During this Wikimedia Conference 2015 there was a paradigm shift in the way problems are expressed. It was highlighted that the wikimedia movement is not only about gathering and sharing knowledge, but also about the people behind it, about finding ways to enhance the togetherness that is created by participating in our sites, no matter which ones they are in the present, and no matter which they will be in the future.
There was a lot of blindness in the past from my side and from a lot of people I met during the years. Our movement is not only a "knowledge movement" or a "open movement", it is above a "social movement" which depends very much on the strength of our social connections to advance and thrive. The most obvious connection is between contributor and reader, it is the most singular one which differentiates us from other platforms like facebook, however it is far from being the only one. Contributor-to-contributor is another key one which has been underestimated, and it is the salt and pepper of the community.
There have been attempts to improve the atmosphere of those relationships, however they have failed because humans are social creatures mostly in person, and online relationships work best once you know the person you are communicating with. With strangers it might work too, but there is a lot of work to do at the personal level to improve the empathy, the goodwill, and of course, to assume good faith.
I am not aware of any attempts to show contributors how they can be better persons online with online strangers, perhaps it is something that can be practiced and learned. There is the common tendency to think that the fault is always in others, but very seldom one seeks to dig deep into oneself and try to find inner peace. I believe that with a strong inner peace conflicts would be less, the atmosphere would improve, and the so-called "editor decline" would be a problem of the past.
That goodwill can be cultivated at upper levels too. Sometimes there are decisions that must be taken to improve our sites, and some of them have created a lot of drama which maybe could have been minimized by enabling expression spaces, where there can be some real communication happening, that is, bidirectional, and not to force any ideas, just to foster understanding.
In the wikimedia movement there is a serious lack of said expression spaces. For instance, during the WMCON 15, it was the first time that user groups representatives seated down together, also with some WMF employees, to discuss user groups in an open manner. I think it is a big step forward which paves the way in other areas too.
Problems of the past like VE deployment schedule, and the upcoming Commons reform could profit of the "sit-and-talk" approach. It is costly, it takes time, however in the end there are more smiles, less drama, and the general feeling that besides of the you and me, there is a we, which is created together.
I would like to propose the creation of a user group for each area of interest that we have problems with, so users can participate in the problem solving approaches. That is of course only half the way, the other half way is even more difficult which involves *using* those spaces constructively, and also involving more and more users in this other kind of "contribution" which is so radically different from the "click-and-type" contribution.
There is for instance the need to create roads for users to progress in the movement, to bring users from "casual reader" to a "wise wikimedian" status. Such a wise people already exist in our movement, it is a pity that we don't enable more knowledge transfer between the "elders" and newcomers, because when one of our wise wikimedian (digitally) dies, it leaves behind a big gap which is very big to fill up again.
I dream of a movement like that, wise, and which enables people to grow to the very best of their abilities. And not only that, I dream of growing myself with all of you together and finding countless friends along the way. What a good way to finish one's life that to have been able to do every day what one loves with people who does the same. This is pure joy and I want more of it :)
Micru
Hoi, It would be good.. The thing is that we are so many communities. All of them have their place and all of them have their relevance. Sociology indicates that the "own" group is the most important of all. It is why there is so little room to understand what is important for another, it is why typically only the biggest groups are catered for.
It goes so far that Wikipedians are unwilling to consider that their effort (any Wikipedia) provides only a subset of the knowledge that is available to us all. It is why there is so little time to provide GLAM's with the data that makes it obvious why their contribution is so valuable to us. It is how they justify the real money they invest in open content..
We should be thankful for what is done and consider how we can get the most out of the information that is available to us all. It starts with the realisation that there is more that we can share. Thanks, GerardM
On 23 May 2015 at 09:27, David Cuenca Tudela dacuetu@gmail.com wrote:
During this Wikimedia Conference 2015 there was a paradigm shift in the way problems are expressed. It was highlighted that the wikimedia movement is not only about gathering and sharing knowledge, but also about the people behind it, about finding ways to enhance the togetherness that is created by participating in our sites, no matter which ones they are in the present, and no matter which they will be in the future.
There was a lot of blindness in the past from my side and from a lot of people I met during the years. Our movement is not only a "knowledge movement" or a "open movement", it is above a "social movement" which depends very much on the strength of our social connections to advance and thrive. The most obvious connection is between contributor and reader, it is the most singular one which differentiates us from other platforms like facebook, however it is far from being the only one. Contributor-to-contributor is another key one which has been underestimated, and it is the salt and pepper of the community.
There have been attempts to improve the atmosphere of those relationships, however they have failed because humans are social creatures mostly in person, and online relationships work best once you know the person you are communicating with. With strangers it might work too, but there is a lot of work to do at the personal level to improve the empathy, the goodwill, and of course, to assume good faith.
I am not aware of any attempts to show contributors how they can be better persons online with online strangers, perhaps it is something that can be practiced and learned. There is the common tendency to think that the fault is always in others, but very seldom one seeks to dig deep into oneself and try to find inner peace. I believe that with a strong inner peace conflicts would be less, the atmosphere would improve, and the so-called "editor decline" would be a problem of the past.
That goodwill can be cultivated at upper levels too. Sometimes there are decisions that must be taken to improve our sites, and some of them have created a lot of drama which maybe could have been minimized by enabling expression spaces, where there can be some real communication happening, that is, bidirectional, and not to force any ideas, just to foster understanding.
In the wikimedia movement there is a serious lack of said expression spaces. For instance, during the WMCON 15, it was the first time that user groups representatives seated down together, also with some WMF employees, to discuss user groups in an open manner. I think it is a big step forward which paves the way in other areas too.
Problems of the past like VE deployment schedule, and the upcoming Commons reform could profit of the "sit-and-talk" approach. It is costly, it takes time, however in the end there are more smiles, less drama, and the general feeling that besides of the you and me, there is a we, which is created together.
I would like to propose the creation of a user group for each area of interest that we have problems with, so users can participate in the problem solving approaches. That is of course only half the way, the other half way is even more difficult which involves *using* those spaces constructively, and also involving more and more users in this other kind of "contribution" which is so radically different from the "click-and-type" contribution.
There is for instance the need to create roads for users to progress in the movement, to bring users from "casual reader" to a "wise wikimedian" status. Such a wise people already exist in our movement, it is a pity that we don't enable more knowledge transfer between the "elders" and newcomers, because when one of our wise wikimedian (digitally) dies, it leaves behind a big gap which is very big to fill up again.
I dream of a movement like that, wise, and which enables people to grow to the very best of their abilities. And not only that, I dream of growing myself with all of you together and finding countless friends along the way. What a good way to finish one's life that to have been able to do every day what one loves with people who does the same. This is pure joy and I want more of it :)
Micru _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi.
I don't know how you're going to shoehorn "we" into "Wikimedia movement". I guess, similar to putting the "me" in "team", it will require transposing letters? Or perhaps dropping letters altogether (since we[!] already have a W and several Es)? Hmm, or I suppose a careful alignment of the two words might do it...
Wikimedia movement
David Cuenca Tudela wrote:
During this Wikimedia Conference 2015 there was a paradigm shift in the way problems are expressed. It was highlighted that the wikimedia movement is not only about gathering and sharing knowledge, but also about the people behind it, about finding ways to enhance the togetherness that is created by participating in our sites, no matter which ones they are in the present, and no matter which they will be in the future.
Not to rain on your revelation, but I hardly think this is new or a paradigm shift. That said, I didn't attend Wikimedia Conference 2015.
That goodwill can be cultivated at upper levels too. Sometimes there are decisions that must be taken to improve our sites, and some of them have created a lot of drama which maybe could have been minimized by enabling expression spaces, where there can be some real communication happening, that is, bidirectional, and not to force any ideas, just to foster understanding.
Right now, the reality is that Wikipedia is massively popular without the help of nearly anyone at the upper level of the current Wikimedia Foundation management. In my mind, the new upper management of the Wikimedia Foundation has a lot more to learn from the Wikimedia movement than vice versa. Which one of them has over a decade of experience building Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia? :-)
There's plenty of work to be done, to be sure, but I get annoyed when I read statements such as "decisions that must be taken to improve our sites" that created drama. Forcing software on a volunteer community is a bad idea and many of the recent dramas seem to involve some version of doing that. I think it says a lot that people at the Wikimedia Foundation have been so uncomfortable with the products they've created that the sheer awesomeness of the products alone can't attract people to want to use them. VisualEditor, ArticleFeedbackTool, MediaViewer, etc. are all examples of this. (VisualEditor, by the way, is a lot better now.)
It's not about open communication, exactly, it's about building products that people want and want to have enabled, instead of trying to force subpar products on volunteers, many of whom have limited time and patience. If you build great products, users will want to use them and have them enabled by default. If your users are all rejecting your product and your product is actively damaging the sites that these volunteers care for, your product sucks and you likely either don't understand your target audience or you don't understand the problems you're intending to solve.
In the wikimedia movement there is a serious lack of said expression spaces. For instance, during the WMCON 15, it was the first time that user groups representatives seated down together, also with some WMF employees, to discuss user groups in an open manner. I think it is a big step forward which paves the way in other areas too.
I very much doubt that this was the first time that Wikimedians sat down and discussed user groups. ;-)
Problems of the past like VE deployment schedule, and the upcoming Commons reform could profit of the "sit-and-talk" approach.
Like Jane, I'm curious what you mean by Commons reform. Can you please elaborate?
MZMcBride
His MZMcBride,
I agree with Micru on a number of points, particularly that it would be helpful to think of Wikimedia as a social movement, with all of the diversity and methods of interaction among ourselves making us a very complex social environment. I'm in the process of writing a piece for the Signpost about WMCON 2015 where I plan to share further thoughts about the social nature of Wikimedia.
I agree that a lack of experience with our products and "society" is a shortcoming in WMF, and that a number of WMF decisions over the years have been of little benefit, harmful to community health, and financially expensive. There have been a number of times when I've lost sleep over trying to figure out what to do, last night being one of them. I wish that I had easy answers. Compounding the diffuculty is that WMF and the community sometimes seem to think that the other organization is the source of most problems. I get the sense that the WMF Board is thinking about devolving more of its responsibilities to the community, and I think that this would be a good start that would lead to better outcomes for everyone in the long term. Also note that the current WMF Board elections provide a window for the community to make some changes.
Regarding user groups, a common theme at the conference is that they need various kinds of support in order to grow and flourish. I get the sense that Lila and Siko are supportive of this general concept.
I like the idea of fostering more and friendlier connections among community members, and recently made suggestions to Philippe about how WMF could help with this process. This would help community health, and is an opportunity for WMF to have a positive leadership role.
I'm glad that we're having this conversation, and I look forward to hearing further discussion, including thoughts from WMF staff.
Pine
On May 23, 2015 7:23 AM, "MZMcBride" z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Hi.
I don't know how you're going to shoehorn "we" into "Wikimedia movement". I guess, similar to putting the "me" in "team", it will require transposing letters? Or perhaps dropping letters altogether (since we[!] already have a W and several Es)? Hmm, or I suppose a careful alignment of the two words might do it...
Wikimedia movement
David Cuenca Tudela wrote:
During this Wikimedia Conference 2015 there was a paradigm shift in the way problems are expressed. It was highlighted that the wikimedia movement is not only about gathering and sharing knowledge, but also about the people behind it, about finding ways to enhance the togetherness that is created by participating in our sites, no matter which ones they are in the present, and no matter which they will be in the future.
Not to rain on your revelation, but I hardly think this is new or a paradigm shift. That said, I didn't attend Wikimedia Conference 2015.
That goodwill can be cultivated at upper levels too. Sometimes there are decisions that must be taken to improve our sites, and some of them have created a lot of drama which maybe could have been minimized by enabling expression spaces, where there can be some real communication happening, that is, bidirectional, and not to force any ideas, just to foster understanding.
Right now, the reality is that Wikipedia is massively popular without the help of nearly anyone at the upper level of the current Wikimedia Foundation management. In my mind, the new upper management of the Wikimedia Foundation has a lot more to learn from the Wikimedia movement than vice versa. Which one of them has over a decade of experience building Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia? :-)
There's plenty of work to be done, to be sure, but I get annoyed when I read statements such as "decisions that must be taken to improve our sites" that created drama. Forcing software on a volunteer community is a bad idea and many of the recent dramas seem to involve some version of doing that. I think it says a lot that people at the Wikimedia Foundation have been so uncomfortable with the products they've created that the sheer awesomeness of the products alone can't attract people to want to use them. VisualEditor, ArticleFeedbackTool, MediaViewer, etc. are all examples of this. (VisualEditor, by the way, is a lot better now.)
It's not about open communication, exactly, it's about building products that people want and want to have enabled, instead of trying to force subpar products on volunteers, many of whom have limited time and
patience.
If you build great products, users will want to use them and have them enabled by default. If your users are all rejecting your product and your product is actively damaging the sites that these volunteers care for, your product sucks and you likely either don't understand your target audience or you don't understand the problems you're intending to solve.
In the wikimedia movement there is a serious lack of said expression spaces. For instance, during the WMCON 15, it was the first time that
user
groups representatives seated down together, also with some WMF
employees,
to discuss user groups in an open manner. I think it is a big step
forward
which paves the way in other areas too.
I very much doubt that this was the first time that Wikimedians sat down and discussed user groups. ;-)
Problems of the past like VE deployment schedule, and the upcoming
Commons
reform could profit of the "sit-and-talk" approach.
Like Jane, I'm curious what you mean by Commons reform. Can you please elaborate?
MZMcBride
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On 23 May 2015 at 17:08, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I like the idea of fostering more and friendlier connections among community member
So do I.
However, the coreallry to this is the firamtion of cliques, which can be equally unwlecoming to new editors and can entrench systemic biases. We see this, and "ownership", in some en.WP wikiprjcts, for example.
How can we itigate against this, while making our projects more social?
How?
Default to open meetings, not closed or invitation only.
Default to open wikis and lists, not closed.
Virtual attendance at meetings and conferences. Wikimania has always been an opportunity to showcase virtual meetings, and encourage those of us unable to fly (or not rich enough to pay) to feel part of the exclusive "we".
Fae On 23 May 2015 17:19, "Andy Mabbett" andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
On 23 May 2015 at 17:08, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I like the idea of fostering more and friendlier connections among community member
So do I.
However, the coreallry to this is the firamtion of cliques, which can be equally unwlecoming to new editors and can entrench systemic biases. We see this, and "ownership", in some en.WP wikiprjcts, for example.
How can we itigate against this, while making our projects more social?
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
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I'll second that!
On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 6:29 PM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
How?
Default to open meetings, not closed or invitation only.
Default to open wikis and lists, not closed.
Virtual attendance at meetings and conferences. Wikimania has always been an opportunity to showcase virtual meetings, and encourage those of us unable to fly (or not rich enough to pay) to feel part of the exclusive "we".
Fae On 23 May 2015 17:19, "Andy Mabbett" andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
On 23 May 2015 at 17:08, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I like the idea of fostering more and friendlier connections among community member
So do I.
However, the coreallry to this is the firamtion of cliques, which can be equally unwlecoming to new editors and can entrench systemic biases. We see this, and "ownership", in some en.WP wikiprjcts, for example.
How can we itigate against this, while making our projects more social?
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
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I third that!
However we are entering the field of privacy, because as useful the virtual meetings can be, they might be intrusive if you are in your home and you show your whole house to the world. As long as people are happy about that, then I do not see any problem in increasing the number of meetings having a virtual component in Wikimania.
I wonder if it is possible to organize a virtual conference first using something like Google Hangouts to test if it would work at a bigger scale like wikimania.
On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 9:29 AM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
How?
Default to open meetings, not closed or invitation only.
Default to open wikis and lists, not closed.
Virtual attendance at meetings and conferences. Wikimania has always been an opportunity to showcase virtual meetings, and encourage those of us unable to fly (or not rich enough to pay) to feel part of the exclusive "we".
Fae On 23 May 2015 17:19, "Andy Mabbett" andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
On 23 May 2015 at 17:08, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I like the idea of fostering more and friendlier connections among community member
So do I.
However, the coreallry to this is the firamtion of cliques, which can be equally unwlecoming to new editors and can entrench systemic biases. We see this, and "ownership", in some en.WP wikiprjcts, for example.
How can we itigate against this, while making our projects more social?
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
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Video is not necessary.
Fred
On Sat, 23 May 2015 09:42:34 -0700 David Cuenca Tudela dacuetu@gmail.com wrote:
I third that!
However we are entering the field of privacy, because as useful the virtual meetings can be, they might be intrusive if you are in your home and you show your whole house to the world. As long as people are happy about that, then I do not see any problem in increasing the number of meetings having a virtual component in Wikimania.
I wonder if it is possible to organize a virtual conference first using something like Google Hangouts to test if it would work at a bigger scale like wikimania.
On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 9:29 AM, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
How?
Default to open meetings, not closed or invitation only.
Default to open wikis and lists, not closed.
Virtual attendance at meetings and conferences. Wikimania has always been an opportunity to showcase virtual meetings, and encourage those of us unable to fly (or not rich enough to pay) to feel part of the exclusive "we".
Fae On 23 May 2015 17:19, "Andy Mabbett" andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
On 23 May 2015 at 17:08, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I like the idea of fostering more and friendlier connections
among
community member
So do I.
However, the coreallry to this is the firamtion of cliques, which
can
be equally unwlecoming to new editors and can entrench systemic biases. We see this, and "ownership", in some en.WP wikiprjcts,
for
example.
How can we itigate against this, while making our projects more
social?
-- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Etiamsi omnes, ego non _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 9:18 AM, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
How can we [l]itigate against this, while making our projects more social?
Hi Andy, regarding your question I guess there is no definite answer, perhaps it is something inherent to social systems, so in a way there is nothing to be done, but instead accepted. If cliques appear naturally, then let them be, let them manifest as user groups, or as sub-communities, or as wikiprojects and give them the space to be born and to die. Through try-and-fail many will appear, and only the most friendly ones should be left on the long run. Perhaps a more interesting question is "what can I do as individual to avoid creating damaging cliques or behaviors?"
Again, there is no definite answer, or if there is one, there is one answer for each one of us. However it is healthy to increase user awareness, and to use this awareness to engage people in a more constructive way. For instance, I cannot choose how you are going to react to my words, but I can choose how I react to your words, I can be calm to a great extent, specially because I met you in person and I know who you are and what are your circumstances.
If I hadn't met you in person and we had a difficult argument, perhaps my patience would be less, because humans are just like that, we spend less time dealing with the unknown (which might me worthless) than with the known (which might be more appreciated). So in a way it is a matter of finding that appreciation for other contributors, which can only happen when knowledge is gathered about who they are, which in turn makes it difficult to make it online because we want to respect privacy, but it is very easy to apply it in real life environments because each one is free to create their own story.
I hope that my little rant makes sense, and it conveys clearly the importance of IRL meetings to foster a healthy communication in online environments.
Cheers, Micru
On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 7:22 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
I don't know how you're going to shoehorn "we" into "Wikimedia movement". I guess, similar to putting the "me" in "team", it will require transposing letters? Or perhaps dropping letters altogether (since we[!] already have a W and several Es)? Hmm, or I suppose a careful alignment of the two words might do it...
It is a matter of individual choice. I can choose to say that the wikimedia movement is a matter of "we", you can choose to decide to hold the opposing view, and it is fine like that. As long as more people decide that the wikimedia movement is a matter of "we" then it *will* be a matter of "we" and "team". It is the same magic as by the money works, people just decide to give little paper pieces (now plastic, or just bits) value and they dare to call it money! Even if the illusion is certified by a collective group of people assigning them fancy names like "government" or "treasury", it is not less of an illusion. There is no reason why each one of us couldn't uphold the illusion that there is a "we" behind the wikimedia movement.
Not to rain on your revelation, but I hardly think this is new or a paradigm shift. That said, I didn't attend Wikimedia Conference 2015.
It is the first time that I saw real intention behind those apparently empty words, and that was new for me.
Right now, the reality is that Wikipedia is massively popular without the help of nearly anyone at the upper level of the current Wikimedia Foundation management. In my mind, the new upper management of the Wikimedia Foundation has a lot more to learn from the Wikimedia movement than vice versa. Which one of them has over a decade of experience building Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia? :-)
Just because something has been true for the last ten years doesn't mean that it couldn't change tomorrow, or the next ten years. I do not doubt the usefulness of the WMF in performing tasks that allow the movement to be more successful on the long run, even the record so far is not impressive, the site works fine, and there have been changes and improvements, that are indeed useful. It is however much easier to point out the faults than to try to highlight what works.
There's plenty of work to be done, to be sure, but I get annoyed when I read statements such as "decisions that must be taken to improve our sites" that created drama. Forcing software on a volunteer community is a bad idea and many of the recent dramas seem to involve some version of doing that. I think it says a lot that people at the Wikimedia Foundation have been so uncomfortable with the products they've created that the sheer awesomeness of the products alone can't attract people to want to use them. VisualEditor, ArticleFeedbackTool, MediaViewer, etc. are all examples of this. (VisualEditor, by the way, is a lot better now.)
Although the examples that you mention were considered failures, they were done with the right intention of improving the movement. It is another thing that should be recognized and accepted on a wider scale. The possibility of making mistakes and failing big time. Without the opportunity of failing there is no the opportunity of learning. In fact what we call learning is just having the opportunity to do things were you can fail until you master it. Since the community has let the wmf fail, now that means that the gathered expertise should be put to good use, and *keep* trusting the wmf. As you say the Visual Editor has gotten much better, and that is thanks to people like Eric Moeller, who has been boo'ed in the past for taking apparently bad decisions but which helped him (and everybody else) to get more acquainted with the limits of our movement, which limits and wishes, and expectations are not always clear-cut, they are created on the go.
It's not about open communication, exactly, it's about building products that people want and want to have enabled, instead of trying to force subpar products on volunteers, many of whom have limited time and patience. If you build great products, users will want to use them and have them enabled by default. If your users are all rejecting your product and your product is actively damaging the sites that these volunteers care for, your product sucks and you likely either don't understand your target audience or you don't understand the problems you're intending to solve.
You are not saying nothing new here, we are dealing with the unknown constantly, and if it was known with exactly precision which products and how they are integrated into the current ecosystem, then we wouldn't need any discussion about this. Volunteers can help yes, but not any kind of volunteers, you need volunteers with a great degree of involvement, the same kind of volunteer that we are loosing more often because of burnout, and of lack of understanding from the parties involved.
I very much doubt that this was the first time that Wikimedians sat down
and discussed user groups. ;-)
I don't doubt that it has happen in the past, it is hardly new :) What is new is the intention to escalate it and to integrate it with the internal processes of the wmf. It is the "angular stone", and it is nor easy nor obvious how it should happen. The fact that there was the first attempt to create a togetherness it is by itself very promising.
Like Jane, I'm curious what you mean by Commons reform. Can you please elaborate?
I meant Wikidata for Commons. I have not been following the last updates, but I thought that there were many interested users in seeing that happen to solve standing issues in Commons and to prepare it to compete at a bigger scale with other sharing picture platforms out there.
Cheers, Micru
PS: I thank you for sharing your thoughts, MZMcBride, I don't think we had the pleasure to meet in person but I hope it happens soon at any venue :)
I agree with a bunch of what you're saying here. That's probably worth saying up front, because I'm going to disagree with a bunch of it, too.
to assume good faith.
"Assume good faith", and nearby concepts such as "be civil", have in the long term severely damaged the social infrastructure of the projects.
I believe that with a strong inner peace conflicts would be less, the atmosphere would improve, and the so-called "editor decline" would be a problem of the past.
I agree that the editor decline is due partly to toxic social atmosphere (mostly, in my experience, on Wikipedia; the smaller sisters are homier, though of course it's hard to know how much of that is simply because they're smaller). Hopefully it's clear that there no way to externally enforce inner peace, and I suggest that attempting to do so is a major source of social toxicity.
That goodwill can be cultivated at upper levels too.
Maybe. Not through "assume good faith", though, which merely gives upper levels an excuse to ignore things they don't want to hear.
Sometimes there are decisions that must be taken to improve our sites, and some of them have
created a lot of drama which maybe could have been minimized by enabling
expression spaces, where there can be some real communication happening, that is, bidirectional, and not to force any ideas, just to foster understanding.
That's a key mistake of reasoning, right there. The Foundation making bad decisions is a problem because the decisions are bad, and any resentment is a secondary concern. The Foundation cannot help making, statistically, bad decisions. The Foundation is intrinsically less qualified than the contributors to make decisions about what direction is in the best interests of the sisterhood; the Foundation's unilateral judgement cannot help being mostly worse for the sisterhood than the contributors' judgement. Can the contributor base make bad decisions? Sure, but the Foundation is at least as likely to be wrong about when that's going to happen as they are likely to be wrong about anything else.
That is, the problem isn't that the Foundation needs to find a better way to liase with the contributors about situations where the Foundation must make unilateral strategic decisions, the problem is that the Foundation is under the delusion there are situations like that. The problem can't be addressed by helping the Foundation to make better unilateral decisions, because it's not possible for the Foundation to be enabled to do so. The problem can't be addressed by improving Foundation-contributor relations, because that doesn't make the Foundations' decisions less damaging to the infrastructure.
In the wikimedia movement there is a serious lack of said expression spaces. For instance, during the WMCON 15, it was the first time that user groups representatives seated down together, also with some WMF employees, to discuss user groups in an open manner. I think it is a big step forward which paves the way in other areas too.
Communicating is much better than not communicating. The Foundation institutionally recognizing its limitations is badly needed.
There is for instance the need to create roads for users to progress in the movement, to bring users from "casual reader" to a "wise wikimedian" status.
Now, that is very true. One really good thing to do for that would be to consistently emphasize users working directly with wiki markup (which teaches by exaemple, something systematically prevented by WYSIWYG), and consistently emphasize everything being done in wiki markup rather than separate languages such as Lua or JavaScript (or, FSM help us all, PHP).
Such a wise people already exist in our movement, it is a pity that we don't enable more knowledge transfer between the "elders" and newcomers, because when one of our wise wikimedian (digitally) dies, it leaves behind a big gap which is very big to fill up again.
Capturing contributor experience, enabling it to be applied and transferred to newcomers, is what I mean to accomplish with my dialog tools https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Help:Dialog. I mean to transform wiki markup into a medium that can make wikis crowdsourced repositories of know-how about wikis for contributors as well as of knowledge for readers.
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