the process of removing the old roof, the landlord realizes that it's a
really big job and that he won't be able to properly replace the roof
quickly. Scrambling, he then asks a few of the building tenants to come up
with a plan for an interim roof, because whoa, an open roof leaves you
susceptible to rain and birds and other problematic elements. And this is
a large and expensive building that lots of people rely on, so an interim
roof is definitely needed pretty soon.
Sure, we can commend the landlord for recognizing that the old roof needed
to be replaced. And we can commend him for realizing that he alone can't
speedily fix the roof himself; he needs additional help to finish this big
job. But that doesn't absolve the landlord of negligence. Removing a roof
has very predictable consequences that any landlord should be able to
foresee and account for. Removing a roof without also having a plan for an
interim roof is a really amateur mistake. Perhaps landlords of smaller
buildings could get away with this kind of mistake, but it's unacceptable
for a landlord of a large building to be turning to the tenants to ask
them to fix the problem. Yes, the tenants were the ones complaining for a
new roof, but it's the landlord's responsibility to have the roof replaced
in a professional and orderly way.
MZMcBride
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