[Foundation-l] Options for community organization

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 1:38 PM, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Milos Rancic wrote:
>  What difference in the
>  world is this kind of organization supposed to achieve?

Maybe no difference whatsoever. However, a lot of volunteers are
interested in putting their time and talents towards this pursuit, and
it doesn't cause any net negative effect to let them proceed with it.
We've moved past the idea of a board-sanctioned community authority.
We're now talking about self-organization of our volunteers in ways
that they deem to be personally important.

In the worst case scenario, this type of organization acheives
nothing. However, I think we've seen that groups can self-organize to
produce much good among the projects: The SWMT, the CVU, Wikipedia's
Esperanza, etc. All of these groups are self-organized to tackle
specific problems that were not being satisfactorily handled through
other methods. In large part, I think that these groups are doing an
excellent job in making our projects a better place to work.

If self-organized groups display a particular competency or expertise,
the community will willingly turn to them as an authority on those
matters. If no such competency is displayed, the community will ignore
them. These groups will tackle the problems that they see before them,
and will be taken seriously by the rest of the community if they earn
that distinction. Volunteers cannot demand respect, but they can earn
it through hard work and dedication.

>  How does this need
>  any further "organization"?  Why should people need to contact
>  you, when they can just start doing these things?

Confusing, perhaps, a "need" for a "want" of more organization.
Organized volunteers are likely to be more productive working together
then they are working in solitude. People will come to Milos for this
if they feel he has a good idea and is producing good results.
Otherwise, he will work alone as usual. You cannot force people to do
any particular task around here, but you can give them options and let
them willfully choose to work with you. Milos has put up a flag asking
other like-minded individuals if they would like to join their
efforts. Whether people are interested in joining or not, is this
really causing a problem for you?

>  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?

And why do you make it sound like you're so threatened by community
self-organization? Milos has pointed out at least one problem here,
the lack of effective inter-project communication. I agree with him
about this, and I suspect that many other people will agree as well.
If there truly is no problem with this, then Milos and friends will
accomplish nothing, and at the end of the day there will be no
difference. If there is a problem, however, then we should all hope
that interested volunteers make those problems go away.

--Andrew Whitworth