Hoi,
A few things are clear. Having a WMF project intended to compete with
Google is bonkers. The mudslinging and power grabbing tone of many of these
messages seriously turn me off. The only thing they accomplish is that
people like myself are moving in their emotions from depressed to furious.
I do not care for all this bullshit. I sat in on a board meeting in
Rotterdam. It was with Jimmy, Angela and Anthere. It is unlikely to be in
any minutes and I only give it as an indication that I have been on the
inside of what is the Wikimedia Foundation for a longer time. I do not
think that either Jimmy or James is crazy but I do know that when people
get into situation that are crazy that they will become erratic.
At a time I asked Pete pointblanc for his opinion on something that had to
do with the quality of Wikipedia. I provided him with all the arguments how
and why it would benefit Wikipedia and its quality. I asked him for his
opinion. I asked him what could be done about it. The only result I got was
suspicion. What was it that I wanted from him, why was it that I asked him
all this. I did not get an response that indicated to me that Pete was
interested at all in Wikipedia.
Pete may share the emails. My memory is known to be erratic but not in this.
Ask yourself. What is it that we want to achieve. How can we achieve it.
What does it take and who is on board.
The WMF is not a democracy. Intentionally so. There is a structure with a
balance of power for stakeholders. The only stakeholder lacking is
personnel. In an optimal world it is the ED that speaks for them. Clearly
this did not happen recently and, sadly so.
The disgust that I feel for what is happening is resulting in many negative
effects complementary to what has been widely mentioned. I will describe
how it affects me. I feel more and more disconnected from the Wikimedia
crowd. It is involved in things that are interesting from a sociological
point of view but it increasingly detracts from what the real issues should
be. This mailing list is more than enough, I can not stomach more and
consequently I do not frequent Meta anymore. This sadly means that all the
legitimate reasons for frequenting Meta are lost for me as well. Given that
I associate many of the "pundits" with Wikipedia, I increasingly grow
antagonistic towards Wikipedia. This is spite of my wish for Wikipedia to
do better than that it does. In spite of my preparations for a project that
I am pushing. A project where I hope to engage James in a positive and
meaningful way (and yes we have had initial communications).
Ask yourself what do all these "analysis" bring us but distrust? When the
board comes with a way forward, it is dismissed with "everything we
discussed is not heard". GOOD. Why should they? Pundits do not represent
us.Some of them I know, some of them I respect. But PLEASE concentrate on
what we do. It is not the politics and stuff of the WMF. It is sharing the
sum of all knowledge as widely as possible. Our immediate challenge is to
share in what we already have. That takes a much improved search engine,
that argument I have made for years now, Magnus added an important missing
part to it and I am sure that most readers of this list did not get this
far <grin> and have never seen it </grin>
Thanks,
GerardM
On 10 March 2016 at 05:46, Keegan Peterzell <keegan.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 6:56 PM, Pete Forsyth
<peteforsyth(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Below is a message Jimmy Wales sent to James
Heilman and myself on Feb.
29.
I'm a firm believer in two wrongs not making a right.
This email has zero context aside from what the reader would like to infer,
as we (the reader) are not the audience.
Publishing this email was just as, if not, more irresponsible than Jimmy
was in sending it.
Those that wish to continue histrionics, take pause before *you* hit send.
--
~Keegan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
This is my personal email address. Everything sent from this email address
is in a personal capacity.
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