The BoT have made some mistakes in the past few days, in the ways they've handled information, silent on critical situation that requires urgent clarification, and how they kept the community in the dark about certain decision. This is painful and that was a poor decision on their part. We have every right to be disappointed in them but that doesn't mean we should give up on them. The WMF's mission is not about us, it's not about them but about millions of people across the world that find the Wikimedia projects useful and helpful. It is easy to believe in people when they are succeeding and it's easy to be disappointed in them when they are failing. The BoT should understand that the Wikimedia projects we have today was built by the community with the efforts of thousands of volunteers across the world and it took many years to build this amazing resources. Patricio Lorente and his team should focus on what is productive and try as much as they can to avoid anything that is counterproductive. They should learn to consult the community and staffs in taking some decision that is likely to generate controversies. Best, Olatunde Isaac Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile. -----Original Message----- From: wikimedia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org Sender: "Wikimedia-l" &lt;wikimedia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;Datet;Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2016 09:25:07 To: &lt;wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Reply-To: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 143, Issue 111 Send Wikimedia-l mailing list submissions to wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to wikimedia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org You can reach the person managing the list at wikimedia-l-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Wikimedia-l digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT (Ziko van Dijk) 2. Technical issues of Wikimedia [was: Particular interests and common ground] (Amir Ladsgroup) 3. Re: Technical issues of Wikimedia [was: Particular interests and common ground] (Szymon Grabarczuk) 4. Re: Technical issues of Wikimedia [was: Particular interests and common ground] (Milos Rancic) 5. Re: An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT (Chris Keating) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2016 01:50:49 +0100 From: Ziko van Dijk &lt;zvandijk(a)gmail.com&gt; To: Wikimedia Mailing List &lt;wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT Message-ID: &lt;CADut_2+aCvreKL=XdcusE6TJOPu8EdmhvAsX-BeRxWG-T4L8nQ(a)mail.gmail.com&gt; Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Dear Ido, Thank you for your e-mail. I am also grateful to many other people who have contributed to give us a better understanding of the past and the present (it is a lot of work). I would like to read your opinion about two things that I find astonishing and urging for a remedy: * How it could come so far that staff members so openly applaud critical voices about their boss, Lila Tretikov. This is a really terrible signal about the state of the Foundation. Ido, do you agree with William Beutler in the Signpost that it is not possible to imagine how the staff and Lila Tretikov can go on together? * We have heard from some of the board members. I actually miss the voice of the chair. It is the task of a chair, certainly in a crisis like this, to contribute to more clearness, what the Board is thinking, what it intends to do next. Ido, imagine that the board makes a new start possible, which would include a new community election. Would you regard that to be helpful? Kind regards Ziko ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2016 02:02:57 +0000 From: Amir Ladsgroup &lt;ladsgroup(a)gmail.com&gt; To: Wikimedia Mailing List &lt;wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Technical issues of Wikimedia [was: Particular interests and common ground] Message-ID: &lt;CA+ttme1o1v+6cC3rxHtr1OrHY=iA-a6k8Qhcb=aW7jrOG4=j3A(a)mail.gmail.com&gt; Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Hey Milos, You talked about things that I'm in no place to comment but I want to emphasize on this part of your email: "For the last 8 years, just two things have been working without problems in WMF: Money and tech infrastructure (servers, "plain" MediaWiki, optimizations etc.)." We hear about technical issues of Wikipedia a lot. We hear Wikipedia is behind in technology, that it's underperforming. etc. etc. It's not just you. It's a lot of people in the community of editors too. I highly doubt that I can comment on this matter, there are definitely better people but I can't keep it anymore. Maybe my perspective as a non-WMF employee who works in technical issues would be worth publishing. The process of getting something technical done is as the same as editing in wiki. It needs a certain amount of expertise like editing most of the articles as well. Anyone can make a patch for every part of Wikipedia and after some code review. it's there. IMO saying "technical parts of Wikipedia sucks" is as the same as "Wikipedia sucks". Technical space of Wikimedia is filled with volunteers. I saw unimaginable times that people work over the weekend, take a day off and then work again because unlike most companies people care about their job in a good way. Helping in technical issues just need passion and caring. Let me tell you a story. I didn't know how to write a line of code in my first three years of editing Wikipedia. I was just a teenage boy who was making articles about movies he watched, songs he liked, etc. and then I cared about Wikipedia so much that I wanted to help more and I heard about cool things called robots (and believe me, for a very long time I thought bots are physical things that edit Wikipedia) so I tried to read about it, there was virtually no help in Persian and my English was so bad that I needed dictionary for everything I read (google translate was a sci-fi idea back then) but I learned and learned and I'm still learning just to make Wikipedia a better place, I hate programming as a goal, it's just a mean. I just want to remind you people done a hell out of job in technical aspects. It wasn't just in their working time. It was also a huge volunteer time too, either by staff or non-WMF employees. Feeling this advantages is not hard. Just take a look at Google's Knol. It was done by *the* Google and it's this. We, as a movement, are competing with companies like Google, Facebook or twitter the same way we are competing with Britannica. Honestly, I think if someone just published a statement saying "There is a cool project called Knowledge Engine but we don't have money for it, We can just give you a space to put your source code and test it, and running it." We would be knocking over google by 2020, as what we did with Britannica. I think, maybe I'm wrong please correct me if I am, the biggest problem is the user interface design of Wikipedia. It looks boring. I know there were, and there are great designers who also love Wikipedia the same way you do. I saw what they are capable of. Look at Winter or preferences redesign [1]. They are capable of making Wikipedia ten times more user-friendly and beautiful. I don't know why it hasn't happened, maybe the community is too conservative, maybe it's some kind of branding. I asked my life partner and he said Wikipedia looks beautiful to the most of its readers, the same way a fresh cupcake smells good, because Wikipedia is awesome. I guess people who work in bakeries doesn't like the smell of cupcakes as much as other people. My last words: If you encounter any technical issues, please report and if you think it's important to solve technical problems you are more than welcome to join the club. Just check out the developer hub [2] and there are tons of manuals in the internet, also there are people in IRC channels willing to help. [1]: It aches my heart every time I see it: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Redesign_user_preferenc… [2]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_hub I hope more people chime in and comment to fix this misconception or correct me. Best ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2016 04:01:38 +0100 From: Szymon Grabarczuk &lt;tar.locesilion(a)gmail.com&gt; To: Wikimedia Mailing List &lt;wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Technical issues of Wikimedia [was: Particular interests and common ground] Message-ID: &lt;CAPv2NmcCGf9fVeDRhK_S6FhpPh81=-dxj_sduqTVXX+2NnQA8g(a)mail.gmail.com&gt; Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 +1 for "saying 'technical parts of Wikipedia sucks' is as the same as 'Wikipedia sucks' ". +1 for "the biggest problem is the user interface design of Wikipedia" and your Winter-related thoughts (I may be also wrong). Thanks for all the message. On 20 February 2016 at 03:02, Amir Ladsgroup &lt;ladsgroup(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- *Szymon Grabarczuk* Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU Head of Research & Development Group, Wikimedia Polska pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tar_Lócesilion <http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tar_L%C3%B3cesilion> ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2016 09:29:15 +0100 From: Milos Rancic &lt;millosh(a)gmail.com&gt; To: Wikimedia Mailing List &lt;wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Technical issues of Wikimedia [was: Particular interests and common ground] Message-ID: &lt;CAHPiQ2ELrAP49GjFuU381twCgBk8Lx_rO-A+hfExnK4CqMA46A(a)mail.gmail.com&gt; Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 3:02 AM, Amir Ladsgroup &lt;ladsgroup(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Just to be clear, as mails like my previous one could be wrongly understood, obviously. I said "without problems" vs. "with problems", not "competent" vs. "incompetent" or "good" vs. "bad" etc. Both money and infrastructure have been no issues for almost a decade (servers longer than money). I am not waking up with the thought that Wikimedia won't have enough money or that servers wouldn't work. (OK, there are some invisible things, like accounting, which obviously haven't been a problem at any point of time.) Everything else has been a kind of problem, but I wasn't going into details. If we are talking about MediaWiki itself, the core is going with infrastructure and it's no issue. In relation to the features, which are the problem, it's related to the articulation of the needed features and allocating resources to create them. Thus, it's the problem of upper management. I know we have a lot of quite competent developers. But I didn't want to go into this kind of analysis. In some cases the causes are obvious, in some other they are not. I just wanted to detect that, besides very limited number of no issues, we have tons of problems, the most of them being the same as a decade ago. ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2016 09:25:03 +0000 From: Chris Keating &lt;chriskeatingwiki(a)gmail.com&gt; To: Wikimedia Mailing List &lt;wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT Message-ID: &lt;CAFche1qiBsPNFmvHrJLU_k69LD0tHCzFGDeUeSAGMDsgPHXPxg(a)mail.gmail.com&gt; Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 On 19 Feb 2016 23:49, "Denny Vrandecic" wrote this engage everything she Hi Denny (and the rest of the Board), conversations from similar organisations) it is usually better to have Board members contributing to debates with their own voices. It's really reassuring to know that someone is saying something. Silence, by contrast, results in a lot of doubts. Thinking back to the Haifa letter and the discussion around fundraising and so on in 2011-2 - it was really helpful in that discussion when WMF board members started sharing their (conflicting) views rather than communicating through agreed statements ( which took hours to write and then ended up being really unclear anyway ). It meant that the Board started to look like a bunch of people trying to do the best job given conflicting perspectives, and stopped looking like an uncontrollable monolith. Of course it doesn't help that there are some people on this list who will leap at every statement to find fault with it - but usually those people are fed more by silence than by engagement. And of course it is not always possible to talk publically about differences of approach or upcoming issues - particularly where staff are concerned - but it is best to talk as far as you can, in my view. Chris of hard results seconds to load to and is first TechOps and and etc. Translation top. people off. get https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> ------------------------------ Subject: Digest Footer _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ------------------------------ End of Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 143, Issue 111 *********************************************