[Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia India Program Trust

[Thomas Morton]

This is a fantastic email, thanks Theo.

When someone decides to lead a movement of people like me, I expect better
> from them. Maybe I should expect less. I even had the pleasure of arguing
> yesterday, if paid employees should be held to a lower standard.
>

That is wonderfully expressed.

I suppose it's easier to proclaim them leaders of the community, people who
> agree when others seem to only attack, who remind others of the same lofty
> principles while glossing over the abject realities and marks incurred in
> the process.


This is very true.

I suppose I am often a vocal critic - even of things I support; I see this
as an important role (and I encourage everyone to constantly criticise). We
should always push to be better and part of that process is to be
criticised.

The Foundation is pretty good. It could be better; it worries me,
sometimes, that criticism descends so often either into a war of emotions

As both a community and an organisation we still reject criticism too
easily. We consistently lack empathy (yep, me too) and far too often see
any negative comment as a slight on our own actions.

As Theo says, criticism is sometimes expressed too forcefully. A problem
born out of the fires of "consensus building" :) We are too entrenched
(I've been taking something of a Wiki-break the last few weeks to mull on
how to pull my own self out of this pit).

So we need to be better at giving and receiving critique.

I've followed this thread with interest. And whilst I am still unsure of
exactly what went wrong here; something clearly did. And the takeaway
should be to find out what went wrong, and how to stop it happening again.
Not arguing over who to blame.

Perhaps it is just that we are all very passionate (not at all a bad thing,
though it leads to clashes). But I do have this growing well of concern
that we are too often talking the wrong approach in communication (both on
and off wiki), stalling our momentum.

Tom