[Foundation-l] How was the "only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote" rule decided?

[Samuel Klein]

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Philippe
Beaudette<pbeaudette at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> On Jul 31, 2009, at 1:13 PM, Brian wrote:
>
>> There
>> is further no top down effort to ask the community if they have any
>> good
>> ideas, and then ask the community what they think about the best of
>> those
>> ideas. That, in my view, is a broken system.
>
>
> Really?  Been to the strategic planning wiki lately?  There's a whole
> big section there asking for proposals from the community. :-)

Right.  I sympathize with both Brian and Philippe here.

There are those who want the Foundation to take a more active role in
facilitating discussion, even from those who are apathetic or shy
about discussing policy; they also want the Foundation to make
decisions based on thorough community input.    They feel that the
Foundation is acting on the limited input given, and fooling itself
that this is a functional way to survey a broad and underrepresented
community.

There are also those who feel the Foundation is open and encouraging
public discourse, but there aren't many community members contributing
to the discussion.  They want the community to take a more active role
in discussions and to start new ones where they don't exist, and to be
bold with ideas about change; they also want the Foundation to make
bold decisions where none has been proposed, and to make steady
progress.  They feel the community is not very communal, and needs
guidance when a complex topic arises to overcome a tendency towards
flame wars - or should be left out of discussions requiring expertise
altogether.


I am somewhere in-between.

On critical complex topics, the Foundation could benefit from more
discussion and better planning.  Why have we made it so hard to start
new Projects?  When did we acquire 8 million dollars in annual upkeep?
 Where are metrics of site popularity, public citation, and reuse (for
all projects, not just Wikipedia) in measures of the Foundation's
success?
   These topics are not generally on the table; occasionally we get PR
instead of detailed answers; and regularly people say things such as
"I don't post to foundation-l [because it's not a friendly enough
environment / it is full of hot air]".  If you ever find yourself
saying that about a canonical place for discussion of community-wide
issues, you've run into a deep problem that you should address
publicly and immediately.

On critical planning topics, the community has the ball in its own
court -- a healthy foundation, hundreds of thousands of active
supporters, worldwide acclaim, and the authority to chart its own
course.  And so far, many of its good planners are looking elsewhere
and saying "I think you have the ball."
   Perhaps local factions and detailed policy-making have won out over
larger-scope planning; perhaps even the most active community members
don't realize the position they are in to contribute to long-term
discussions -- such as how to define membership, suffrage, community
engagement.   But if you find yourself spending more time writing
eloquent challenges to authority than proposing better solutions, you
should stop and consider whether you can just fix what needs fixing.

Sj