This was posted to the Strategy wiki but I don't think I ever mentioned it on list. The case study itself can be found at http://www.fanhistory.com/FHproposal.pdf . The blog entry about the case study can be found at http://blog.fanhistory.com/?p=1103 .
Sincerely, Laura Hale
2009/12/20 Laura Hale laura@fanhistory.com:
This was posted to the Strategy wiki but I don't think I ever mentioned it on list. The case study itself can be found at http://www.fanhistory.com/FHproposal.pdf . The blog entry about the case study can be found at http://blog.fanhistory.com/?p=1103 .
I think the study shows the old problems, which mainly comes from Wikimedia/Wikipedia history.
Meta wiki was first created as a place for meta-cross-project discussions including strategy planning as well. Then there was an assumption (IMHO false) that there is some sort of meta-cross-language-cross-projects-community which is allowed to make vital decisions by the system of consensus process mixed with voting system.It was soon found silly and many decisions were moved to Wikimedia committees that theoretically were created just as "advisory bodies" for Wikimedia Board of Trustees, but in fact the advice given by the committees was usually accepted by the Board. Than - when the process of increase of power and size of Foundation's office started many vital decisions were transferred to the office from the Board of Trustees, which only is expected to lead the general Wikimedia Foundation direction and do not interfere with everyday single issue decision making process. Therefore we have now a kind of power structure which looks like a square. On one corner (the most powerful a the moment IMHO) - we have an Office with paid staff, on the other we have a Board of Trustees, on the third there are a set of existing committees, and on the fourth there is use to be meta-cross-language-cross-projects-community and no one knows who really have a decision power in this or another issue, so if potentially difficult decision is about to be made all corners of the square are just playing some sort of table tennis just hitting a ball with rackets back and forth to each other on a table untill the ball is broken or end up forgotten in the net or on the floor :-)
Tomasz Ganicz wrote:
2009/12/20 Laura Hale laura@fanhistory.com:
This was posted to the Strategy wiki but I don't think I ever mentioned it on list. The case study itself can be found at http://www.fanhistory.com/FHproposal.pdf . The blog entry about the case study can be found at http://blog.fanhistory.com/?p=1103 .
I think the study shows the old problems, which mainly comes from Wikimedia/Wikipedia history.
Meta wiki was first created as a place for meta-cross-project discussions including strategy planning as well. Then there was an assumption (IMHO false) that there is some sort of meta-cross-language-cross-projects-community which is allowed to make vital decisions by the system of consensus process mixed with voting system.It was soon found silly and many decisions were moved to Wikimedia committees that theoretically were created just as "advisory bodies" for Wikimedia Board of Trustees, but in fact the advice given by the committees was usually accepted by the Board.
Note that Meta was founded in 2001, so it significantly predates the Foundation and the non-Wikipedia projects. So the idea that decision-making there was "soon found silly" is a bit of an exaggeration. It predates the namespace feature in MediaWiki; it originally had a role similar to the Help and Wikipedia namespaces on the English Wikipedia today.
-- Tim Starling
2009/12/20 Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org:
Tomasz Ganicz wrote:
2009/12/20 Laura Hale laura@fanhistory.com:
This was posted to the Strategy wiki but I don't think I ever mentioned it on list. The case study itself can be found at http://www.fanhistory.com/FHproposal.pdf . The blog entry about the case study can be found at http://blog.fanhistory.com/?p=1103 .
I think the study shows the old problems, which mainly comes from Wikimedia/Wikipedia history.
Meta wiki was first created as a place for meta-cross-project discussions including strategy planning as well. Then there was an assumption (IMHO false) that there is some sort of meta-cross-language-cross-projects-community which is allowed to make vital decisions by the system of consensus process mixed with voting system.It was soon found silly and many decisions were moved to Wikimedia committees that theoretically were created just as "advisory bodies" for Wikimedia Board of Trustees, but in fact the advice given by the committees was usually accepted by the Board.
Note that Meta was founded in 2001, so it significantly predates the Foundation and the non-Wikipedia projects. So the idea that decision-making there was "soon found silly" is a bit of an exaggeration. It predates the namespace feature in MediaWiki; it originally had a role similar to the Help and Wikipedia namespaces on the English Wikipedia today.
Well, My "story" is quite obviously just a simplification of the long history. For me the first contact with meta was in 2002 and it was about some sort of strategy planning - the discussion of the "second stage of Wikipedia" - i.e. the idea of cleaning-up the Wikipedia as it become large enough to be called a real encyclopedia :-) (roughly 100 000 articles). The second contact was at 2003 when we were voting for "ambassador" of Polish Wikipedia. Anyway - what is my main point is that the consensus/voting system in meta - was based on an idea that there is a kind of meta-community, a large group of people interested to look at Wikimedia movement as a whole, which has their origins in various Wikimedia project's communities, not only English Wikipedia and not only Wikipedias. In fact, it was always 90%+ English Wikipedia community + 9%+ major other languages Wikipedia's communities members + less than 1% of minor languages Wikipedia's and other Wikimedia project's communities. Therefore that system never worked effectively - as there was never such a real meta-community which could effectively represent the general Wikimedia projects' editors community of communities.
Well, My "story" is quite obviously just a simplification of the long history. For me the first contact with meta was in 2002 and it was about some sort of strategy planning - the discussion of the "second stage of Wikipedia" - i.e. the idea of cleaning-up the Wikipedia as it become large enough to be called a real encyclopedia :-) (roughly 100 000 articles). The second contact was at 2003 when we were voting for "ambassador" of Polish Wikipedia. Anyway - what is my main point is that the consensus/voting system in meta - was based on an idea that there is a kind of meta-community, a large group of people interested to look at Wikimedia movement as a whole, which has their origins in various Wikimedia project's communities, not only English Wikipedia and not only Wikipedias. In fact, it was always 90%+ English Wikipedia community + 9%+ major other languages Wikipedia's communities members
- less than 1% of minor languages Wikipedia's and other Wikimedia
project's communities. Therefore that system never worked effectively
- as there was never such a real meta-community which could
effectively represent the general Wikimedia projects' editors community of communities.
Or even worse, when it comes to voting users who are not really regular meta participants but who are interested in accepting or rejecting the proposal arrive in big numbers and then the coordination decides, not really any reasonable arguments.
Cheers Yaroslav
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