[Foundation-l] WMF and the press

[Samuel Klein]

On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 5:39 AM, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>
wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > Anthony wrote:
> >> On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>>  b) public view. Every time we sneeze, there is a journalist to report
> >>>  it, claiming we caught the flu and are dying. There are leaks to the
> >>>  press in private lists. It is disastrous because it created an
> >>>  atmosphere of distrust, and many issues are no more discussed by fear
> of
> >>>  being repeated
> >>>
> >> Maybe I'm naive, but I really don't understand this fear of the press.
> >> It's especially ironic considering that the Wikimedia Foundation is
> >> dedicated to providing free access to knowledge, and the press is
> >> heavily used in obtaining and sourcing that knowledge.  Is the claim
> >> that the press often gets it wrong, and that the general public is
> >> stupid enough to believe whatever the press tells them, and won't
> >> change its mind when presented with the truth?  I might buy that (the
> >> first part is pretty much incontrovertibly true), though I'd find it
> >> at odds with the whole concept of Wikimedia projects (that
> >> Wikimedians, on average, can find reliable sources, sort the wheat
> >> from the chaff, and get to the truth).
>

It's one of those red-letter days when I am 100% in agreement with Anthony
:)


>
> > I'm inclined to agree with this analysis.  Concern with the press is
> > about concern with image instead of identity.  It puts looking good in a
> > higher place than being good.  We've been looking over our shoulder ever
> > since the Seigenthaler incident.
>

And I often find that this reflexive fear of the press leads the projects to
do the wrong thing in order to somehow 'pacify' the press.  Many press
events are neither interesting nor of significant impact to a project with
the scope and importance of Wikipedia.



> > Ironically, going out of our way to
> > avoid such things only draws attention to their possibility, and may
> > even be counterproductive.  An organization the size of WMF cannot
> > completely avoid these fumbles.  Most of the time it's only one person
> > who has screwed up in a unique way (like EssJay), a
>

In many cases I do see reacting rather than ignoring the press (when they
get things very wrong) as counterproductive.  The Essjay case was a specific
example where we could have highlighted the strength and robustness of
Wikipedia -- saying when asked, "look, we are robust to this kind of
spoofing <examples>, which is why we can afford not to care about
credentials".  Instead people went out of their way to say things like
"we're looking into ways to make sure this doesn't happen again," and to
suggest that the spoofed credentials in question actually hurt the projects,
which was itself deceptive and didn't do anyone any good (and certainly
didn't improve or minimize reaction in the press).



> > and yet we get all up
> > in knots establishing policies that will keep these one-off incidents
> > from ever happening again.
>

New users still cannot create new pages on en:wp, which is a real pity.
While some people feel responsible for demanding one-off policies, I don't
see that anyone feeling responsible for revisiting such one-off policies
with cooler heads (and statistics!) once they have become taken for granted.

 Florence writes:

> I certainly do not look at the press as the source for an atmosphere of
> distrust, and this is not the issue.
> The issue is that the press makes a big mountain of every little
> disagreement shared between us. These big mountains reflect badly on
> donors, in particular big donors, who dislike public controversies. So,
> the issue is not so much fear of the press itself, but fear of the
> consequences it may have on our ability to fundraise, which is an
> essential consideration for survival of the websites.
>

Can you please provide a few examlpes of controversies stemming from
internal disagreements that reflected poorly on a big donor or potential
donor?

I would think that "presenting internal disagreements at face value" and
"the foundation's ability to fundraise" are fairly independent.


>
> As such, it is recommanded that we always show a public face of full
> agreement. Discussions, sometimes heated, could have been preserved on
> private lists and a common front presented to the press.
>

Hopefully you do not mean /all/ heated discussions.  Are you talking about
discussions about donors themselves??


>
> If we must maintain a common voice, the main question left is "who is in
> control of the information distributed", and what will be the channels
> of distribution of the information. In an internet area, the one who has
> control over the information distributed or not distributed, has in
> reality control of the organization. That's basic strategy.
>

This line of reasoning is starting to sound bad for the foundation /and/ the
communities in the long term.


>
> There are certainly mainy good arguments for trying to solve
> disagreement with discretion. However, collateral damages are
> * decrease of discussion with a large audience (an issue that is real;
> that's for example decrease of discussions on key issues on this very
> list)
> * power struggle over communication channels (who says what to who)
>

for not only these reasons.  beyond lessened discussion and power struggles,
hiding disagreement preempts the engagement of the community on difficult
issues.  Issues that haven't found a good resolution within a small-group
discussion are often ones that benefit from wider engagement; similarly, one
of the functions of a heterogenous board with community representation is to
deal effectively with uncontroversial issues, while letting interested
parties know about those that are controversial, and inviting input on
issues that might be decided with undue weight given to one such party or
another.

More specifically, people seem to be excited these days by the prospect of
big donors.  A big donor who has occasional personal meetings with board
members will naturally have more influence on board decision making than the
community will, ifthe issue cannot be discussed with the commnity at
large... naturally in this case any public presentation of concern or
disagreement would endanger offending a big donor.

I can't imagine a world in which every open community group needs to
organize an action commitee that includes at least one person who can be
privy to internal Wikimedia disagreements and conversation, simply to
advocate for their point of view; but that seems to be in the air.

SJ


> ant
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>