[Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation

[Birgitte SB]

--- On Thu, 8/27/09, Kropotkine_113 <Kropotkine113 at free.fr> wrote:

> From: Kropotkine_113 <Kropotkine113 at free.fr>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Thursday, August 27, 2009, 7:53 AM
> Thank you very much all of you
> (Brigitte SB, Ting Chen, Mickael Snow and
> others).
> 
> To close my participation in this thread I just add three
> points  :
> 
> - My question about the wikimedia membership criterion
> wasn't very
> important, but just-to-know ; thanks for your
> explanations.
> 
> - The communication process on this whole story has been
> disastrous ;
> this, added to the fact that Wikis, Q&A and help pages
> are not
> up-to-date or are confused, tranforms a maybe-good-decision
> (I have my
> own opinion on this point ;)) in a
> too-weird-to-be-good-decision ; the
> "NOMCOM disapearance in vacuum" is a good example. It
> doesn't worth 10Mo
> discussion threads, I think you are aware of this.

I agree.  Inward facing communication has long been a problem for WMF.  At times there have been board members that took more leadership in this area regarding various issues, but I can't remember a time when this hasn't been an issue.  I think it is mostly a problem of WMF not setting up the expectations accurately.  In my personal opinion when communicating with the community; surprises are bad.  Even good surprises are bad.  Fulfilling expectations on the other hand is good.  It seems to be better received by the community when WMF fulfills a modest expectation than when it reveals a wonderful surprise.  
> 
> - Even more important point is the cultural gap between
> Foundation's
> intentions and communication, which are very
> "north-american slanted" (I
> don't know how to say that), and its perception by a very
> multicultural
> community. The gap is particularly large concerning
> financial/executive
> power relations. You have to be very careful about this and
> to be very
> pedagogic when you report such decisions, because when the
> story will
> appear in french village pump (for example) it will be hard
> tuff for
> chapter's members to explain it correctly (if possible).
> The answer
> often used is : "It's not evil, it's just the way american
> people deal
> with it every day".. Just let me tell you that's not a
> sufficient answer
> for many people (like me ;)). I think that a non-used but
> very efficient
> solution would be to share informations before the official
> report and
> to work closely with local chapters ; but this is a more
> wide problem
> and slightly out-of-the-scope of this thread.
> 

I don't completely understand what you are talking about here.   What is the "american way" ?  And what do you mean by "pedagogic"?

Birgitte SB