[Foundation-l] Use of moderation

[Erik Moeller]

2009/9/8 Brian <Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu>:
> Some of us feel
> that the foundation has become out of our reach. That no matter how much we
> discuss and try to reach consensus it will just be too hard, or there will
> be a lack of interest in our consensus at the foundation, for any real
> change to happen. You practically have to get a grant on behalf of the
> foundation anymore in order to convince them you've got a good idea.

Really? Can you give examples of stuff that used to be easy that's
become harder now, and where consensus has been ignored where it would
have been swiftly acted upon in the past?

I do believe that much like in Wikipedia itself, we're past the low
hanging fruit phase right now when it comes to WMF's objectives. It's
one thing to set up a MediaWiki instance and call it Wiktionary, it's
another to actually design software for supporting a multilingual
dictionary and thesaurus. And so it goes with virtually every major
challenge we're facing today. The "easy stuff" at this point is only
easy in that it is obvious (yes, MediaWiki usability sucks), not in
that it is easy to fix.

Part of traditional professionalization is also to only make a
commitment when you feel you can uphold it. So where a casual,
informal organization is more likely to say "Yeah, sure" and then
never do anything (FlaggedRevisions and SUL being two examples of this
happening in the past, with no execution over multiple years), a more
formal, professional organization will only make the commitment if it
can allocate resources to keep it. So, as an organization matures, it
will by definition say "no" more frequently, because saying "yes" too
often is one of the most common signs of immaturity. We've certainly
not reached the end point of that process yet.

But for a _volunteer_ driven organization, it's important to make a
further transition, not from "yes" to "no" in 9 out of 10 cases, but
from "yes" (and nothing will happen) to "yes, and here's how _you_ can
make it happen", except for the truly bad ideas. :-) I think this is
where we're failing right now -- engaging more people to help us solve
problems. The strategic planning process is the first attempt to scale
up the small-room conversations of the past into the largest possible
meaningful consultation. How do we transform those plans and proposals
into volunteer workgroups and actions?

[ And yes, that's a bit off-topic for the thread, but I think pretty
on-topic for the list. ;-) ]

-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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