folks, please. If Michael thinks he's a good guy, I'm fine with it. I don't think that mawning on how he made the choice etc will help a lot. Welcome, Ral315! Lodewijk

So in other words, the reason you're critical of the person chosen is because you were passed over? --Michael Snow

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Michael Snow wrote: Mr. Snow, With respect - I think he stated he was critical because of the current choices inactivity. Not the fact that he was passed over. Where in Wikimedia did you come up with that?

I asked because when something like this is brought up so quickly, the very natural inference is that it is the real motivation for the challenge, not the reason initially stated as a pretense. I observe that neither of the existing list admins, and Austin especially, is noted for being an especially high-volume poster to the list. And on a mailing list where people regularly complain about the volume of posts detracting from the discussion, it seems rather misplaced to consider that kind of activity the primary criterion for those who might help moderate. There are enough concerns about "editcountitis" in the community, let's not import it from wikis to mailing lists. --Michael Snow _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

folks, please. If Michael thinks he's a good guy, I'm fine with it. I don't think that mawning on how he made the choice etc will help a lot. Welcome, Ral315!

folks, please. If Michael thinks he's a good guy, I'm fine with it. I don't think that mawning on how he made the choice etc will help a lot.

Welcome, Ral315! Lodewijk 2008/8/17 Jon <scream(a)datascreamer.com>om>: _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

I must say, I'm astonished what kind of seemingly uncontroversial decisions can spark so much drama again. In fact, I echo Dan's suggestions that this thread should die again very quickly (for reasoning see below), but I figured that it would again be seen very negatively if I didn't respond here, so let me make a short statement: 1) It is my opinion that Wikipedia would not be as successful as it is, if we had not Assumed Good Faith of each other at times. Can we please also apply this to this list (administration)? 2) Some people here opposed Ral's appointment on procedural grounds ("How did you choose him? Why was this not a democratic process with a survey?"). Now, opposing a candidate (under such circumstances as we have them here) on merely procedural reasons seems rather meritless to me. May I suggest that you first wait to see how Ral does his job? In fact, in the best case you will hardly notice him doing anything, which is the way it should be. If you have good reason to complain later, you can still start a 'vote of no-confidence' here... 3) Others questioned his experience or activity: By all means, I can't take this serious. Ral has been here longer than many of you (or at least those who are the loudest critics), his en.wp involvement started in September 2004. And no, to anticipate a counter-argument, this is not irrelevant in this context -- he has a good grasp of Wikimedia affairs (obviously, as Signpost editor), he is experienced in dealing with..."difficult users" and thus he is in my eyes perfectly qualified for the job. That he is a less frequent poster than others on the other hand is really irrelevant here - he is not here to actively moderate any *discussion* (panel-style), he is here to moderate a *discussion list*. That's a fine but important difference. In fact, it gives him more time to do moderation work while you guys fire away your 10 posts an hour ;-) 4) One last point about procedure: We received many applications, both off- and onlist. We considered all of them and have now chosen Ral315, that's the way application systems work. I'm not a friend of model letters ("Unfortunately your application was not successful, I hope you will apply again for other functions blablabla") and thus the approach was rather "Only successful applicants will be contacted". Sorry, if this wasn't made clear. And no, it's not practical to make an appointment hearing or even a vote for the job of list administrator. If you don't trust us as a team, organise a sound vote of no-confidence and if the board (or the technical staff or whomever) are satisfied that this vote reflects broad consensus, I'm sure they will replace us with other list administrators. Please, let Ral315 do his job now and if you want to explore this further, do it off-list with us. Regards, Michael _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 5:27 PM, Jon <scream(a)datascreamer.com> wrote: Well, yes, I'll try to do this next time. With this, though, I have a bit more problems. It's not that I strive to be impolite, but rather, I'm doubting about its practicalities: 1) Even with the comparatively small amount of applications that I myself have already written to corporations, I can tell you that it is by no means standard practice to reply to every application - many companies only reply to those whom they want to do an interview with etc. Now, of course, this alone wouldn't prevent us from "doing better". 2) However, what kind of mail would you have liked? You said that you didn't want a boilerplate email, okay. But how do you write "personal emails" to the ca. 10 applicants who we did not choose? Either you keep it very short and simple ("Hi, this is to inform you that you were considered but that we found Ral315 to be the most qualified candidate after all"), which would be a form of a boilerplate again. Otherwise, you'll have to outline for every candidate the exact reasons why the successful candidate was "better" (read: more qualified) than him and it's a) difficult to formulate this without being impolite and b) it takes a lot of time. In fact, I know until now absolutely *no* company that will write you a personal letter explaining why you, in particular, were not chosen. I don't know whether in the US, corporations have that large HR departments that they can make this effort, but it doesn't strike me as SOP. This said, if you find a medium way between boilerplates and tailor-made emails for every individual candidate, I'm glad to consider it. Michael

2) However, what kind of mail would you have liked? You said that you didn't want a boilerplate email, okay. But how do you write "personal emails" to the ca. 10 applicants who we did not choose? Either you keep it very short and simple ("Hi, this is to inform you that you were considered but that we found Ral315 to be the most qualified candidate after all"), which would be a form of a boilerplate again. Otherwise, you'll have to outline for every candidate the exact reasons why the successful candidate was "better" (read: more qualified) than him and it's a) difficult to formulate this without being impolite and b) it takes a lot of time.

Along these lines, does the mail software support giving someone permission to approve messages only (not to change moderation status)? Seems that pretty much anyone who can be trusted to send unmoderated posts can be trusted to do this.

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 12:49 PM, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote: An explanation of why only one person could be accepted would be helpful, since you seem to be implying that this is the case. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Maybe it is time to think about canalizing enthusiasm of Wikimedians toward higher involvement.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Anthony wrote: > On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 5:50 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> Maybe it is time to think about canalizing enthusiasm of Wikimedians >> toward higher involvement.

Hoi, Great idea we might call it a volunteer council :) Maybe this council can liaise strongly with Cary in stead of making him the head honcho ... Thanks, GerardM NB no irony intended !! On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 9:56 AM, Milos Rancic <millosh(a)gmail.com> wrote: > AFAIK, Cary is not a list owner who asked for volunteers. As well as > he is not able to monitor all volunteer activities. > > It is obvious that coordinating hundreds or thousands volunteers is > not a job for one person. Maybe it is good to think about Volunteer > Committee, led by Cary. (Hm. Do we have something like that?) >

Hoi, Great idea we might call it a volunteer council :) Maybe this council can liaise strongly with Cary in stead of making him the head honcho ... Thanks, GerardM NB no irony intended !!

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 10:29 AM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: There are two different starting points between the Council and the Committee intentions: Council was intended to represent (somehow) community's (or communities') will, while committee is a working body with a particular goal. With or without council, for me it is obvious that we should have a body which manages volunteers' enthusiasm toward higher involvement. (And, according to the size of the volunteer community, this is not a job for one person.)

wrote:

wrote:

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 6:49 PM, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler(a)gmail.com> wrote: There are a lot of useful thing to be done for Wikimedia projects, community, WMF, free knowledge... If there is a will to do so, it should be used. If there is just one place for list admin, it is reasonable to keep a list of other possible tasks and to offer one of the tasks from the list to candidates which didn't pass. Maybe it is time to think about canalizing enthusiasm of Wikimedians toward higher involvement. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[snip] As far as my list inactivity goes, I read the list on a daily basis, but lately I've noticed that others tend to make my points for me, and are much more articulate in expressing their views. I think a lot of the "top posters" add a significant amount to discussion and their posts are worthwhile; for myself, I find that the more I post, the less I tend to say.

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 12:51 AM, Ral315 <wiki.ral315(a)gmail.com> wrote: I wish more people had this insight. Personally, I think Ral315 will do an excellent job moderating the list. Honestly, it's an administrative job folks, it's not the keys to the kingdom. -Chad _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l