James Hare wrote: Others have said it already, but since I'm the chair of the Communications Committee, I think it's appropriate for me to add my apology for the difficulties in communication between the Wikimedia Foundation and the community. It's clear that the level of communication is not adequate, and I share the frustration that I think many of us feel. Because of the scope of the problem, I think it's worthwhile to explore it at some length. Part of the problem is a lack of resources, both human and technical, in the communications area as much as in any other. That sort of thing is, of course, exactly what this fundraiser is trying to address. As has been noted, we've barely managed sufficient communication to merely coordinate what we're going to do, let alone communicate those intentions more broadly. Although there has been some previous communication that produced disappointingly little discussion. The community seems much more inclined to give feedback when the Foundation does something as opposed to when it talks about planning things. Some of that feedback is over the issue of advertising, with various attempts to draw lines in the silicon and declare them crossed or not crossed. Honestly, it reminds me greatly of a typical dispute over competing points of view on a Wikipedia talk page. It is not resolvable by simply insisting on a particular interpretation, and in the meantime the Foundation has to make decisions in order to continue operating. Wikimedia is committed to maintaining a neutral point of view, as is well known, and I believe that value has not been compromised in any material way. Perceptions are admittedly important too, but they do not always reflect reality, as anyone familiar with the media coverage of Wikipedia can tell you. What is advertising and whether we should have it are important considerations, and have been debated at length, but it's not a fundamental value in the same way that free content or neutrality are. Anyone who's convinced that our actual content has been compromised already by the recent decisions is welcome to try and demonstrate how that's the case. A wise person once told me that basically all longstanding members of the community are outliers on certain issues. I know that it's true for me, and I'm sure that it's also true even of people closer to the center of Wikimedia, including Jimbo himself. There will always be some matter on which your personal viewpoint does not prevail, even though you think it's an important point and use your most persuasive arguments to get that across. In any group project that consists of more than just your ideological clones, this is something we have to deal with. Here we do share a few fundamental goals, and hope that people can put aside other agendas to work on them. If upon closer examination you find that you cannot adopt these goals, or that the path to them includes elements that you absolutely cannot live with, then we wish you well in your other endeavors. Meanwhile, we have a number of communications needs, and some go beyond communicating just with the immediate community of Wikimedia projects. I'd like to mention some of those to remind people of the many tasks being handled, often unseen and unappreciated, and invite additional help. We have the general public to communicate with, for example through the volume of email Wikimedia receives, which many volunteers take turns responding to (some of you may know this as the OTRS system). This is frequently overloaded, especially in English, but through a valiant effort we actually cleaned out the backlog about a month ago. Of course, over the holidays the emails have built up again, and we need to renew the effort. Anyone willing to help with this for a few months, please contact UninvitedCompany, the chair of the OTRS subcommittee, or else the contact for your particular language. Good customer service skills are a key here. Communicating with the project communities is also a challenge, because they are so widely distributed. There is no central place to reach everyone, and many differing expectations about what "affects" the community and how it should be notified. (I use quotes because everything affects the community, but notice doesn't seem to be expected every time we buy servers, as long as the site runs.) The solution is for the community to help spread the word about anything that might be of importance. Some people may be familiar with The Wikipedia Signpost on en.wikipedia, or the Kurier on de.wikipedia. These are community efforts to grow and build on, and more like them should be encouraged. I know the TIME honor is so last year, but "You" are the only way Wikimedia can ever communicate with its projects. Contributions like Walter's Wikizine or Improv's LSS are invaluable (and as we regret the latter's departure, thanks to BirgitteSB for committing to keep it going). Returning to the public side, the Wikimedia Foundation gets a number of requests to provide speakers at various functions. Some want Jimbo, but he's not able to fill them all, and many of these requests would be happy with community representatives. A few of these may be large conferences that can offer to cover travel expenses, but often it's a smaller function simply hoping that someone local would be available to meet with them. We're looking for someone who can volunteer to coordinate public speaking assignments, both handling requests and organizing a pool of available speakers. If you're interested in doing this, please let me know (in the meantime, if people who have presented on Wikimedia subjects can update http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Presentations it would be appreciated). --Michael Snow