[Foundation-l] Options for community organization

[Harel Cain]

My take on the matter [hi everyone, glad to join the list!] is that
you have to bear in mind that for some of the most active editors on
Wikimedia projects, this activity is a major hobby and an important
part of their [our] social life. People want to make a difference,
even stand out in their own special way. "Organizing" stuff is just
such a way. It happens in any hobby-based club, congregation etc.
That's people!

The "bane" of the Wikimedia-editing hobby is that it's basically a
solitary experience of people sitting at home in front of the
computer. There's just so much goodwill activity of "organizing stuff"
that people can do in this environment, even if you take into account
all committees, projects, meetups etc. etc. That's also why the online
"managerial" roles are so coveted.

I think if you look this way at all attempts to form assemblies,
councils, you name it -- then they become the natural, understandable
processes that they are, even if they cannot always be objectively
justified .

Harel


On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 8:38 PM, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Milos Rancic wrote:
>
>  > - For those who are interested in organizing community, I think
>  >   that the best way is to self-organize themselves and start to
>  >   work on sensible proposals.
>
>  A trade union can organize a strike, a church community can
>  organize to build a church, a political party can win an election
>  and a guerilla can cause a revolution.  The Wikimedia Foundation
>  has organized fundraisers and keep the servers running, with some
>  paid staff.  The chapters have organized various exhibitions and
>  information outreach events and a running toolserver.  But what is
>  "the community" supposed to organize?  What difference in the
>  world is this kind of organization supposed to achieve?
>
>
>  > - At the other side, communities should start with
>  >   self-organizing their inter-project cooperation at the lower
>  >   scale
>
>  Individuals and small groups are already participating in more
>  than one project, be it Wikipedia+Wikisource, multiple languages
>  of Wikipedia, or even Wikipedia+Wikitravel+OpenStreetMap which
>  reaches outside of the Wikimedia Foundation. They're already
>  talking on each other's IRC channels, mailing lists, village
>  pumps, exchanging interwiki links and ideas. How does this need
>  any further "organization"?  Why should people need to contact
>  you, when they can just start doing these things?  It's as easy as
>  editing Wikipedia.
>
>  Some things that individuals can't easily do is organizing local
>  events of a certain size.  That's what we have chapters for.
>
>
>  > I would like to make a group for initiating self-organizing of
>  > inter-project coordination.
>
>  Pardon?  Why do you make it sound as if all you want is to get the
>  role of a bureaucrat, no matter what needs to be done?  Can you
>  point to some problems that need to be fixed, instead of just
>  pointing to yourself as a solution for a non-existing problem?
>
>
>  --
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
>
>
>
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