I like the idea of a strategic plan for the movement and one for the
Foundation.
I think that is a good idea.
/a
On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 12:22 PM, Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Thank you for the reflections, Yaroslav, Specific
replies inline below.
Pine, thank you for the invitation; actually, this video was done in
preparation for my panel session at the Wikipedia 15 celebration, which
will also be live-streamed later in the day. Eugene will be one of my
panelists, and we will certainly dig into these issues! Please bring your
own reflections and questions (and feel free to send them ahead of time so
I can try to incorporate them into the main panel discussion).
To Yaroslav's points:
On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 7:51 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod(a)mccme.ru>
wrote:
On 2016-01-12 04:21, Pete Forsyth wrote:
> And beyond this video -- what do those who participated in the last
round
(or those
who have observed it) think the important lessons are? How
should
we be moving foward?
I did not watch the video, but I did participate in the community process
and still have an iron barnstar sent by Philippe - my children are still
impressed.
Very cool -- I hope the barnstar becomes a treasured family heirloom :) It
sounds like it was well deserved. And I hope you do watch the video --
based on your comments below I believe you will find Eugene's design goals
and reflections very interesting.
1) It was good that the process was structured from the very beginning:
there was a pre-process which helped to shape the
task forces.
Agreed
2) There was little to not at all coordination between different task
forces. Not sure it was necessary, since it was
pure brainstorming, but
still wanted to mention.
It seems to me (and Eugene or Philippe might correct me here) that the
expectation was that "coordination" would happen somewhat organically,
since it was hosted on a wiki. I did browse a number of the task forces at
the time, and commented on a few, and some others were doing so as well.
Perhaps there could/should have been a more focused effort to get
cross-pollination, though?
3) It was not clear (at least not to me) what would happen beyond the task
force round. I tried to ask around but never got
a satisfactory answer.
May
be I just asked wrong people.
Again from my own, somewhat limited perspective: I believe the intention
was for volunteers to play a stronger and more central role in the
synthesis of the Task Force outcomes into a final Strategic Plan. Since
this was the first time this was attempted, it's not surprising to me that
this wasn't fully realized. I think a second iteration of this could be
much more successful, as it could be informed by what worked well and what
didn't the last time.
4) There was a bit too much noise (compared to signal), and organization in
the task forces was a bit chaotic - for example,
in the task force I was
mainly active at somebody was (or claimed she was) appointed the task
force
coordinator, but she disappeared after a week and
never came back, so
that
I took on the coordination myself and delivered
some summary to the
second
round - but nobody ever talked to me about this.
Ah, noise vs. signal -- always an issue in a community that values openness
and inclusion! But again, perhaps there are ways to improve on the process
so that it's easier to navigate toward the "signal."
5) It is good that Liquid Threads died. They should not be ever used again
for such process.
I'll leave my opinion on LT (and Flow) aside for the moment, but I do agree
that using a discussion technology that was unfamiliar to a core set of
constituents led to some confusion, and may have discouraged participation.
(However, it's also possible that it encouraged some participation by those
who were NOT familiar with wiki page discussion, and may have found
threaded discussion a little easier to deal with.)
6) Despite some deficiencies I listed above it was definitely fun to work
on the strategic plan, and also I had an
impression we are really shaping
things up, not merely rubber-stumping some pre-determined ideas. And that
was indeed a community-driven process, and I mean the whole community,
not
just the English Wikipedia.
I agree strongly with this, and am especially glad to hear that it was fun!
Speaking for my own perspective, I started working for WMF during the
process, and because of that I did not participate deeply -- I was in a
transitional state between "volunteer" and "staff" and lacked a
clear
perspective in that time on how to appropriately use my voice. But I
observed the process very closely, and talked a lot with Eugene and others
about it. I do think it was a valuable exercise in helping both the WMF and
community members see across languages, country borders, and project
borders, and in learning to listen better to one another and develop a
fuller understanding of the big picture. I believe the resulting plan was
strongly reflective of common sentiments within our community; and even if
imperfect, it's the first (and maybe only) time a document has really
attempted to do that, and I think it did an admirable job.
I remain hopeful that some day we will see a "Strategic Planning 2.0"
effort that draws heavily on these lessons. I am increasingly of the
opinion that volunteers should lead the effort to make that happen; and it
might make sense to fully separate two ideas:
* A strategic plan for the movement
* A strategic plan for the Wikimedia Foundation
-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]
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