[Foundation-l] WMF seeking to sub-lease office space?

[Michael Snow]

Sage Ross wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 4:05 AM, Domas Mituzas<midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Gerard,
>>     
>>> Remember, the Signpost is an en.wp publication. It is not really the
>>> place
>>> to announce such things.
>>>       
>> it is up for Signpost editors if they want to include it or not. Not
>> your business :)
>>
>> BR,
>>     
> I guess I shouldn't have stopped reading this thread so early on.
>
> I wrote "News and notes" this week but I didn't end up mentioning the
> sub-lease/move in this week's Signpost because it just didn't seem
> very important. But I do consider it part of the Signpost's mission to
> report on Foundation matters, and more than that, to help push for WMF
> transparency and accountability to the community.
>
> I don't like the idea that what the Signpost does is "our" business
> and not "your" business, for various intracommunity values of us and
> you.  Despite being based on en.wp, we're trying to become more useful
> to the broader Wikimedia community/communities.  (To that end,
> OhanaUnited is reviving the Sister Project Interviews series:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:OhanaUnited/Sister_Projects_Interview
> .  And both news reports from other projects and reflective pieces
> about what it's like to work on individual non-English projects versus
> their English counterparts are very welcome.)
>
> The "we" of the Signpost is anyone from the Wikimedia community who
> wants to contribute.
>   
Just to chime in, figuring my perspective from the early days of the 
Signpost might be useful. From the beginning I knew that we had people 
reading from outside the English Wikipedia, and there's always been 
interest in building off that framework for cross-project exchange of 
news, whether it's the English-speaking audience learning about the work 
in other languages, or getting news from English out to those languages. 
That was, is, and should always be encouraged.

This simply reflects that the Signpost is for the benefit of the 
community, however broadly that may be defined, and should look to that 
for guidance in its coverage. In that sense, if Gerard reads the 
Signpost, it is his business what he wants to hear about. I would hope 
that was mostly focused on making it more thorough and comprehensive, 
though. Strictly speaking it's correct that the Signpost is not the 
place for us (in this case, "us" meaning the Wikimedia Foundation) to 
announce things, because it's independent of the foundation, but the 
implication that it's not something people should expect to read about 
in the Signpost would be a mistake.

Finally, as valuable as both the Signpost and Wikizine are, along with 
this list and all other ways to disseminate information, no single 
source can be the magic bullet to reach everyone. In working toward 
that, we need to exercise our cultural value of sharing knowledge, so if 
you have information that is appropriate to share, pass it on to those 
who would like to know about it.

--Michael Snow