[Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 89, Issue 30

[WereSpielChequers]

I think the nub of this debate is between those who see decentralisation as
inherently inefficient as in Phoebe's comment
/"decentralization is important" raises a whole bunch of other
important questions: is decentralization more important than efficiency as a
working principle?"

And those of us who see centralisation as inherently inefficient.

This is partly a philosophical debate, though hopefully one where most of us
are mid spectrum..I suspect most of us can think of things which work better
decentralised, and also things which work better when centralised.
Personally I'm a moderate decentralist - my experience is that in general
decentralised solutions work better than centralised ones, but I'm
sufficiently moderate as to concede that sometimes centralisation works
best.

As far as the Wikimedia movement is concerned I suspect that decentralised
solutions are more likely to be "efficient"/successful because they are more
compatible with the ethos of the community, and especially when knowledge of
cultural and legal quirks is important.

Remember we are a worldwide movement. Having a diverse group of people who
understand their own culture and are tolerant of others is a viable and
successful model for this. A centralised group making global decisions that
work in varied cultures is much more difficult model to make work. How many
people do we have who truly understand more than two or three of our globe's
cultures? Centralisation is much more difficult than decentralisation when
you are operating across multiple cultures.  - I'd be interested if anyone
can point to an efficient despite being centralised model that we could crib
from.



Sometimes centralisation is more efficient, for example IT, wherever I am in
the world I can edit the same wikis. But Tax systems are not centralised -
if we want tax privileges in as many countries as possible then a
decentralised model is inherently more efficient. Centralised fundraising
has left us overly dependent on the generousity of US donors, though I
appreciate that the fundraising team has tried to move away from that.. But
the last figures I've seen show a US based fundraising team that raises most
of their funds in the US.



WereSpielChequers


> Anyway, thanks for raising the importance of decentralization. The Board
> agrees: there's a reason it was first in our list of principles. To my mind
> "decentralization is important" raises a whole bunch of other important
> questions: is decentralization more important than efficiency as a working
> principle? How do we also implement decentralized dispute resolution when
> two entities disagree? How do we make sure people who don't consider
> themselves aligned with any particular body, including readers and donors,
> are represented in decision making? Who allots funds; who makes sure funds
> keep coming in? Who is responsible for keeping wikipedia.org up and alive?
> How do we align the WMF's specific legal responsibilities with those of a
> decentralized movement? (These and many more questions are also part of the
> movement roles project discussions, btw; see meta).
>
> One thing that struck me about reviewing chapter financials was that there
> are 20+ chapters that don't directly receive donations and haven't applied
> for many grants to date, and thus have little to no money to support
> program
> work. Though mostly outside the scope of the Board's letter, this is for
> instance one part of our model that I would like to see change --
> Wikimedians everywhere should have better access to resources to get things
> done. On this specific point, I do disagree with Birgitte -- I think a
> well-developed grants program [and it's true we're not there yet, but want
> to be soon] could actually help us decentralize faster, in that to obtain
> money needed for program work chapters or other groups wouldn't have to
> develop the (increasingly difficult) infrastructure needed to directly
> fundraise with all the attendant legal and fiduciary concerns.
>
> The point raised by Anthere and Delphine elsewhere that developing
> fundraising capabilities helps chapters mature is worth noting and
> certainly
> historically true, but is that the best course of affairs, or are there
> other paths of development that would be better? I do agree wholeheartedly
> that the WMF should invest in helping everyone get better at fundraising
> and
> management (and PR, and other essential skills...)
>
> -- phoebe, speaking for herself not the board or staff
>
>