On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 12:47 PM, Achal Prabhala <aprabhala(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Pradeep maintains a personal blog and wrote up his
thoughts on the WCI
report earlier shared with this list:
http://pradx.me/2012/05/22/**wikiconference-india-2011-**
report-more-personal-thoughts/<http://pradx.me/2012/05/22/wikiconference-india-2011-report-more-personal-thoughts/>
Pradeep's post brought up some immediate and broader questions for me,
which I've put up on his blog.
Also reproducing them here, simply because I don't think we should
under-estimate what his post means. That someone who was such an integral
part of the Mumbai and India community and the wikimedia movement feels
despairing enough to retire - over the 'politicking' - is not a good sign.
*Reporting*
*How can we ensure that such reports are based on consensus, so that those
who've been vital parts of such community events do not later feel
alienated by the reporting?
*How can we ensure that such reports represent the perspectives of many of
those involved in such events, rather than a singular perspective? One way
to do so is to involve all 'teams' in writing their parts of the report -
eg Scholarships, Programs etc, getting internal consensus within each team,
and then providing it to the core team.
*How can we ensure that such reports are constructive, rather than
destructive, in their criticism, and steer clear of name calling or
singling out individuals?
*How can we ensure that such reports 'look forward' to helping future
community teams that organize such conferences, rather than backwards at
pinpointing perceived errors of omission and commission?
*How can we ensure that such reports have a helpful problem-solution
approach, eg "this was the problem, this was how we fixed it" to supplement
the documentation of processes leading up to an event? That would really
help future teams.
*Broader*
*How can we retain the sense of fun that is so much part of - and integral
to - a volunteer movement?
*How can we create a sense of togetherness, a sense that we're all working
towards the same shared goals?
*How can we ask the tough questions that are needed to make constituents
accountable to a larger community while ensuring that we are not unduly
politicking or undermining trust in the process? And how do we know when
enough is enough, that it's time to stop?
Many other questions, but I'll stop here for now. I forgot to put some of
these up on the blog, they occurred to me while I was writing this.
Best
Bishakha