[Foundation-l] Board Resolution: Openness

[Marc Riddell]

on 4/8/11 3:35 PM, Ting Chen at tchen at wikimedia.org wrote:

> Dear community,
> 
> on the IRC board meeting at April 8th 2011 the board approved
> unanimously the following resolution:
> 
> 
> 
> We, the Wikimedia Foundation Board, believe that the continued health of
> our project communities is crucial to fulfilling our mission. The
> Wikimedia projects are founded in the culture of openness,
> participation, and quality that has created one of the world's great
> repositories of human knowledge. But while Wikimedia's readers and
> supporters are growing around the world, recent studies of editor trends
> show a steady decline in the participation and retention of new editors.
> 
> As laid out in our five-year Strategic Plan, and emphasized by these
> findings, Wikimedia needs to attract and retain more new and diverse
> editors, and to retain our experienced editors.  A stable editing
> community is critical to the long-term sustainability and quality of
> both our current Projects and our movement.
> 
> We consider meeting this challenge our top priority. We ask all
> contributors to think about these issues in your daily work on the
> Projects.
> We support the Executive Director in making this the top staff priority,
> and recommend she increase the allocation of Foundation resources
> towards addressing this problem, through community outreach,
> amplification of community efforts, and technical improvements.
> And we support the developers, editors, wikiprojects and Chapters that
> are working to make the projects more accessible, welcoming, and
> supportive.
> 
> The Board resolves to help move these efforts forward, and invites
> specific requests for Foundation assistance to do so.  We welcome and
> encourage new ideas to help reach our goals of
> [[strategy:Openness|openness and broader participation]].
> 
> We urge the Wikimedia community to promote openness and collaboration, by:
> * Treating new editors with patience, kindness, and respect; being aware
> of the challenges facing new editors, and reaching out to them; and
> encouraging others to do the same;
> * Improving communication on the projects; simplifying policy and
> instructions; and working with colleagues to improve and make friendlier
> policies and practices regarding templates, warnings, and deletion;
> * Supporting the development and rollout of features and tools that
> improve usability and accessibility;
> * Increasing community awareness of these issues and supporting outreach
> efforts of individuals, groups and Chapters;
> * Working with colleagues to reduce contention and promote a friendlier,
> more collaborative culture, including more thanking and affirmation; and
> encouraging best practices and community leaders; and
> * Working with colleagues to develop practices to discourage disruptive
> and hostile behavior, and repel trolls and stalkers.
> 
> 
> ;Resources
> : 
> [[strategy:Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summary|Wikimedia_Movement_Strate
> gic_Plan_Summary]]
> : [[strategy:Editor_Trends_Study|2011 Editor Trends Study]]
> ([[strategy:March_2011_Update|Executive Director's summary]],
> [[strategy:Openness|ideas]])
> 

Thank you, all, for this. This resolution is great news; and a great
commitment of support for the Wikipedia Project, as well as for the
individual Community Members who are at the heart of it.


Marc Riddell, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychology/Psychotherapy