On Sun, Jun 19, 2022 at 3:22 AM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <
galder158(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Samuel and James for the constructive approach
in your messages.
I know that I have said this before, but there's a huge problem with
accountability here. We have money to become a great platform and we have
staff to do it, but there's no way to go forward, and that problem is seen
clearly at every opportunity: migrating to Discourse because we don't have
"good enough" discussing software, not having centralized templates or the
completely broken wishlist survey (where only 1/4 of the projects voted by
the community are done, and some of them in a sub-optimal and non-usable
way).
James points out the integration of data from OurWorldInData. This is so
impressive and useful that is hard to think how the WMF can't afford to
expend staff time (or give 1.000 USD to someone) to do that. Instead, Wiki
Project Med has to ask for it outside. The Basque Wikimedians User Group is
funding this effort, and is doing it with its own funds. Do you know how we
get these funds? Well, sometimes they call us for a lecture somewhere about
free knowledge, copyright or whatever, and the money they usually give the
speaker goes to a fund. Whenever we have a good amount of money there (like
1.000USD), we invest in free knowledge projects. So, at the end of the day,
is volunteer's time, expressed as money, and re-invested in things that
will make our experience better. Of course, we are happy to help with this
project, but the question is why the WMF, with 400.000.000 USD a year,
can't afford to do this. And the answer is that no one cares, and those who
should care about that are not accountable.
Indeed, there's quite a big group of workers thinking in design, and they
work to do some things, like the new Vector (but not only, they have a
bunch of projects open). But every time they get a critic about the
approach by a volunteer, there's an attack to the volunteer. Let's take
some examples: here's a Phab ticket (
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T293405) with a proposal to build a
Main Page that will easily be copied by every project. You can read the
answers and the attitude towards the proposal. Or this one, when they
decided to move the interwiki links to the bottom of the main page because
they didn't think that Main Pages where relevant (
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T290480). Or here, when a bug report is
closed because someone thinks that breaking things is not a bug:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T289212.
And I could continue, but the reality shows us that sub-optimal solutions
are our way of finishing projects. The same teams that are moving things
around in the Vector-2022, for example, decided to break the PDF creator
(still has many issues) and decided that creating books wasn't relevant, so
they broke it on purpose. No one cares, and if you do, you shouldn't: no
one is going to fix it. No accountability. The same team has decided that
hiding our sister projects from the main page, something that goes against
the Strategic Direction, is a good idea at all (
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T287609). And there we are, some
volunteers, trying to make any sense of all of this, and trying to point
that the Strategic Direction is something that should be granted at every
decision. But, again, if there's no accountability, then every team will
make what they think is better, they won't accept any proposal from
volunteers, and our years-long strategy discussions will be a completely
loss of time and donor's money, because no one is implementing what it was
decided there.
Things are broken, and we could still be here discussing about that for
ages. We have money and staff to fix this. Who is going to fix it? This is
the great question.
Sincerely,
Galder
Galder - I wish I was optimistic that the WMF's strategy and actual
performance will be responsive to your points. The consequences of the
disconnect you describe (between the people whose labor feeds the
organizations, and the paid staff of the various orgs) have been clear and
tragic for many years.
The WMF spent half a billion in donor funds in the last five years (not
including endowment contributions). Was it money well spent? What enormous
accomplishments match that figure?