[Foundation-l] Our values

[Delirium]

Florence Devouard wrote:
> I would like to ask you to have a look at the value page on meta:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values
>
> And add more suggestions there, or different phrasings. Values can be 
> expressed by keywords, or by sentences. Either are fine, as long as they 
> express what is important to us.
> Or comment on some of the keywords already there.
>   

This strikes me as somewhat reversed from our typical practice---we have 
goals, like creating a neutral, wide-coverage, multi-lingual 
encyclopedia, or a repository of free media, etc., and then we choose 
means to those goals based on what we find works and doesn't work. We 
use wikis, for example, because they work better than Nupedia did, not 
because we love wikis; and we use consensus-based decision making 
because it seems to work better than the alternatives, not because we 
have some attachment to consensus-based political systems ([[en:WP:NOT]] 
has said as much for many years).

The same goes with the things on that list---we encourage diversity 
because diverse groups of contributors tend to reach less biased and 
more wide-reaching consensus; we encourage friendliness because it makes 
the whole process go smoother; and so on. But this seems to be setting 
those values up as the organization's values per se, which seems 
backwards. When it comes to Wikimedia projects, I don't think we should 
specifically value friendliness, or diversity, or openness, or trust, 
for their own sake. In particular, I can see situations where we 
*wouldn't* want to put undue value on openness or trust, if they didn't 
serve our mission (at the moment they mostly do).

An exception is the first value on the list, "right to knowledge". Now 
*that* sounds like the sort of thing that should be on our list of core 
values, because it actually relates to our vision and mission. 
Principles of community organization, on the other hand, I think should 
remain means to an end, since organizing ourselves is just a way to 
carry out our mission, not the actual mission (we aren't a social club 
or something).

-Mark