On 9/13/07, WikipediaEditor Durin wikidurin@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