[Foundation-l] Mission & Vision statement update

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

On 4/26/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:


> I do not think anyone can reasonably claim that the change came as a
> total surprise. The issue of updating the mission statement has been
> mentionned as early as october 2006.

Quite the contrary, I most specifically claimed that the specific
emendation of "free licence" to "free content licence" was made in a
fashion that did not observe the niceties of feedback from the
community in any reasonable form. That "change" is the only *change*
that I am challenging, and _yes_ I do think it is reasonable to claim
that it will have not been reviewed by any great section of the
community in any significant way.

The change that stood unchallenged, which Erik linked to as the
unstable mission statement, was from my viewpoint quite fine. I
had/have no objection to that one, and no, that version can not be
reasonably claimed to have surprised anyone.

*But* that is not the version you enacted.


> Now, no one is claiming the new one is perfect. Kat herself is not fully
> happy with it. I am not 100% happy either, even if I prefer it to the
> previous one. For example, I am embarassed by the restriction caused by
> the use of the words "educational content", because wikinews is more
> about "informational content" than about "educational content".
>
> However, the previous statement basically limited ourselves to be wiki
> projects hosting providers (is dedicated to the development and
> maintenance. To encourage the further growth and development of open
> content, social sofware WikiWiki-based projects and to provide the full
> contents of those projects to the public free of charge).
>
> Do you really think this is ONLY what we want to be ? That this is ONLY
> what we want to do ? Being host providers ?
> I do not think so.
>
> I think many of us also wants the Foundation to push the distribution
> and the dissemination of content beyond online. I think many of us also
> wants to be freedom advocates. I think many of us want to develop a
> global awareness, partly thanks to the collaboration with the chapters.
>
> All this was not in the previous statement.
>
>
>
> We wondered whether to wait again till everyone is 100% happy (which may
> be an unreachable dream), or to update the statement to better fit what
> we think the Foundation is about. Some of you have noticed that we are
> not always very quick to do things and to take decisions
> (understatement). I do believe that when we are "reasonably" happy, we
> should avoid waiting forever to take a decision. In particular for
> issues which can be changed in the future.

This is precisely my point. "In particular fo issues which can be
changed in the future." In my view the bad change is being done right
now. It is not a case of adding later what we failed to do now, but a
case of not doing now what should never have been done in the first
place. Can you understand the distinction?

> I will add that whilst we knew that Kat was not fully happy with it, the
> call for comment and participation did not provide much feedback, so we
> had the reasonable expectation that the change was okay for most.
> Hence the decision to update it.
>
>
>
> Now, this is not graved in stone. You want to discuss it ? Discuss it.
> Put a new version on meta. Call for feedback. Get a new agreement. No
> problem. Once a new version seems to be reasonably approved and
> preferable to the current new version, it may be updated in the bylaws.
> Elections are a perfect time to do that. Please do be an actor on this.
>
>
> As for me, I think that this statement is 90% good. In comparison, staff
> situation is maybe 60% good. Governance is perhaps 30% good. I prefer
> focusing my attention on what is really really broken, than getting a
> 90% satisfaction to 95%. But do keep the discussion open please Cimon.
>

I think you know me well enough to trust I will do precisely that.

--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]