Hello everyone,
As most of you know, I resigned
at the beginning of this year from the chapter, promising that I will most
probably return to the chapter at the end of the year. This isolation from the
chapter gave me however a broader perspective of the chapter and also the
Wikimedia movement in general. I made use of this time to thoughtfully make a
decision regarding my future involvement.
If you are a lazy reader and do
not care, the short answer is that I am not coming back. I am however going to
try and keep the longer explanation as concise as possible. Normally I tell
people that when you have a problem with something, do not walk away, rather
try to improve the situation and be an example to others. Currently I have a
few problems with both the global Wikimedia movement and our local chapter. The
problem is, I believe that even if I dedicated large amounts time and energy to
both of these, it will still be insufficient to fix these problems. I do
however hope that the movement will sort these issues out automatically with
time, whatever that is supposed to mean.
I do not want to go into these
issues now, because that is a discussion for another day. Just to hint in the
direction of my problems, it is of my opinion that those people in the leading
positions of the movement are good in what they are doing, but that they do not
have the insight to make the movement succeed in certain fields. It is obvious
that no one person could have the capacity to do this, but from my experience
the majority of these people are not open to the input of those with feasible and
reasonable ideas. And this is where my elaboration ends.
Some of you might also know that
I strongly considered to get involved with Creative Commons, with the intention
of working in the science and data subprojects. Due to similar and other
reasons I also decided not to get involved there. Those of you that know me
will be able to agree to my admiration towards open movements such as these, meaning
that I always still support it.
Within the next few days I will
also ask to get removed from certain closed mailing lists as well as those that
I manage and moderate. There is also now some new blood in the chapter and I
wish everyone good luck with the adventure ahead! I will see you around. :)
Kind regards
Lourie