Hi Lodewijk and all,
As a result of our All-Hands event in early January this year, an informal
group of staff members (namely: Siko Bouterse, Guillaume Paumier, Edward
Galvez, Caitlin Cogdill, Jessica Robell and myself) decided to come
together and start a series of conversations about transparency. Our goal
was to provide practical examples of how to apply our value of transparency
to our day-to-day work in practice.
We started a Meta page to identify some good transparency practices and
guidelines, initially intended as a resource for our co-workers, but we
hope it may also be useful for others in the movement. We can’t do this as
staff alone, though.
As you noted in your email, recent events make a conversation about
transparency crucial right now, and that’s why we would like to invite
anyone to share stories, ideas and best practices on this Meta page.
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Transparency/Practices> Stories about how
transparency or lack of transparency affects your work (or your
organization's work) in the movement can help to communicate the
significance of this value.
We hope to see your stories and ideas there. Lodewijk - we've already added
your suggestion from this thread to the talk page, but people should of
course feel welcome to incorporate ideas directly into the main page as
well.
To be clear, this page isn’t meant to replace the meaningful discussion and
changes that many are pushing for on today’s issues here, but just as
another resource for documenting how those of us who believe in
transparency can better live this value.
In solidarity,
Adele
On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 2:59 PM, Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Lodewijk,
Thank you for this suggestion. I drafted a proposal about a month ago for
something like this, as a community-initiated project; however, I agree
that something with explicit buy-in from the Board would be much better.
Still, perhaps this draft will be useful; it is Proposal #1 (of two) on
this page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Peteforsyth/Heilman15
Do keep in mind, it is a bit out of date; help in updating it and/or moving
it to main space as a more formal proposal is welcome.
-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 2:45 PM, Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org>
wrote:
Hi Lila,
Thank you for the update and the pointer.
As you probably noted, there have been several 'incidents' quickly
following each other, which worry me, and probably you too. You're saying
that you welcome feedback and discussion, and that you're having internal
conversations on how to improve communication.
When problems continue like this in governments, you often see (well,
this
probably depends on the country) that a committee
is appointed to
investigate what is really the problem, and to come with some general
recommendations for structural improvements.
I'm not sure if this is the most effective method, but it might be an
effective way to gain back a bit of trust. Why not appoint a small
committee of a few trusted community members, that can get a bit more
information (also when that has to remain confidential) and make some
structural recommendations with regards to communicating with the
community? Normally I'd expect the Board to take such role, but given
recent events, I don't have the feeling the Board is best placed to do
so.
Just thinking out loud, maybe there are better ideas to approach this in
a
way that builds trust again.
Lodewijk
On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 11:28 PM, Lila Tretikov <lila(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> As promised, here is the blog post we published earlier today:
>
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/16/wikimedia-search-future/ . We are
> also
> having internal conversations on how we can improve communication and
> transparency to increase collaboration on ideation with all of you
going
forward.
I hope this helps contextualize the grant agreement and our broader
efforts
while addressing some of the confusion around
this topic. As always, I
welcome your feedback and discussion and look forward to our ongoing
discussion.
Lila
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