[Foundation-l] Instant Commons : INCORRECT

[Erik Moeller]

On 6/7/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I'd like that you make the effort to recognise that we are acting in
> good faith

This is not about good or bad faith, Florence. Of course the SP
committee is acting in good faith - I never denied this. The point is
that a 5000 EUR project that was essentially OK'd by Kennisnet in
February is still not ready to go by June. The point is that at this
organizational efficiency, we need not even dream of realizing any
real grant proposals that are brought to us from the outside. I'd like
_you_ to make the effort to recognize that the organization needs to
fundamentally change in the way it does things if it does want to
fulfill its charitable mission.

I am very, very concerned that our promises about helping children in
Africa are going to sound rather cynical when actual African projects
(and InstantCommons is one) do not happen because the organization is
so ineffective. _Especially_ in an all-volunteer organization, the
approach which is currently taken -- a small group of people must make
all the critical decisions, and new members are only recruited if
there is consensus _within_ that group (_and_ ideally the Board) -- is
not scalable. And it's certainly not scalable for a top 16 website
with over a million registered users and hundreds, thousands of
potential "special projects". Not to mention other projects besides
Wikipedia which are badly in need of innovative thinking and creative
partnerships. Not to mention that we're supposed to be multilingual.

I have not seen a single announcement on this mailing list for an open
SP-related meeting. Most of the discussions you need to have can be
open without leaving a permanent record on the web -- publish edited
logs or summaries where confidential information is concerned. You can
accept advisors without even voting on them. And the core voting
members should be those who do the most work of actually planning,
coordinating and realizing projects as this becomes visible in a
larger group.

The notion that every contract has to be between the Wikimedia
Foundation and another organization is also unnecessary -- contracts
can be between volunteers and grant-giving organizations, if the
grants are small and having the contracts managed by Wikimedia only
adds unnecessary bureaucratic overhead. This way, Wikimedia adds
organizational credibility for volunteers who deserve it.

This could have been done with Kennisnet in February or March. Don't
be overly afraid of  outcomes -- just dissociate yourself from
projects which fail, and highlight those that succeed. And for
Christ's sake, don't worry all the time about legal risks. Legal risks
can be addressed as a project develops. Wikipedia is an insanely bad
idea from a legal point of view and would never have been started
through _any_ process which we are actually using in our organization
to start things.

Build _many_ relationships with people you can trust, instead of
building _few_ relationships with people you'd like to take out for
dinner.

> We are under no obligation to spend hours studying
> your proposals

How about you start _trusting_ me, Gerard and other volunteers when we
come to the Foundation and say: "This here is a moderately cool
project that these people over there are willing to pay for, but
they'd like to get an OK from the Foundation." Again, I ask: Why could
the SP committee not simply have sent the authorization to Kennisnet,
and let the contract side of things be handled between Gerard and
them? Again, not a single valid reason has been given for excluding a
person like Gerard from the committee. This is not about him
personally -- it's about the _process_.

You accuse me of assuming bad faith. Yet you are treating me as an
outsider after 5 years of working with and around Wikipedia which has
included more "special projects" than I care to mention (which pay my
salary, I might add). There are large grants I am associated with
which I wouldn't bring even anywhere _near_ the Foundation because of
its current state. Your point above seems to be accurately
summarizable as: "Erik, please be nice to us, because otherwise we'll
just ignore your ideas."

Not a single part of my e-mails was personal criticism, an assumption
of bad faith, or deliberately insulting. I have been very careful to
focus on the issues, using InstantCommons as an example of failure. I
am doing this publicly not to humiliate you but because I know from
experience that otherwise I will just be silently ignored. Instead of
actually trying to resolve the problems I pointed out, you posted a
new thread with the upper case title "INCORRECT", accusing me of
spreading false information. When the information turned out to be
correct, you accuse me of not being nice. How about, instead of
accusing me of something, you try to actually answer to my points
above? How is the Foundation going to scale to the size of problems it
faces?

I would be very happy to serve with you on SP and to work with you to
reorganize it in such a fashion that it can handle grants and projects
efficiently and effectively. The question is, do you acknowledge the
problems there are, and do you want my help to solve them? Or are you
hoping to pull a miracle CEO out of your hat who will solve global
hunger?

Kennisnet is just one random (if important) organization from the
Netherlands we happen to have a good working relationship with. There
are thousands of Kennisnets out there, thousands of organizations and
companies and institutions who would be happy to support us in a
myriad different ways. Heck, some of them have already sent the
Foundation product samples.

I have no doubt that the SP committee will initiate a dozen or half
dozen projects from within its own ranks in the coming months.
However, Wikimedia's ambition is not "to start a dozen or half dozen
interesting projects". Wikimedia's ambition is:

   "Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access
to the sum of
    all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."
   http://wikimediafoundation.org/

The first version of this statement was drafted by Jimmy and me at the
WOS 2004. I would say it's about time we get serious about it, or drop
the rhetoric. Wikimedia is turning into a "who likes who" club rather
than an organization centered around goals, objectives, and
qualifications. Jimmy says he doesn't want the organization to be run
like a college club. Then it's time to get rid of the bullshit
politics. Get Gerard and me on SP. Let us identify other people who
can help. Allow us to bring our existing collaborations into the WMF.
And let's broaden and open up the organization in ways which will
amaze us all.

This is not about "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like
a nail" philosophy, about applying wiki ideology to areas where there
are "tried and tested" ways of doing things which are preferable. This
is about learning from great thinkers like Douglas Engelbart, Ted
Nelson, Howard Rheingold, Frederic Vester, and Tim Berners-Lee. This
is about running Wikimedia in accordance with the laws of
thermodynamics: only open systems are survivable. The last thing our
planet needs is more politics and more bureaucracy. What it does need
is smart people collaborating, building global networks, and
overlooking their personal differences, before our civilization
collapses under its own weight.

Erik