--- Mike Godwin <mnemonic at gmail.com > wrote:
I speak as someone who worked to develop other communities -- the WELL, cyberliberties activists, and others -- so I worry that Birgitte is interpreting my anti-club remark as an
anti->community remark.
Sorry about your name ...
I thought your comment was not *against* community so much as narrowly focused on this "meta" community that is more removed from the wiki's and more outward facing today, than it has been before. What proportion of the volunteers creating and managing the content WMFs support do you believe understand "free content" and how a viral license like the GFDL works? How many editors understand the underlying reason to create a NPOV encyclopedia rather than seeing NPOV as simply th method that was chosen to settle disputes? How does this proportion change outside the top ten wikis?
These are issues that have been topics of discussion to some degree in the past. Today, it seems to me, that promoting "free content" means partnering with outside organizations to work on the goals of larger free content community rather than working to educate the people who have already invested their time in Wikimedia wikis. It seems more and more goals and initiatives are outward looking. And the effort to ensure that those who drive the whole process are on-board is missing. Not just missing, but not even a topic of discussion. People who dedicate a great deal of their time to the wikis mostly request WMF deliver features and straightforward advice. I think they want WMF to look inward at how to help wikis that are struggling to deal vandalism, copyright, and pushing the limits of MediaWiki. Not that working to standardize CC and GFDL licenses is a bad thing, but that sort of initiative is not balanced with anything more inward looking. In the past, any complaint about WMF's focus or decisions was answered with the suggestion that a representative of the complaining community should join foundation-l and keep everyone updated about important issues. Recently more discussions move away to private lists and most input is compiled from people who spend most of their time working on foundation issues rather than people whose work is focused on the wiki's, especially the smaller ones. Do I think this is evil and a conspiracy against the undefined "Community"? Of course not. Do I think this is wise? Definitely not.
In full seriousness, as long as WMF has the support of developers I think it will be able to do whatever meta people like. The developers are the demi-gods of the wikis. But wouldn't it be better for WMFs initiatives to have the informed support of thousands of people who volunteer their time to Wikimedia? To have these people as stakeholders in what WMF is trying to do rather than simply be the passive and sometimes grumbling mass behind WMF's claim to being a top-ten website.
I hope the Wikicouncil intiative can change things and make more people stakeholders in WMF.
Birgitte SB
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