On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 11:44 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:

On 1 March 2011 19:35, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:

...

I'm curious how

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Storyteller

...

fits in with Wikimedia's mission or its strategic plan.

It's pretty much directly answered right there on the linked page, for anyone else who's wondering.

What bit of the page wasn't clear?

Thanks David - I tried to make it as clear as possible.

But there is one important purpose of that job that may be a bit hidden in between the lines: For this position, I'm looking for someone who can help free us from dependence on "The Jimmy Letter" in fundraising.

No one -- least of all Jimmy -- thinks it's acceptable that our fundraising model relies entirely on a letter from the founder. In the 2010 fundraiser, we found that banners from editors (and Sue) got similar, sometimes slightly better, click rates as the Jimmy banners.

But the best 15 or 20 major versions Jimmy's letters all performed massively better than the best-performing editor letters. (BTW: Megan and Ryan Faulkner are working on a big post-fundraiser report on our testing which will be released here as soon as it's done.)

Therefore, there's a large chunk of creative work to be done in discovering letters that can work from editors -- and not only editors, but also readers, donors, and other figures, such as maybe the Nobel Laureate Physicist who writes us fan mail.

There's no question that the winning letters have to be written by the people themselves -- not only for reasons of integrity, but also because fake letters don't actually work. But letters don't work as fundraisers simply because they come from the heart. They need to tell a gripping story (in two paragraphs!), ask for money effectively, and answer several questions that potential donors have on their minds.

That's a tall order. And that's why I want to hire someone to go spend a ton of one-on-one time with a whole lot of Wikimedians while working on these letters.

That is not all this person will do. They will also capture images and hopefully some video.

And not just for the fundraiser. For the purposes of the fundraiser, we need this person to amass a mountain of creative material that we can remix, in collaboration with the original voices behind the material, and test during the fundraiser.

But shouldn't we use that mountain of material for other purposes too? Yes. And so this person -- if we are lucky enough to find someone to fill this role -- will also work closely with Jay & Moka in Communications to use this material for general purposes too. (Please send recommendations if you know anyone who can fill this role!)

Max, I hope that helps. If it doesn't, just let me know and I'll provide more info.

Zack

• d.

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Zack Exley wrote:

But there is one important purpose of that job that may be a bit hidden in between the lines: For this position, I'm looking for someone who can help free us from dependence on "The Jimmy Letter" in fundraising.

I think part of my confusion (maybe the biggest chunk of it) comes from terminology and naming. I guess you're not really trying to hire a "storyteller," you're trying to hire a "public relations (fundraising)" person. One title is obviously a bit more poetic, but also a lot more confusing, I think.

The other aspect to this that's confusing to me is the underlying purpose of the "Community Department." Best as I can tell, it's largely focused on fundraising. Is there a description of the current "Community Department" that clarifies what it does (other than fundraising)? I'm not saying that Wikimedia shouldn't have a team devoted to fundraising, but I don't really understand why it's named the way it is. Is there something wrong with it being named the "Fundraising Department"? I can't imagine I'm the only one confused about this.

MZMcBride

Did autocomplete change your sentence Fred? I don't follow and it doesn't seem to relate to MZMcBride's new question about naming.

-- Dan Rosenthal

Sent from my iPhone. My apologies for any brevity.

On Mar 1, 2011, at 1:33 PM, "Fred Bauder" fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:

...

Is there something wrong with it being named the "Fundraising Department"? I can't imagine I'm the only one confused about this.

MZMcBride

There is plenty wrong with messing with us. This is hardly the first time. I doubt advancing the project is on your agenda.

Fred

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________________________________ From: Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, March 1, 2011 4:46:10 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia "Storyteller" job opening

________________________________ From: MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, March 1, 2011 3:24:37 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia "Storyteller" job opening

Zack Exley wrote:

But there is one important purpose of that job that may be a bit hidden in between the lines: For this position, I'm looking for someone who can help free us from dependence on "The Jimmy Letter" in fundraising.

I think part of my confusion (maybe the biggest chunk of it) comes from terminology and naming. I guess you're not really trying to hire a "storyteller," you're trying to hire a "public relations (fundraising)" person. One title is obviously a bit more poetic, but also a lot more confusing, I think.

The other aspect to this that's confusing to me is the underlying purpose of the "Community Department." Best as I can tell, it's largely focused on fundraising. Is there a description of the current "Community Department" that clarifies what it does (other than fundraising)? I'm not saying that Wikimedia shouldn't have a team devoted to fundraising, but I don't really understand why it's named the way it is. Is there something wrong with it being named the "Fundraising Department"? I can't imagine I'm the only one confused about this.

It makes sense to me that there would be a lot of overlap on the ground delivering the two messages "We are a worthwhile project and you can join us and

contribute on our websites" and "We are a worthwhile project and you can donate

some money to the supporting Foundation".

Ambiguity is only a bad thing when someone knows exactly what they want and they

choose to be unclear about it rather than when is someone aware of a general need while being somewhat open-minded about how might be filled. This situation

strikes me as the latter, advertising for a writer to develop public relations material for fundraising would probably bring in a much more narrow set of applicants and would also make it harder to get the new employee to take the other duties that are desired seriously. I don't know how much hiring you have done, but it is not uncommon for people to get their minds set as to what their "job" is early on and getting them to put a lot of effort into things they believe are "not what they were hired to do" is difficult. So if you want a new

employee to have a wide range of duties, you should advertise describing a more open-ended position. People that have narrow mindsets are less likely to apply for vague jobs, and everyone wins because good hiring is all about fit. Narrow and well-settled duties = detailed description of opening. Wide-ranging and uncertain duties = ambiguous description of opening.

Birgitte SB

Also you have to remember that the purpose of http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Storyteller is not to explain the job to curious community members. The only purpose that should be considered in writing a job opening is to attract people who may be a good fit for the job and inspire them to apply, while repelling people who would be a bad fit for the job. The target audience of the job opening is job seekers. The only useful measure to judge if a job opening was "good" is whether it resulted in lots of applicants that you would like to find out more about and few applicants that are an obviously poor fit. Wasting your time processing the applications of obviously unsuitable people is nearly as bad as not producing an interview pool filled with equally great applications. And the former has become the more likely scenario these past few years. So if you personally find that a job opening turns you off, it may just be working quite well. A good job opening should turn off a fair number of people.

Birgitte SB

On 3/1/2011 2:46 PM, Birgitte SB wrote:

Ambiguity is only a bad thing when someone knows exactly what they want and they choose to be unclear about it rather than when is someone aware of a general need while being somewhat open-minded about how might be filled. This situation strikes me as the latter, advertising for a writer to develop public relations material for fundraising would probably bring in a much more narrow set of applicants and would also make it harder to get the new employee to take the other duties that are desired seriously. I don't know how much hiring you have done, but it is not uncommon for people to get their minds set as to what their "job" is early on and getting them to put a lot of effort into things they believe are "not what they were hired to do" is difficult. So if you want a new employee to have a wide range of duties, you should advertise describing a more open-ended position. People that have narrow mindsets are less likely to apply for vague jobs, and everyone wins because good hiring is all about fit. Narrow and well-settled duties = detailed description of opening. Wide-ranging and uncertain duties = ambiguous description of opening.

This explanation is quite insightful, I think. The challenge described is a significant piece of why the Wikimedia Foundation has developed a somewhat non-standard approach to its organizational structure and allocation of staff responsibilities. Practically every conversation I've had with Sue about this, while hiring for a number of different positions, has touched on how unusual a combination of background, skills, and personality is needed for someone to be the right fit for us, and how adaptable both we and the candidates have to be during the hiring process in how we think about the position.

--Michael Snow

Stories are absolutely essential to any non-profit's ability to persuade new people to support or join its cause. Sometimes we tell our stories well, sometimes we tell them poorly. Telling a story well is a very specific skillset that few people possess. Even for those who are good writers (and of course there are many in Wikimedia), it takes a lot of conscious effort to construct a narrative in a way that's accessible and appealing to someone who's not already on the inside.

We've talked about this issue at length in the past. Back in October 2007, I tried to call attention to the significance of storytelling specifically in fundraising:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-October/thread.html#3...

In that fundraiser, we made some first humble efforts at storytelling, and we've more systematically collected and compiled stories since then. But just putting stories on a page, like this one:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Stories2/en

Is not going to persuade anyone to support us. As Zack said, in the context of fundraising, it's all about distilling essential points effectively. In the context of other movement work, such as public outreach, it's about connecting with our target audience by choosing meaningful examples that resonate (how do you talk to educators, to scientists, to students). People have made attempts at telling success stories of public outreach here, for example:

http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Success_stories

But all these stories would benefit from a more skillful approach to telling them. The structure of a story is one of the most fundamental ways in which human beings understand the world, and we all have a regrettable tendency to underestimate that significance. As I have in the past, I'd really encourage you to watch Andy Goodman's talk in full:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-289257716014946841

He gives plenty of examples of non-profits that are terrible at telling their own story, which can have disastrous consequences. There's absolutely nothing morally questionable about telling a story effectively -- if anything it's morally pernicious to tell an important story poorly. To have a staff position dedicated to this is a wonderful thing, and if we find someone really good for this job, the benefits will become obvious really, really quickly.

On 2 March 2011 00:53, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:

Stories are absolutely essential to any non-profit's ability to persuade new people to support or join its cause. Sometimes we tell our stories well, sometimes we tell them poorly. Telling a story well is a very specific skillset that few people possess. Even for those who are good writers (and of course there are many in Wikimedia), it takes a lot of conscious effort to construct a narrative in a way that's accessible and appealing to someone who's not already on the inside.

Erik wikipedians do know their history. The English term is propaganda. Please use it. If you feel completely unable to use it "public relations" is the closest to an acceptable alturnative.

We've talked about this issue at length in the past. Back in October 2007, I tried to call attention to the significance of storytelling specifically in fundraising:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-October/thread.html#3...

In that fundraiser, we made some first humble efforts at storytelling, and we've more systematically collected and compiled stories since then. But just putting stories on a page, like this one:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Stories2/en

Is not going to persuade anyone to support us.

Well lets face it. Your problem is not that you don't have a propaganda line it's that the old one (bare bones foundation struggling on a minimal budget) is no longer remotely credible.

So you are now looking for someone to create new propaganda lines that allows for greater foundation growth with a larger budget.

Now it's possible that that could be a lot of fun. Spreading twitter like propaganda about how we are helping with whatever moderately good news story there is this week (hey no journalist is going to go to the effort to prove it is false). Trying to get pro wikipedia statements out of random role models that kind of thing (although if a football WAG ever tuns up in a donate to wikipedia T-shit there is going to be trouble with a capital Z).

However it is understandable that people are going to be concerned about what this means with regards to the direction the foundation is taking.

As Zack said, in the context of fundraising, it's all about distilling essential points effectively. In the context of other movement work, such as public outreach, it's about connecting with our target audience by choosing meaningful examples that resonate (how do you talk to educators, to scientists, to students).

Which I seem to recall is a role that has largely been left to the chapters. Now thats a choice the foundation is free to make but it does rather render your position inconsistent with events.

People have made attempts at telling success stories of public outreach here, for example:

http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Success_stories

But all these stories would benefit from a more skillful approach to telling them. The structure of a story is one of the most fundamental ways in which human beings understand the world, and we all have a regrettable tendency to underestimate that significance. As I have in the past, I'd really encourage you to watch Andy Goodman's talk in full:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-289257716014946841

Why? Have Edward Bernays works been banned or something?

He gives plenty of examples of non-profits that are terrible at telling their own story, which can have disastrous consequences. There's absolutely nothing morally questionable about telling a story effectively -- if anything it's morally pernicious to tell an important story poorly.

Oh nice try. Great set of appeals to emotions and attempts to falsely frame the debate. Just one tiny problem. We are wikipedians. Not only do we tend not to see the world in terms of stories (See wikipedia's house style sometime) but a big part of NPOV is shattering stories.

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 4:22 PM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:

...

On 3/1/2011 2:46 PM, Birgitte SB wrote:

...

Ambiguity is only a bad thing when someone knows exactly what they want and they choose to be unclear about it rather than when is someone aware of a general need while being somewhat open-minded about how might be filled.  This situation strikes me as the latter, advertising for a writer to develop public relations material for fundraising would probably bring in a much more narrow set of applicants and would also make it harder to get the new employee to take the other duties that are desired seriously.  I don't know how much hiring you have done, but it is not uncommon for people to get their minds set as to what their "job" is early on and getting them to put a lot of effort into things they believe are "not what they were hired to do" is difficult.  So if you want a new employee to have a wide range of duties, you should advertise describing a more open-ended position. People that have narrow mindsets are less likely to apply for vague jobs, and everyone wins because good hiring is all about fit. Narrow and well-settled duties = detailed description of opening.  Wide-ranging and uncertain duties = ambiguous description of opening.

on 3/1/11 7:08 PM, Michael Snow at wikipedia@frontier.com wrote:

...

This explanation is quite insightful, I think. The challenge described is a significant piece of why the Wikimedia Foundation has developed a somewhat non-standard approach to its organizational structure and allocation of staff responsibilities. Practically every conversation I've had with Sue about this, while hiring for a number of different positions, has touched on how unusual a combination of background, skills, and personality is needed for someone to be the right fit for us, and how adaptable both we and the candidates have to be during the hiring process in how we think about the position.

Michael, do you, and the rest of the Foundation staff, have any idea how detached - yes, estranged - you are becoming from the Community that is at the heart of this Project?

Marc Riddell

Michael isn't staff; he's the former chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board, and is speaking as a (very) long-time and respected community member.

-- phoebe

David Gerard wrote:

On 1 March 2011 19:35, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:

...

I'm curious how http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Storyteller fits in with Wikimedia's mission or its strategic plan.

It's pretty much directly answered right there on the linked page, for anyone else who's wondering.

What bit of the page wasn't clear?

The part where adding this person leads to better content? Wikimedia's mission is to educate the world with free content. I'm not sure how a Propaganda Minister really furthers that goal. There is a very finite amount of resources for staff hires; I just don't see how this passes any type of reasonable cost/benefit analysis.

If it's the outside world's perception of Wikimedia that is the underlying concern, I think hiring someone whose job description includes "make something incredibly beautiful every month" might be more detrimental to Wikimedia's image and mission than anything else. There are a lot of people who would be (more) willing to donate to Wikimedia if they didn't feel their donations would be spent like this, in my view.

MZMcBride

David Gerard wrote:

On 1 March 2011 20:22, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:

...

The part where adding this person leads to better content? Wikimedia's mission is to educate the world with free content. I'm not sure how a Propaganda Minister really furthers that goal. There is a very finite amount of resources for staff hires; I just don't see how this passes any type of reasonable cost/benefit analysis.

If it's the outside world's perception of Wikimedia that is the underlying concern, I think hiring someone whose job description includes "make something incredibly beautiful every month" might be more detrimental to Wikimedia's image and mission than anything else. There are a lot of people who would be (more) willing to donate to Wikimedia if they didn't feel their donations would be spent like this, in my view.

You appear to be generalising from your personal preferences to the world here. This is a common fallacy and a really bad idea in general.

It's not really about my personal preferences (I originally asked how this job opening fits within Wikimedia's strategic plan or mission). You've chosen to side-step the actual questions being asked here (twice now). Based on my past discussions with you, I generally take this to mean that you agree with the premise, but don't want to say so aloud. (Your brand of Wikimedia criticism is much more diplomatic than my own, to be sure.) If I'm wrong and you really do believe that this job opening is a good idea, perhaps you can explain why you think that. :-)

MZMcBride

On 1 March 2011 20:44, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:

It's not really about my personal preferences (I originally asked how this job opening fits within Wikimedia's strategic plan or mission). You've chosen to side-step the actual questions being asked here (twice now). Based on my past discussions with you, I generally take this to mean that you agree with the premise, but don't want to say so aloud. (Your brand of Wikimedia criticism is much more diplomatic than my own, to be sure.) If I'm wrong and you really do believe that this job opening is a good idea, perhaps you can explain why you think that. :-)

Here's one line of reasoning:

a) Our fundraising was effective (it brought in money) but also pretty tedious for readers - it relied heavily on variants of one banner, with the side-effect that millions upon millions of people were forced to stare at one J. Wales for quite a while, only lightly alleviated by staring at someone else for a short time before reverting to the original.

b) This was widely derided (see discussions passim), with people objecting to it for reasons including (in no particular order): i) undue focus on "figurehead" personality; ii) stylistic issues; iii) terminology (mostly of non-Wales banners, sometimes of letters); iv) sheer tedium of seeing the same thing for a month; etc. etc. ...

c) ...but pretty much everything else we tried didn't work very well...

d) ...even though, anecdotally, people liked seeing the other ones much more than they liked the routine banners.

e) Running another fundraiser is probably inevitable.

Given these points, it seems a good idea to try to ensure that when we next throw big banners up at a million people to ask them for money, we do so in a way that is less tedious and irritating. It seems a fairly good approach (anecdotally, at least) that people like the varied individual user banners; the problem is that there's something not quite working about them.

Hiring someone to make them work - thus allowing us to do away with the All Wales, All The Time approach which was, to say the least, not universally loved - will hopefully mean the next donation campaign annoys fewer people. That doesn't seem too unreasonable, to me.

(The actual job description did make my eyes roll a bit, though. "Storyteller", oh dear.)

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 6:39 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:

Andrew Gray wrote:

...

Here's one line of reasoning:

a) Our fundraising was effective (it brought in money) but also pretty tedious for readers - it relied heavily on variants of one banner, with the side-effect that millions upon millions of people were forced to stare at one J. Wales for quite a while, only lightly alleviated by staring at someone else for a short time before reverting to the original.

b) This was widely derided (see discussions passim), with people objecting to it for reasons including (in no particular order): i) undue focus on "figurehead" personality; ii) stylistic issues; iii) terminology (mostly of non-Wales banners, sometimes of letters); iv) sheer tedium of seeing the same thing for a month; etc. etc. ...

c) ...but pretty much everything else we tried didn't work very well...

d) ...even though, anecdotally, people liked seeing the other ones much more than they liked the routine banners.

e) Running another fundraiser is probably inevitable.

Given these points, it seems a good idea to try to ensure that when we next throw big banners up at a million people to ask them for money, we do so in a way that is less tedious and irritating. It seems a fairly good approach (anecdotally, at least) that people like the varied individual user banners; the problem is that there's something not quite working about them.

Hiring someone to make them work - thus allowing us to do away with the All Wales, All The Time approach which was, to say the least, not universally loved - will hopefully mean the next donation campaign annoys fewer people. That doesn't seem too unreasonable, to me.

(The actual job description did make my eyes roll a bit, though. "Storyteller", oh dear.)

Thank you very much for this post, Andrew. This post clarified the job role in a very nice, clear way and I really appreciate you taking the time to write it.

Agreed with MzM that (though I do not have any special insight into this job and what it entails or is meant to entail in particular) Andrew's post was good, clear, and made an excellent point. And I think I am going to adopt the phrase "see discussions passim" whenever applicable!

Model discourse, we can haz :)

-- phoebe

Le 01/03/2011 17:26, David Gerard a écrit :

On 1 March 2011 20:22, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:

...

The part where adding this person leads to better content? Wikimedia's mission is to educate the world with free content. I'm not sure how a Propaganda Minister really furthers that goal. There is a very finite amount of resources for staff hires; I just don't see how this passes any type of reasonable cost/benefit analysis. If it's the outside world's perception of Wikimedia that is the underlying concern, I think hiring someone whose job description includes "make something incredibly beautiful every month" might be more detrimental to Wikimedia's image and mission than anything else. There are a lot of people who would be (more) willing to donate to Wikimedia if they didn't feel their donations would be spent like this, in my view.

You appear to be generalising from your personal preferences to the world here. This is a common fallacy and a really bad idea in general.

No, I subscribe to this point of view and all my circle of relations feel the same about donating to non-profit organizations who show too much interest into receiving money. I'm not insinuating any accusation but stating a fact about a category of minds.

David, your sentence wasn't very clear. You're "doubting"[1] that the ethical-driven concerns expressed by MZMcBride can be generalized. Are you saying that this point of view is so minoritary, maybe even unique, that it should be disconsidered?

Let's pretend you're right for a second.

If there is such a minority of ethical concerns, it could be one of the reasons that volunteers are leaving the boat. Nobody likes being exploited, in particular volunteers. This is a common mistake of volunteers management. (aka "butchering the golden egg producing chicken"). This hypothesis would be worth checking. A survey could be drawn about why the very active wikipedians left since 2001.

[1]: in fact you even say it would be a fallacy.

Le 01/03/2011 18:31, Michael Snow a écrit :

On 3/1/2011 12:57 PM, Pronoein wrote:

...

If there is such a minority of ethical concerns, it could be one of the reasons that volunteers are leaving the boat.

Based on the one survey of former contributors that has been conducted (see http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Former_Contributors_Survey_Results), this doesn't figure highly enough to demonstrate the kind of significant minority you suggest. Rather, the concerns of those surveyed are overwhelmingly about how rulebound, overly complex, and unfriendly their work in the community seemed to be. Perhaps somebody would care to go back through the full survey responses and see if they can identify comments that fit the "I was being exploited" line you're pushing here. I would prefer to hope that as the foundation's community department works to develop the fundraising and messaging, it will also create and improve upon initiatives that lead to a better community environment, as that seems to be the dominant problem.

Thank you for your answer Michael. However: «Note that this survey was aimed at less experienced editors. »

I remember for example that many administrators quit during the sexual content controversy because of the decision of Jimbo. Those people were driven by a vision of a certain type of governance and felt betrayed or disappointed.

-----Original Message----- From: Michael Snow wikipedia@frontier.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, Mar 1, 2011 3:49 pm Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia "Storyteller" job opening

On 3/1/2011 2:41 PM, Pronoein wrote:

Thank you for your answer Michael. However: «Note that this survey was aimed at less experienced editors. »

I remember for example that many administrators quit during the sexual content controversy because of the decision of Jimbo. Those people were driven by a vision of a certain type of governance and felt betrayed or disappointed.

I acknowledge the limitations of the survey, and as always would be thrilled if we had more and better data. But since you were connecting your thesis to a broad systemic trend, I considered it more useful to look at evidence of systemic trends, not anecdotal reactions to a single incident. In terms of volunteer motivation, I'd have to think being "driven by a vision of a certain type of governance" has to rank pretty low, considering that our mission has nothing to do with promoting any particular vision in that field. A survey of former administrators or something like that might be informative, certainly, if somebody is available to drive that. My guess is that compared with other former volunteers, their responses would have more similarity than difference.

--Michael Snow -----------------------------

I think you two are talking at cross purposes here. It's not that volunteers are motivated to contribute *based* on the governance model. It's that they decide to *quit* based on the governance model.

The police are your friends until they screw with you. Then they are not. Can a person who has been screwed with, ever be reconciled again to the project?

The project has situations encoded into it, which don't go away simply because they are ignored.

W

On 1 March 2011 15:54, SlimVirgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 16:41, Pronoein pronoein@gmail.com wrote:

...

Le 01/03/2011 18:31, Michael Snow a écrit :

...

On 3/1/2011 12:57 PM, Pronoein wrote:

...

If there is such a minority of ethical concerns, it could be one of the reasons that volunteers are leaving the boat.

Based on the one survey of former contributors that has been conducted (see http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Former_Contributors_Survey_Results), this doesn't figure highly enough to demonstrate the kind of significant minority you suggest. Rather, the concerns of those surveyed are overwhelmingly about how rulebound, overly complex, and unfriendly their work in the community seemed to be. Perhaps somebody would care to go back through the full survey responses and see if they can identify comments that fit the "I was being exploited" line you're pushing here.

Michael, I wouldn't underestimate the "I'm being exploited" feeling for

people either leaving, or failing to join up. In Wikipedia's early years, we were exploiting ourselves, as it were. But the more of a corporate structure the Foundation assumes, the greater the sense that we're working for something in which we have no input. There will be a tipping point that differs for each individual, and they may not even express it in those terms.

Ah, Sarah, I don't think that's particularly fair. Bear in mind we've just published a strategic plan that 1,000+ Wikimedians helped create. I'm not denying that some Wikimedians may feel alienated from the Wikimedia Foundation: I'm sure it is true for some. But "something in which we have no input" is, IMO, not a fair characterization.

Thanks, Sue

Sarah _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On 3/1/2011 4:31 PM, SlimVirgin wrote:

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 18:06, Sue Gardnersgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

On 1 March 2011 15:54, SlimVirginslimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:

...

Michael, I wouldn't underestimate the "I'm being exploited" feeling for people either leaving, or failing to join up. In Wikipedia's early years, we were exploiting ourselves, as it were. But the more of a corporate structure the Foundation assumes, the greater the sense that we're working for something in which we have no input. There will be a tipping point that differs for each individual, and they may not even express it in those terms.

Ah, Sarah, I don't think that's particularly fair. Bear in mind we've just published a strategic plan that 1,000+ Wikimedians helped create. I'm not denying that some Wikimedians may feel alienated from the Wikimedia Foundation: I'm sure it is true for some. But "something in which we have no input" is, IMO, not a fair characterization.

Thanks, Sue

I accept that, Sue, but it's a matter of perception. I can see a lot of effort on the Foundation's part to reach out to new communities, but a similar "in-reach" program to keep current editors feeling invested would help a lot.

I appreciate that, and would renew my suggestion to have some kind of communications staff dedicated to internal relations, as distinct from external.

Every time one of these new jobs is announced it does add to the feeling (rightly or wrongly) of corporate expansion that we're not part of.

It's interesting that these feelings should attach to job openings in particular. In contrast to how it was put earlier - "Nobody likes being exploited, in particular volunteers" - actually, in my experience it is people who work for pay that most resent being exploited, not people who work for other reasons. While volunteers can feel that they have been taken advantage of when their work is abused, in general employees are much more sensitive to inadequate compensation for their labors, overwork, or being underappreciated. Volunteer motivation is important to understand, of course, although I'm not a big fan of "volunteer management" as a phrase because our environment is geared more toward self-organization and self-management. The foundation can try to influence things to motivate people up to a point, but one of the wonderful things about volunteers is that we supply our own motivation, and largely regulate it as well. Here we happen to be touching on a sensitive area, partly because balancing volunteer and staff effort is one of the factors in motivation, but there's also a factor here that's beyond the foundation's control, and where volunteers have to figure out their own motivation.

I realize that economic conditions in much of the world are not the best these days, and I sympathize with people who are personally affected. To get to one of the points underlying this discussion, I would like to offer some advice. Volunteers who happen to also be looking for paid work should not focus on openings at the Wikimedia Foundation as their solution, as it can't possibly hire all the diligent wiki editors who might want to work there, no matter how successful the next fundraiser is. For people looking to add volunteer work to boost their CV, I would expect that Wikipedia is now widely-recognized enough to give about the same benefit as volunteer work with various other well-known charities. But if someone is really focused on working at the Wikimedia Foundation specifically, then my advice is the same as it would be for anyone targeting a specific employer - demonstrate that you have the skills and experience that employer is looking for, or go get them, quite possibly by going elsewhere first. Experience in our particular community may figure as an advantage among similarly-qualified candidates, but it doesn't substitute for having other qualifications that the foundation needs for a position. Nor, as I expect current staff who started as editors could confirm, is working for the foundation the solution to all of your problems, just exchanging one set of challenges for another.

--Michael Snow

On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 11:06 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:

Sue Gardner wrote:

...

Ah, Sarah, I don't think that's particularly fair. Bear in mind we've just published a strategic plan that 1,000+ Wikimedians helped create. I'm not denying that some Wikimedians may feel alienated from the Wikimedia Foundation: I'm sure it is true for some. But "something in which we have no input" is, IMO, not a fair characterization.

This is an interesting comment given who actually authored the strategic plan. It's my understanding that several people (Eugene, you, Erik, and others) wrote different parts of the report, which were then compiled by people from Bridgespan. Is that accurate?

Is there a record of who wrote which parts of the report? It would be particularly interesting to see how much of it came from volunteers.

MZMcBride

MZ,

She didn't say they sat down and banged out the plan on their IBM Selectric. She said they helped create it. That's entirely accurate. It grew from the work of the task forces, research around the proposals, research in general…. all of those done by volunteers. While the final wording may have been "smithed" by a relatively smaller set of people, the first attempt was actually to have community members do that as well. It didn't work well - either because it's a task that was poorly facilitated (and if so, I'm to blame), or a task that was poorly defined, or simply a task that the people who were there weren't interested in doing (and as volunteers, that's their right and privilege), the writing had to be assigned to a number of people.

I dislike this posts like this one, which (at least from one perspective) engage in a game of rhetorical "gotcha".

pb

On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 3:54 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:

Philippe Beaudette wrote:

...

On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 11:06 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:

...

Sue Gardner wrote:

...

Ah, Sarah, I don't think that's particularly fair. Bear in mind we've just published a strategic plan that 1,000+ Wikimedians helped create. I'm not denying that some Wikimedians may feel alienated from the Wikimedia Foundation: I'm sure it is true for some. But "something in which we have no input" is, IMO, not a fair characterization.

This is an interesting comment given who actually authored the strategic plan. It's my understanding that several people (Eugene, you, Erik, and others) wrote different parts of the report, which were then compiled by people from Bridgespan. Is that accurate?

Is there a record of who wrote which parts of the report? It would be particularly interesting to see how much of it came from volunteers.

She didn't say they sat down and banged out the plan on their IBM Selectric. She said they helped create it. That's entirely accurate.

It

...

grew from the work of the task forces, research around the proposals, research in general... all of those done by volunteers. While the final wording may have been "smithed" by a relatively smaller set of people,

the

...

first attempt was actually to have community members do that as well. It didn't work well - either because it's a task that was poorly facilitated (and if so, I'm to blame), or a task that was poorly defined, or simply a task that the people who were there weren't interested in doing (and as volunteers, that's their right and privilege), the writing had to be assigned to a number of people.

I dislike this posts like this one, which (at least from one perspective) engage in a game of rhetorical "gotcha".

So... that's a no? There's no record of who wrote what? I think people in the community are interested to know how much of the strategic plan came from various stakeholders, both the ideas and the actual pieces of the report. If you feel that it's unfair to ask for attribution, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

MZMcBride

I don't think I actually answered that part of the question, because - as I told you privately - I was gone from the project long before then. I simply don't know.

But this is further rhetorical "gotcha" - you took my response to one part of your post and tried to twist it to be a non-answer to the other part of your post.

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 11:06 AM, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:

... Ah, Sarah, I don't think that's particularly fair. Bear in mind we've just published a strategic plan that 1,000+ Wikimedians helped create.

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 11:22 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:

How cares who wrote what? What matters is who came up with what and who thought it was a good idea. I don't know if that information is available in any easily accessible way, but it will all be on the strategy wiki if you wish to search for it.

I'm more than a bit disturbed to see my name in the Acknowledgements at the back of the Wikimedia Strategic Plan, which is largely a Wikimedia Foundation business plan.

In participating in strategy.wikimedia.org, I was contributing to the strategic planning for the *movement*. I don't think I edited any of the pages relating to this document. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/2010-2015_WMF_Business_Pla...

Also, I looked for this "188 employees" figure in the strategy wiki and couldn't see it anywhere. Was there any attempt to have this document approved by the community?

-- John Vandenberg

Thomas Dalton wrote:

On 6 March 2011 23:54, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:

...

So... that's a no? There's no record of who wrote what? I think people in the community are interested to know how much of the strategic plan came from various stakeholders, both the ideas and the actual pieces of the report. If you feel that it's unfair to ask for attribution, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

How cares who wrote what? What matters is who came up with what and who thought it was a good idea. I don't know if that information is available in any easily accessible way, but it will all be on the strategy wiki if you wish to search for it.

Most of the final report was posted to the wiki by a Wikimedia intern: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/AJ_WMF_Intern

I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say "that information ... will all be on the strategy wiki." Some of the content is, but most of the actual edits to write this report don't seem to be. I'm probably just missing something. Do you have links?

I think it's important to know who wrote what because it complements Wikimedia's values and it speaks to the success of the "Wikimedia way." The "Wikimedia way" is touted throughout the final strategic plan ("we did it differently, we did it with the community, etc."). But that doesn't quite match reality, does it? For better or worse, the "Wikimedia way" failed here: the community (whatever that is) chose not to write the report. The community chose not to engage in the final and most important steps (i.e., producing something substantive that could be a guidepost for the future).

Wikimedia's values (of transparency, openness, and attribution) were seemingly set aside as the report was compiled. Is that okay? I think the same reasons that every wiki article has a page history apply to why every section of this report should have clear attribution history. Completely anonymous stakeholders writing large swaths of Wikimedia's plan, and then saying it was a community effort? I don't know, that doesn't seem quite right to me.

Here are three accounts belonging to people from Bridgespan that were in some way involved in the creation of the final report (I think): * http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Laura231 * http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sarah476 * http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/TylerT

The more I look at this whole process, the more confusing it becomes to me. I doubt this obfuscation is intentional, but trying to figure out where anything came from seems nearly impossible. Even when you can find a specific edit, it's cloaked behind an unrelated account.

I don't think this report matches the values of the Wikimedia community. Looking at this from a broad angle, I think anyone who has ever been involved in a Wikimedia-related discussion would say that coming to a consensus among such a large and varied group of people is nearly impossible, which makes this unified report all the more dubious in my mind. How was a cohesive, unified report able to be compiled when the community was involved? I don't see many possibilities here.

If someone has the time to break this report down more completely, I'd certainly appreciate it and I imagine others would as well.

MZMcBride

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 11:26 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:

You appear to be generalising from your personal preferences to the world here. This is a common fallacy and a really bad idea in general.

I have heard numerous complains from other volunteers who thought that WMF is spending its money irrationally. So I believe those "personal preferences" are widespread enough.

--vvv

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 1:52 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:

David Gerard wrote:

...

On 1 March 2011 19:35, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:

...

I'm curious how

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Storyteller

...

...

fits in with Wikimedia's mission or its strategic plan.

It's pretty much directly answered right there on the linked page, for anyone else who's wondering.

What bit of the page wasn't clear?

The part where adding this person leads to better content? Wikimedia's mission is to educate the world with free content. I'm not sure how a Propaganda Minister really furthers that goal. There is a very finite amount of resources for staff hires; I just don't see how this passes any type of reasonable cost/benefit analysis.

If it's the outside world's perception of Wikimedia that is the underlying concern, I think hiring someone whose job description includes "make something incredibly beautiful every month" might be more detrimental to Wikimedia's image and mission than anything else. There are a lot of people who would be (more) willing to donate to Wikimedia if they didn't feel their donations would be spent like this, in my view.

MZMcBride

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

+1 for calling the title 'Propaganda Minister'. Raconteur would be my second choice.

On 1 March 2011 23:41, The Mono mono@mono.x10.bz wrote:

We think so little about our community that we have to hire someone to figure out how to explain it.

I expect your volunteer efforts were factored into the decision.

- d.