[WikiEN-l] What's going on? - Inquiry 2

[Kat Walsh]

On 9/13/07, WikipediaEditor Durin <wikidurin at gmail.com> wrote:
> The overarching problem here is that Wikipedia is collapsing. This list
> is just a symptom of that.
> * The Foundation has become ineffective and no longer cares about
>    its mission and goals.

This is untrue.

>  There's a number of symptoms resulting from
>    this state. One such symptom is the abysmal state of fundraising.
>    In hard numbers, the fundraising is better. In terms of per-capita
>    analysis, absolutely terrible. In short, the importance, scale and
>    complexity of Wikipedia has dramatically increased while fund
>    raising has only slightly increased. It's not keeping up, and the
>    more that it can't keep up the worse the problems will become.

We're aware of fundraising. The Foundation isn't currently in
financial difficulty; there is a fundraiser planned for later on in
the year, and because we do actually care about it, have enlisted help
and are starting organization, research, and campaign planning early;
there are more long-term plans for future efforts.

>    Another symptom; massive turnover at the Foundation level. Though
>    the words we've been hearing from the departing people have all
>    been nice, any outside observer can see that an organization that
>    loses people by the droves has serious problems, regardless of
>    what face they attempt to put on it.

For what it's worth, I think the office is in a better state now than
it has been in the past; the personnel are a better fit for the needs
of the organization as they are now. Turnover doesn't come without its
problems, but it's not always for the worse.

The rest are community issues which I can't speak on with any more
knowledge than others here, but I recognize them: we have huge scaling
issues, and many of the people who best know what the original
community values were have burned out, have lost interest, or just
aren't used to dealing with a sprawling metropolis rather than a small
town.

I do see the list as being more argumentative than it has been in the
past, more prone to hostile rather than healthy argument. Some
speculation: people get tired of fighting the same battles fifty times
over and get short and snappish, people leave when they are tired of
rehashing, people don't know the people they're arguing with anymore,
haven't worked with them and likely never will, and treat each other
more poorly than if they knew they'd have to work together in the
future. The list is too high-volume for people given to slow,
thoughtful responses and who don't wish to spend all their time on the
list to keep up; it's shifted more toward firing things off quickly,
which leads to a more hasty and argumentative tone.

No one's disputing that there are problems... and often big, honking,
obvious ones. But to characterize the issues as coming from
indifference or apathy is not only a falsity but an insult to everyone
putting in their effort toward them.

-Kat

-- 
Wikimedia needs you: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
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