Le 04/10/15 16:15, Theo10011 a écrit :
I thought the mandate of this committee was to facilitate and coordinate bidding, set up policy and best practices. The page on Meta still mention the same as its purpose[1].
When did a committee intended to facilitate an already established, open process make the leap to downright owning the process and instead, doing away with it all together? We went from an open jury system to finalizing things behind closed doors in a physical meeting that seemingly the same people attend regularly.
It's downright patronizing to hear plans about rotating wikimania from Europe (excluding eastern Europe for some reason?), to North america and the "rest of the world". This seems more like someone picking holiday destinations, talking about countries, entire continents and rest of the world, in a manner so cavalier.
It's constantly mentioned that the open bidding process is unwieldy and too cumbersome. While that may be true for the bidding teams, it's still an open, accessible process that gives everyone the same chance. The entire idea of the committee was to move the process away from a single individual's initiative to a group, not make the same individual chair who just does away with the entire process and decides things on a whim.
Lastly, I don't think this is the usual WMF communication shortfall. This is more of a committee issue, with its quasi-official status, they took some liberty with the entire process and their own stated purpose, made some sweeping changes and forgot to tell anyone, for months. The foundation could have been as out of the loop as the rest of us.
Theo
There are roughly three components on the Wikimania committee. One component is WMF staff. One component is former and future Wikimania organizers. One component is community members.
WMF staff does not have the same obligations and standards than the other members.
The rather unique situation of this committee is that... whilst it should include much community input... for most years (not all), Wikimania is actually mostly funded by WMF and beyond funding, some WMF staff put quite a bit of work in it. To say it bluntly, most of the time, without WMF input, Wikimania would simply not happen. This is no criticism to local teams (without them, Wikimania would not occur either), but a simple statement. WMF is a key stakeholder. What is the consequence of that from a committee member perspective ?
In my opinion, the consequence to that is that community members on the committee do not feel that they "own" this committee. It "does" feel like being invited on a Wikimedia Foundation committee. And as such, it feels like a sort of special attention/listening should be given to WMF staff members on that committee. And when things go ashtray... we hesitate being bold. It is not about forgetting.
So... two examples...
1) early October, Io stated that we should really push the announcement; Ellie answered that Canada organizer was on an unplanned leave and that she would prefer to work more on the Canada case before any announcement; And here it goes... no announcement.
2) last message on the committee list was, on the 2nd, Ellie saying that "James F. is the owner of the process document announcement" and "I do think we should post something today if at all possible". Uh. I answered "yes please, post". What happened ? Nothing. James F. has not sent ANY message to the committee till the 21th of August (that is... 6 or 7 weeks ago ?) I have no idea why. Maybe there is a good reason. But did any members of the committee feel free to publish anything whilst James is the Chair and Ellie wants more time ? Well, obviously not.
Good thing the google docs were public, right ?
You are correct. This is not a "Wikimedia Foundation communication" by large shortfall. This is more of the committee. And this is because it is "too official" a committee.
Now, beside head rolling... (uh, ouch :)) what do you suggest to fix that ?
Anthere
[1]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_Committee#Purpose_and_process
On Sun, Oct 4, 2015 at 12:55 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Yes and no. Considering that I've been waiting for months for answers to questions about the WMF Annual Plan, I would say that there is much room for improvement in communications.
On the other hand, the WMF Comms department itself seems to more or less ok, and I personally think we'll of WMF's chief communications officer.
So, some good points, and some room to improve. I agree that the status quo has been this way for awhile and it would be good to see across-the-board communications SLAs.
Pine On Oct 4, 2015 12:18 AM, "Mathias Damour" mathias.damour@laposte.net wrote:
Le 04/10/2015 05:36, Craig Franklin a écrit :
I take your point Pine, but "improving communication with the community" seems to have been a WMF priority for as long as I can remember, yet
there
doesn't seem to have been any consistent improvement, as we can see
here.
A new approach and direction to how matters like this are communicated
is
clearly needed, because the current one doesn't seem to be working at
all.
I wouldn't say that the WMF communication is simply bad, it is pretty professional.
It may rather be that an open communication and keeping control on the greater part of the decisions (or even conducting the users of the
projets
themself, as an average internet company does), are "two tendancies that are not fully compatible" (to borrow Florence's words).
-- Mathias Damour [[User:Astirmays]]
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