Hello,
Recently, the "draft recommendations" of the strategy working groups have been published. As Nicole informed us, they are "key tools" for the future of the movement. These documents are the result of one year of work of the working groups.
If I am not mistaken, the Wikimedia volunteers now have one month to give feedback. In October, the process of refining and finalizing has to be ready, and in November, the movement will have to start with implementing the recommendations.
Having seen now more of the documents, my conclusion can only be one: the documents are simply not ready for this stage of the process. They are much more unready than they should be for being put to the eyes of the Wikimeda volunteers.
There are documents in which there is only one question answered, by one sentence. Other documents don't show that any research has been used to back the statements. Many obvious arguments and links are missing. At least at one occasion I read as an answer to an important question: "todo".
The proposals often give the impression that they are not thought through. There should be quotas for admins, but we see nowhere an explanation how that would relate to the right to remain anonymous. There is the statement that minorities sometimes can only express themselves with ND and NC content, but the two links in the document hardly back that claim. After years in which the Wikimedia organizations and other free and open content organizations taught us that NC is problematic, now such a drastic change?
And there is this already infamous sentence: Instead of being informed about the possible negative impacts of NC and ND, we only read: "All change has negative connotations to some members of the community."
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Working_...
I find it stunning that there was nobody who went through the documents before publication and said: we cannot publish this sentence, it is giving a very bad impression about our attitude towards the community (= the very same people we are asking to invest their time for giving feedback).
This does not mean that all documents or all sections and recommendations are unusable or damaging. I also cannot judge about the efforts invested, as I have no insight in the inner workings. But it is very frustrating for me to read the documents and often have to guess what they actually mean. And it seems to me, given the comments on the user pages on Meta Wiki, on this list, on de:WP:Kurier and on Facebook, that I am not the only one who feels this frustration.
Therefore, I ask the people responsible: please reconsider the timeline. If these documents are the result of one year work, then the documents will not be ready within two and a half months. Consider several months for the working groups to use the present feedback for a redraft, and then give the Wikimedia volunteers at least the same amount of time for giving feedback again.
Kind regards Ziko