Pete, one thing that I loved about my time at reddit was the existence of a subreddit called “r/museumofreddit”. It was mandatory reading for every new hire on my team and every other team I could convince and it was critical to onboarding me.
It lived to serve just the documentary process that you mention.
Regards, pb
Philippe Beaudette
On Aug 25, 2020, at 6:35 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I've thought about institutional memory quite a lot since I stopped working at WMF in 2011. A few points I think are worth considering:
- Often, institutional memory is measured in terms of
staff/executive/board turnover; while there has indeed been a very high rate of turnover at times, I would argue that another factor (see #2) is actually more important. 2. An organization can do a great deal, with a well-planned top-down approach, to ensure institutional memory is *generated* and *retained* even if there's a lot of turnover. 3. The main thing that can be done is to ensure that significant events are *debriefed and summarized *("documented") in a way that is clearly and concisely articulated, supported by evidence and logic, and fair to various good faith perspectives. 4. We might call that an "encyclopedic" approach. (The skills required are almost exactly the skills that tend to be cultivated in our Wikipedia volunteer community, as codified in its policies and norms, and learned through practice by its core volunteers.) 5. The Wikimedia Foundation has not historically done very much in terms of thorough encyclopedic documentation of important events in its history. There have been exceptions, and I believe that where it has been done and done well, much good has come of it. The best example of this, in my opinion, is the Assessment of Belfer Center Wikipedian in Residence program https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Assessment_of_Belfer_Center_Wikipedian_in_Residence_program. This was initiated by then-Executive Director Sue Gardner and her deputy Erik Möller, who participated actively in it. Specific programmatic improvements in the Grants department were a direct outcome. 6. But many events have never been documented with guidance/resourcing/participation by the WMF. It's worthwhile to debrief and summarize both positive and negative experiences. 7. If you don't document positive outcomes, WMF staff may have difficulty replicating that success, because the experience is not widely understood within the WMF (or in the community, etc.) The example foremost in my mind is the 2012 rewrite of the Terms of Use, overseen by then-General Counsel Geoff Brigham. He made changes to his process to leverage the knowledge and experience within the volunteer community, and ended up with a document substantially superior to his initial draft, and that also had the buy-in of many volunteers whose fingerprints were on the final document. (I hope to write this up myself some day; if I ever get around to it, it'll be linked here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Peteforsyth/governance#Organizational_governance . 8. If you don't summarize/debrief negative outcomes, you don't learn in the moment what went wrong (so as to avoid repeating the mistakes), and you leave anybody impacted by the problems (e.g. volunteers) with the impression that you don't care. The example I think of is Superprotect https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Superprotect. As the author of a diplomatic letter, signed by more than 1000 people, making straightforward requests of the WMF, I am not too bothered that they didn't do what we requested; but I am very bothered that they never acknowledged the existence of the letter, nor stated which parts of it they agreed/disagreed with, or what motivated the subsequent decisions they did make. (These are things they could still do, even several years later, that would still make a difference.) 9. As any seasoned Wikipedia writer/editor knows, there is an important difference between writing that aims first and foremost to be useful and informative ("encyclopedic"), vs. writing that aims first and foremost to present an organization in a good light, or to advance an agenda ("public relations" or "communications" for an organization). People who excel at one of those types of writing are not always great at doing the other kind; the two types of writing require a different mindset. 10. The kind of writing required to summarize and debrief important events, to create and preserve institutional memory, is (in terms of the ways I defined them above) *encyclopedic* writing. 11. In closing, I'd like to make a point about the skillset the WMF board has hired. I want to be really explicit -- I like and admire the WMF's Executive Director/CEO; she is highly skilled, and a kind person. But I am continually surprised that there has been little acknowledgment of what the board did by hiring her, and the direction the WMF has (unsurprisingly) taken since her hire. She was previously the WMF's Communications Director, and her earlier career was largely in communications. I would urge others to consider that it is not surprising, if an organization is guided by an executive with a Communications background, that it would not embrace an encyclopedic approach to its own self-knowledge.
If the Board wants to build an organization that learns about its assets (first among them, IMO, is its extensive and passionate volunteer community) and its history, and retains what knowledge it gains, I believe it is entirely within the power of the Board to make that happen. The Board has several tools at its disposal to ensure that kind of outcome. It can make its wishes known through directives and motions passed in its meetings, and it can exert its influence on documents like Annual Plans and budgets.
So, I would argue that if there are observable patterns that the WMF is not doing a great job of retaining institutional memory, and if anybody has the energy to try to change that (I don't), advocating to the Board is the most worthwhile way to bring that about. Anything less, it seems to me, is rather pointless.
-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]
p.s. If interested, please review my own (work in progress) list of significant events in Wikipedia's history, with links to more detailed information. I'm interested in feedback, additions, or criticism of this list. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Peteforsyth/governance https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Peteforsyth/governance#Organizational_governance
On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 1:52 PM Strainu strainu10@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
It seems the WMF is going through another crisis of institutional memory, with the T&S team taking center stage. It's not really important what they did wrong, it's minor compared with other faux-pas they did in the past.
I was wondering though if the organization as a whole has learned anything from major crisis in the past and if there is a formal way of passing to newcomers information such as when and how to contact communities, what's the difference between a wiki, a community and an affiliate etc.?
Strainu
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