[Foundation-l] Communicating effectively: Wikimedia needs clear language now

[MZMcBride]

Erik Moeller wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 3:16 AM, Tom Morris <tom at tommorris.org> wrote:
>> Mostly though, thanks to the Internet and multinational corporations,
>> godawful business jargon crosses all national borders. Words and
>> phrases like 'onboarding', 'stakeholders', 'mission statements',
>> 'platforms', 'proactive', 'sectors' and pretty much anything
>> 'strategic', for instance.
> 
> Terms like "strategy", "mission statement" and "stakeholder" have
> concrete organizational meaning. Yes, they are also often used as part
> of marketing copy or organizational copy in ways that are unhelpful,
> because people who aren't good writers feel the need to plug holes by
> picking from the shared vocabulary of organization-speak. That doesn't
> make them meaningless, anymore than the fact that every idiot has an
> opinion on quantum physics makes quantum physics meaningless.

That's just your guilt talking. You've been as big an offender in this area
as anyone. I can't be the only person who remembers that there's an entire
"Strategic Planning" wiki. Anyone interested in a broad sampling of bullshit
language need look no further. :-)

> However, organizational development and management are serious human
> endeavors that merit open-mindedness and willingness to discover and
> learn on the reader's part just as much as they merit clarity and
> brevity on the writer's or speaker's part. Being simplistic about the
> "corporate world" is no more charming or noble than is ignorance about
> any other field.

Applying corporate jargon to a non-profit, or worse, to the wiki model, has
expectedly poor results.

MZMcBride