[Foundation-l] Discussion duration and the SOPA shutdown

[FT2]

I wasn't involved but I can guess one key issue. On this of all things, the
foundation's hands were tied,. it could not pre-empt the community or do
things in a way that would let it be seen as foundation pushing, or
hinting, or anything. And the community.... well.... it just yapped and
yapped, as it does.

A communal formal RFC Dec 20, saying "decision by Jan 5 so whatever happens
we are ready and the foundation knows what's asked of it" would have been
sensible. In itrs absence and with discussion underway, could the
foundation have said "we need a decision by X date" or "you might want to
close this by X date given politics"?  Probably. Live and learn, consensus
was apparent and agreed, and.. yeah, the process could be smoother another
time. Maybe in another 11 years ..... :)

FT2


On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 2:27 AM, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com>wrote:

> In a sense, nobody getting out ahead of it in terms of in-wiki
> leadership may have been the goof.  We could have had a
> date-to-be-filled-in formal consensus exercise starting a week or two
> in to the on-wiki informal discussion (say, late Dec or first week of
> January).  Even if it wasn't clear what date it would take effect on,
> that would have given time to get the consensus properly consensed.
>
> It sounds like the Foundation was more organized about it than the
> community, and didn't reach out to push early enough.  I understand
> the desire not to be seen to be leading the community around, but it
> seems to have led to a counterproductively late push (from my point,
> of lack of community discussion time).  Given the depth of Foundation
> internal discussions, perhaps it should have been earlier, at least in
> a "heads-up" sense asking for the community to start prepping / get
> more result-focused.
>