[Foundation-l] Follow up: Fan History joining the WMF family

[Laura Hale]

This is a follow up to my proposal that Fan History Wiki join the wMF
family, based on my experiences via e-mail, on the list and on strategy
wiki.  This isn't as coherent as I would like.

To give some back story that might not have been as obvious in our initial
proposal, we were interested in joining the WMF for several primary reasons:

1) Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization where we fundamentally
believe in the objectives of the organization.
2) Wikimedia Foundation has credibility that could be extended to our
project, helping us accomplish our mission.
3) Fan History and I feel like we have positive relationships with Wikimedia
Foundation staff, based on our interactions at RecentChangesCamp and in
various chat rooms like #wiki and #mediawiki on irc.freenode.net.

We have certain things that we want to accomplish that have been detailed
elsewhere.  We're in the process of looking for and determining if we should
partner with some one to accomplish these goals, what we're looking for in
partnering or being acquired by some one.  Our general criteria have been:

1) Non-profit, no-profit or for profit business where the emphasis would be
on helping us to succeed with our mission.  Monetization of the project is
fine so long as major content focus and creation is focused around
monetizing.  We see our project as fundamentally for a greater good, to
preserve and document the history of fan communities, and we don't want that
made secondary to commercial interests.
2) Financial issues.  In an ideal world, we would want one or two or three
of our staffers to get some form of compensation for helping to maintain the
content, enforce policies and helping work towards the mission.  We also
want to make sure that the project has the funding to continue indefinetely.
3) Fix and improve our back end.  Thankfully, it feels like a fair amount of
this has been addressed in the past two weeks so we're much less stressed
about this than we were.
4) Increase the visibility and credibility of our project.  Get more people
involved.

That out of the way, time to discuss the process of trying to get acquired
by the Wikimedia Foundation.  Simply put, there were three basic steps that
we took:
1) Contacted members of the Wikimedia Foundation to ask them if they would
be interested in bringing Fan History into the Wikimedia Foundation family.
Got directed to other people, told not sure who in the organization this
would be best proposed to, got told that the Foundation itself probably
wouldn't be interest, finally suggested I post this on the list because if
community consensus is yes than we can go ahead.
2) Posted the proposal on the mailing list.  Good feedback.  Suggested I
post it to the Strategy Wiki.
3) Posted to strategy wiki.

Step one is fine.  The only problem I might have had with step one was not
getting out right rejected.

The problem is really when it comes to steps two and three.  To my
knowledge, all of the projects that are currently part of the Wikimedia
Foundation are home grown; they did not join as part of any aquisition
process.  In this regards, our proposal was unique.   Steps two and three
are kind of where we got hung up: What is the timeline?  What are the next
steps to take after these?

The timeline issue is a big one.  For us, this is not that big of a deal
necessarily.  We're finacially in a place where we can probably chug along
for a while in that regards.  We're not facing issues of possibly being shut
down because of legal problems or scripting problems.  We do not have issues
that say this is a last resort option for us to keep us open.  In the
future, others may contact Wikipedia where this may be an issue or where the
founders may see this as the only solution.

I tried to ask various people to get a feel for the timeline that we were
looking at to, well, know if WMF was interested in acquiring us or setting
up some sort of official relationship.  What I got told by people in the
know on  #wikimedia-strategy was that we were looking at three to eighteen
months before we got some sort of official response back regarding whether
this was something that the Wikimedia Foundation community was interested
in.  I was left with the impression that unless I was basically agitating
and trying to get support on an almost daily basis, the timeline was
actually closer to eighteen months.  EIGHTEEN MONTHS.

And that eighteen months didn't even factor in under what conditions WMF
would want us, what we would have to give up, and if we'd even be willing to
accept WMF's offer if they made that decision.  We couldn't get the
information that we needed to know if we even wanted to work with Wikimedia
Foundation for that long.

That puts us in a bind.  There are other places we would like to approach.
(And if you have ideas for who would be a good fit, please get in touch with
me.)  Is it ethical for us to approach other people and organizations while
we have this on the table with the WMF?  If we approach other people in the
mean time, does that signal that our interest in the WMF is dead?  We just
don't know.  Is it fair to the WMF to basically keep us in limbo for three
to eighteen months?  We kind of don't think so.

Outside of the timeline issue, there is the whole procedural issue.
Proposal is made.  It is posted to the appropriate places that WMF employees
and volunteers have guided us to.  What are the next steps?  There really
hasn't been any clarity for us on this.  When we've asked in the chat, the
answer is persistence.  That's not a step and it isn't particularly
helpful.  Persistence how?  Post repeatedly to the mailing list?  Troll talk
pages of contributors to Strategy Wiki asking for them to vote yes, Fan
History should be part of the WMF?

Looking around at other new content proposals, Strategy Wiki looks like a
place where proposals go to die.  There are proposals that have been there a
year, that have no votes, with no comments on them.  There doesn't appear to
be any follow up by 1) the person who posted the proposal, 2) volunteers for
the WMF, 3) WMF employees who are working on strategy wiki.  This is not
encouraging for several reasons.  If you are really excited about your
content proposal and it would be a really good fit, you have the time to
basically put full force into launching the project in the next three to six
months, you've followed the guidelines that I have gotten and the procedure
on the wiki, time and procedure become a huge issue that are potentially
huge deterrents.

By deterents, I mean that these projects could end up off WMF and you could
lose contributors who can't get past the bureaucracy to accomplish their
goals, are not insider enough to push to get things done, are going to deter
future proposals and may deter future contributions to Wikipedia and related
projects.

As some one who has proposed a new project for the WMF (which would really
probably be an acquisition if it happened), some changes need to be made:

1) Clear procedure for what happens step by step in making such a proposal.
Post proposal.  Contact people who support your position to vote in favor of
it using talk pages on Strategy wiki.  After one hundred votes vast in favor
with no more than half that total in opposition, project moves to
development stages where WMF staff will be in contact with the person making
the proposal.  Something like that.
2) Clear timeline of what happens and when so that people can plan
accordingly
3) Expectations regarding exclusivity of proposal to the WMF during the
proposal process.  Can people propose it elsewhere or seek acquisition by
others while there is an open proposal on Strategy Wiki?

As for where Fan History's proposal to join WMF stands now, we're not sure.
The mailing list conversation died.  Strategy wiki's only commentary has
been regarding getting us off the blacklist for Foundation projects.

Sincerely,
Laura Hale