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