Hello Nathan,

I have no anti-Americanism, I only notice some differences in the culture how communities from different continents work and to me that is natural. The only thing I say is that an organisation for a worldwide movement should reflect more that diversity. Not only in people, but only in ways of thinking. Before you wrote this mail I already knew where they were from, but people easily take over the culture of the organisation they work for.

There is a big protest and much critic on three major Wikipedias on how WMF handles the development and roll out of the VE, and as this seems to be not the first time the way of acting is worse, I try and would like to find out why this happens. Too often people from local communities do get the feeling they are not listened to by WMF, and I think that is terrible for an organisation that is there to support those people. I am certainly not surprised that less people participate in elections for board and so, people are demotivated on several ways.

If you have a better explanation please tell us, as it is good to name the problems and try to find solutions for it.

and you should retract it so that others will continue to take your feedback seriously.

You make wrong conclusions out of the words I said, in a way you twist it so it doesn't match any more they way it was intended. (And you should know that I like the VE very much.) How can you ask to retract it if you do not take it seriously already? You twist my words, you gave it a meaning which it originally did not had, that is what you consider as taking someones feedback seriously? No thank you.

The past week I have been working on the localisation for Wiki Loves Monuments, and with that I see the differences between countries and between language areas. I like those differences, I try to respect them and try to take them into account. They have all the same goal in creating an encyclopaedia, but are all a bit different as no culture, language or country is the same. They all have a different history and way of looking. I think the best known situation where this appeared was the image filter, but there are many more smaller situations that differences are playing. For example on the Dutch Wikipedia there are every year discussions on how nl-wiki differs from other Wikipedias like en-wiki, and I see that happen on more Wikipedias.

Sorry Nathan, I am disappointed that this reaction is the only thing you take out of my reply. Maybe my expectations are too high, I really thought serious feedback is appreciated, it is not me who experience this, but many others as well. What I would like to see and what I strive for is a better cooperation between WMF and communities.

Romaine

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Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 09:11:06 -0400 From: Nathan nawrich@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Communication plans for community     engagement

On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 2:08 AM, Romaine Wiki romaine_wiki@yahoo.com wrote:

In my opinion the liaisons failed very much with the

VE, as they act like a car salesman who gives much the impression that communication is only in one direction: the community. They said they send our feedback to WMF but we haven't seen any results at all from that. After a month still all feedback was untouched, nothing was changed on all subjects we have given feedback on. Even critical bugs. I sure believe that the liaisons do their work, and that the problem lies in WMF itself, but still the liaisons became very much annoying. It is like they got a training to talk everything right or minimize the serious critic. I really hate such behaviour, to me and the rest of the community it is a signal that we aren't taken seriously. I consider the liaison involvement as a failure, certainly not recommended to repeat that in future this way.

Besides that, with previous software changes we have

had technical ambassadors who maintained mostly the feedback between developers and the communities and that worked well so far I can see. I seriously do not understand why they ignored them with the VE and instead hired liaisons which behaved more like staff of WMF with the agenda that they must sell the car, than neutral people who are involved in the local community. That is not the way how communities should be approached.

Perhaps the gap between communities and WMF, already

there in 2007, still hasn't become much closer since. I think the problem lies in the idea that the WMF is thinking top-down, while the communities work bottom-up (they do the actual daily work at the end). Also I notice for years that there is also a gap between North America and the rest of the world in culture, or at least certainly between North America and Europe. Both are part of the western culture, but still the way Americans deal with things is not the way Europeans would deal with. WMF seems to be too much America based and doesn't internal reflect enough the worldwide movement the whole Wikimedia community is. As I see a clear gap in culture between North America (including WMF style) and Europe, I guess such gap is also there between North America and other parts of the world, but I do not have a clear view on those areas.

Romaine

I think your anti-Americanism is misplaced. Let's look at some of the key people involved in the VisualEditor project. Erik is German, James F is British, Roan Kattouw is Dutch, Timo Tijhof is Dutch. If you were to skim the list of the engineering staff, they are extremely diverse, with many remote employees throughout Europe and a number of relocated Europeans (and others) working in San Francisco. So I think your implication that the VE is some element of arrogant American imperialism is false, and you should retract it so that others will continue to take your feedback seriously.

~Nathan