I'd recommend George Orwell's essay on "Politics and the English Language". It's one of the most persuasive arguments to use clear language I've read.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
We're a multi-lingual movement, and this makes clear English even more important. If something is unclear to a native speaker, it's even more difficult for someone who has English as a second or third language.
Chris
We're a multi-lingual movement, and this makes clear English even more important. If something is unclear to a native speaker, it's even more difficult for someone who has English as a second or third language.
I confirm. Its quite difficult for a non fluent english speaker to be involved in the international wikimedia movement even if I understand that we need a lingua franca and this lingua franca is english. But please do not complicate their life for example by using American or British locutions (or explain it if use).
Thierry who still not have found a good translation in French for accountability :)
2012/2/19 Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com
I'd recommend George Orwell's essay on "Politics and the English Language". It's one of the most persuasive arguments to use clear language I've read.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
We're a multi-lingual movement, and this makes clear English even more important. If something is unclear to a native speaker, it's even more difficult for someone who has English as a second or third language.
Chris
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On 19 February 2012 10:21, Thierry Coudray thierry.coudray@wikimedia.fr wrote:
We're a multi-lingual movement, and this makes clear English even more important. If something is unclear to a native speaker, it's even more difficult for someone who has English as a second or third language.
I confirm. Its quite difficult for a non fluent english speaker to be involved in the international wikimedia movement even if I understand that we need a lingua franca and this lingua franca is english. But please do not complicate their life for example by using American or British locutions (or explain it if use).
Just to clarify: the issue I raised isn't about American or British terms. I'd argue that UK/US (and Canada, Australia, NZ etc.) differences isn't really a major issue with Foundation/Chapter communications. A few of the Foundation-isms (Sue's "On-passing") are probably down to spending too much time in California. (And I do hope Wikimedia UK doesn't start using phrases like "Tally ho, chaps!" in their documents...)
Mostly though, thanks to the Internet and multinational corporations, godawful business jargon crosses all national borders. Words and phrases like 'onboarding', 'stakeholders', 'mission statements', 'platforms', 'proactive', 'sectors' and pretty much anything 'strategic', for instance.
To see the difference, consider:
Wikipedia is the leading player in the online reference sector and provide a revolutionary cloud-based 'encyclopedia as a service'. Thanks to the visionary utilization of our key strategic software assets, we deliver value-add to our stakeholders by enabling them to modify, shape and determine the future of the resource by modification of key text assets.
vs.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia on the Internet that anybody can edit.
On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 3:16 AM, Tom Morris tom@tommorris.org wrote:
Mostly though, thanks to the Internet and multinational corporations, godawful business jargon crosses all national borders. Words and phrases like 'onboarding', 'stakeholders', 'mission statements', 'platforms', 'proactive', 'sectors' and pretty much anything 'strategic', for instance.
Terms like "strategy", "mission statement" and "stakeholder" have concrete organizational meaning. Yes, they are also often used as part of marketing copy or organizational copy in ways that are unhelpful, because people who aren't good writers feel the need to plug holes by picking from the shared vocabulary of organization-speak. That doesn't make them meaningless, anymore than the fact that every idiot has an opinion on quantum physics makes quantum physics meaningless.
Where I agree with you: It's the job of any writer to make their message accessible and understandable, where possible by using plain language. It's probably good to maintain a healthy degree of prejudice against "organizational jargon", just because it is so prevalent and often used poorly.
However, organizational development and management are serious human endeavors that merit open-mindedness and willingness to discover and learn on the reader's part just as much as they merit clarity and brevity on the writer's or speaker's part. Being simplistic about the "corporate world" is no more charming or noble than is ignorance about any other field.
On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 4:19 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 3:16 AM, Tom Morris tom@tommorris.org wrote:
Mostly though, thanks to the Internet and multinational corporations, godawful business jargon crosses all national borders. Words and phrases like 'onboarding', 'stakeholders', 'mission statements', 'platforms', 'proactive', 'sectors' and pretty much anything 'strategic', for instance.
Terms like "strategy", "mission statement" and "stakeholder" have concrete organizational meaning. Yes, they are also often used as part of marketing copy or organizational copy in ways that are unhelpful, because people who aren't good writers feel the need to plug holes by picking from the shared vocabulary of organization-speak. That doesn't make them meaningless, anymore than the fact that every idiot has an opinion on quantum physics makes quantum physics meaningless.
I work in an airline company and for a person coming from outside it could be a real nightmare to speak about airline questions because the environment is really full of "technical questions" and "abbreviations".
For me it has been hard at the start because it was frequent to use "ERP" for "Emergency Response Plan" but for me it was "Enterprise Resource Planning".
A good compromise could be to create a "company dictionary" in order to help all persons to use the same words to define the same concepts and to help new persons to be part of the discussions.
This solution solves a lot of conflicts and helps the communication.
In Wikimedia environment the real problem is that anyone tries to translate some technical words connected with some legal systems and sometimes these words are peculiarities of these systems and could not have a corresponding in others.
For instance in Paris I have looked in the word "entitlement" which seems to be connected with the US system's of NGOs but has no correspondent in the European legal systems (and sometimes it could "illegal" in some countries).
Ilario
Mostly though, thanks to the Internet and multinational corporations, godawful business jargon crosses all national borders. Words and phrases like 'onboarding', 'stakeholders', 'mission statements', 'platforms', 'proactive', 'sectors' and pretty much anything 'strategic', for instance.
Terms like "strategy", "mission statement" and "stakeholder" have concrete organizational meaning. Yes, they are also often used as part of marketing copy or organizational copy in ways that are unhelpful, because people who aren't good writers feel the need to plug holes by picking from the shared vocabulary of organization-speak. That doesn't make them meaningless, anymore than the fact that every idiot has an opinion on quantum physics makes quantum physics meaningless.
This might be my jaded view as an engineer who came later to corporate environments/management but... when I first got trained in business practices my initial thought was "hold on, this is common sense packaged up to make it look more complicated and smarter". Since then nothing has changed that perception. I think such terminology, and indeed most of the business practices/jargons, are stagnant, limiting, inaccessible etc.
I have experience of how difficult this can make communication. For example, stakeholder analysis and requirements engineering; these were all things I was explicitly doing before in my technical capacity. But in simple language, that anyone non-technical (i.e. manager) could follow. But add a layer of "corporate" and you have to follow these set layouts, set terminology - none of which is necessarily obvious to the layman. And at the end you have a longer document with wasteful overthinking that is less accessible to untrained individuals.
To me it has always come across as an elitist terminology (and if you track back to the origins it does originate from the need for management to speak a different, superior, language to the grunts) that focuses on making a) work look smarter and b) cover ones ass.
I think the more agile approaches will grow in adoption over the coming years, even in large corporations, and are certainly worth considering.
Where I agree with you: It's the job of any writer to make their message accessible and understandable, where possible by using plain language. It's probably good to maintain a healthy degree of prejudice against "organizational jargon", just because it is so prevalent and often used poorly.
However, organizational development and management are serious human endeavors that merit open-mindedness and willingness to discover and learn on the reader's part just as much as they merit clarity and brevity on the writer's or speaker's part. Being simplistic about the "corporate world" is no more charming or noble than is ignorance about any other field.
I think when communicating to the outside world, businesses use jargon to stop consumers digging too much into their actions and decision making process (this is my perception from inside a company that does use such jargon). They also use it to make things sound "smart". Not necessarily in a malicious way - that is just how it is trained.
When communicating with the public, as a charity, I think it is critical the WMF should make the extra step to communicate in simple language. Rather than asking them to meet you half way. I mean, I agree that encouraging open-mindedness is a good thing. But there are better ways to do it than wrap public communication up in jargon.
You talk about clarity and brevity as well; it is my perception (again from having to write press releases with such nonsense in them) that the jargon simply removes any clarity you had and sacrifices understanding for brevity-as-less-words.
I think this is becoming obvious to those interested in business development - with the advent of much leaner business processes (piloted by web firms and startups!).
As a multi-lingual, social minded movement, the Foundation should be at the forefront of accessible business, not in the middle :)
Tom
Erik Moeller wrote:
On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 3:16 AM, Tom Morris tom@tommorris.org wrote:
Mostly though, thanks to the Internet and multinational corporations, godawful business jargon crosses all national borders. Words and phrases like 'onboarding', 'stakeholders', 'mission statements', 'platforms', 'proactive', 'sectors' and pretty much anything 'strategic', for instance.
Terms like "strategy", "mission statement" and "stakeholder" have concrete organizational meaning. Yes, they are also often used as part of marketing copy or organizational copy in ways that are unhelpful, because people who aren't good writers feel the need to plug holes by picking from the shared vocabulary of organization-speak. That doesn't make them meaningless, anymore than the fact that every idiot has an opinion on quantum physics makes quantum physics meaningless.
That's just your guilt talking. You've been as big an offender in this area as anyone. I can't be the only person who remembers that there's an entire "Strategic Planning" wiki. Anyone interested in a broad sampling of bullshit language need look no further. :-)
However, organizational development and management are serious human endeavors that merit open-mindedness and willingness to discover and learn on the reader's part just as much as they merit clarity and brevity on the writer's or speaker's part. Being simplistic about the "corporate world" is no more charming or noble than is ignorance about any other field.
Applying corporate jargon to a non-profit, or worse, to the wiki model, has expectedly poor results.
MZMcBride
On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 8:40 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
Terms like "strategy", "mission statement" and "stakeholder" have concrete organizational meaning. Yes, they are also often used as part of marketing copy or organizational copy in ways that are unhelpful, because people who aren't good writers feel the need to plug holes by picking from the shared vocabulary of organization-speak. That doesn't make them meaningless, anymore than the fact that every idiot has an opinion on quantum physics makes quantum physics meaningless.
That's just your guilt talking. You've been as big an offender in this area as anyone. I can't be the only person who remembers that there's an entire "Strategic Planning" wiki. Anyone interested in a broad sampling of bullshit language need look no further. :-)
Adding a smiley to an insult doesn't make it any less an insult. I think there are ways to make this argument more politely.
Mike
On 19/02/2012 5:21 AM, Thierry Coudray wrote:
Thierry who still not have found a good translation in French for accountability :)
You probably want "/imputabilité/" :-)
-- Coren / Marc
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