[Foundation-l] Foundation too passive, wasting community talent

[Jan Kucera (Kozuch)]

Hi there,

why is the Foundation so passive??? I have been since almost 5 years with various Wikimedia projects and I can really see NO PROGRESS from the side of the Foundation but more employees, 2 new blogs, new Vector skin and maybe MediaWiki performance tweaks. My participation declined radically, because I can not feel any real support from the foundation. It is not 2006 anymore. Look at what other websites have done in 5 years and you realize they have undergone major redesigns. And as someone wrote here lately Wikipedia still seems so 2005. This is OK for an encyclopedia, but unfortunately the way volunteers work is stuck in 2005 too...

Large-scale LiquidThreads deployment is far far away to allow more sophisticated discussion on wikis. Few central notices is what the Strategy project just resulted in, without any "serious" action (anyone to remember that  "call for action" thing?). I really doubt the community is able to do more than just bring few ideas (proposals) together.

The Fellowship program has been largely a PR thing only so far, wasting its great potential to bring a real change in how Wikimedia uses its (financial) resources. Similarly working grant program for wide community is needed to be able to do the necessary progress. Besides that, we as the community have very, very little control over what the 5 tenths of staff are paid for (I mean a real tasks breakdown).

Sophisticated decision mechanism simply does not exist on a community level, and those on Foundation level are of little importance. Is it really that hard to launch an ideas bank (at ideas.wikimedia.org for example) to boil down what the community really needs instead of letting volunteers have endless discussions in wiki-style? Will someone finally realize that wiki is not the holy-grail of "collaboration" and maybe other tools are needed too?

Videos are still not being offered in various bitrates which makes them unusable within the encyclopedia, etc. etc. There has been literally no progress at all from an established editor point of view and that is very depriving. Very little is done in supporting new projects creation, Data Commons being an example.

I wish I had the power to change all these things, but unfortunately I do not. Of course, if I do not want to have endless discussion in wiki (or mailing list) -style...


Cheers,
Kozuch

http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kozuch