Hi David,
I wholeheartedly support your words. The Wikimedia movement relies on the energy and enthusiasm of the Wikipedians or the volunteers from around the world. Technology is a tool in this case, but not the driving agent. The other tools which you mentioned are indeed important in the movement.
Regarding the practices that are running now, it's actually like, not everything's wrong or negative. Of course there is way to explore new ideas or practices, and that would definitely come out of spontaneous discussion among volunteers. The movement is ever changing, so new practices and ideas should come along the way and we must welcome such interactions or discussions. The decision to accept or disregard of new ideas would also rely upon the unanimous opinion. In some cases, some idea might work in a specific part of the world, and not everywhere.
Thanks, Tanweer
On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 8:25 PM, Anders Wennersten mail@anderswennersten.se wrote:
Den 2016-03-01 kl. 11:01, skrev David Emrany:
The credibility of Wikipedia as a brand is going down the tubes rapidly as fresh scandals emerge with alarming frequency. More enemies of the movement are being created daily.
We all live in different realities, so please be careful to indicate that your reality is everyones reality
In Sweden we have had the most profound increase in trust in Wikipedia the last six month, not least in conjunction to the 15 year anniversary There have been several articled in our main media reporting both with good insight and giving credibility to Wikipedia. We have seen a continuous strong support from the Glam sector and also a significant change from School authorities, which now are staring to look mostly how to make best use of Wikipedia, and not as before only indicating the need to be observant of sources being used
The affiliate here has just received the biggest grant yet on more then 300KUSD to put the result of wikipedia loves word heritage onto WIkidata. And also our community is working better then ever and seeing regularly new editor (but we still have a problem of too few new ones)
So here there is no scandal being known and what is happening around SF is not reported or known her in our media
Anders
On 3/1/16, David Cuenca Tudela dacuetu@gmail.com wrote:
Hi David,
you say that "A large number of these persons are paid editors / PR -SEO "consultants" who have worked themselves up to positions of administrators". Although there is no clear evidence, there is a lot of mistrust and suspicion about "paid editing". Since people need to make a living, they find a way to market their skills, sometimes honestly and other times dishonestly. Not everybody can combine a job and take positions of responsibility in the movement without burning out after a while.
However you come to say that the WMF should "purge all rogue editors" and I consider that it is wrong to consider the WMF as the police of the site. It is right to have assistance in legal matters when the community requests it, but it would compromise the autonomy of the movement if the wmf would take an interventionist role. It would do more damage than good >> https://xkcd.com/1217/
I do advocate for an evolution in the culture of the community, but that cannot come from external sources, it has to come from volunteers themselves taking more responsibility, increasing the partnership with the professional arm of the movement, and creating in the process more trust to take appropriate action - and there is never a solid definition of what it constitutes.
When I started the tread I mentioned other volunteership models (like WOOF, or workaway) that could help create more trust. It is unclear if it could work for us, or if it would be scalable, but given the state of the movement perhaps it doesn't hurt so much to try new things and see how it goes.
Cheers, Micru
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