[Foundation-l] Where we are headed

[Delirium]

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Recently I heard about a big argument in the German Wikipedia about the
> Verein... and honestly it sounded to me like the same story all over
> again.  People who are very good volunteers but who prefer, for good
> reasons, to spend their time editing, may not always properly appreciate
> the work of other volunteers who become more involved in organizational
> work.
>   

Part of the problem from my perspective is that it feels like you need 
to make the transition to meta-level time committment to have any say in 
how things are run.  But even keeping up with the public mailing lists 
is a significant time commitment---I'm the most "meta-involved" by far 
of the Wikipedians I know in real life, and I'm only moderately involved 
compared to many folks.  I don't think that people who prefer to spend 
most of their time editing the encyclopedia, developing its policies, 
resolving article, disputes, etc.---the people intimately familiar with 
the workings of our main reason for being here---should be cut off from 
knowledge of and a say in what's going on at "higher levels".  Important 
issues should be announced ahead of time to the community at large; 
comments should be solicited and taken into account before final 
decisions are made; and in very important cases even referendum-type 
votes (or at least straw polls) should be taken.

At the very least things should be routinely discussed on the 
publicly-accessible mailing lists, and ideally important things should 
be announced on the relevant wikis (i.e. Village-Pump type places) early 
enough to give non-mailing-list folk a chance to weigh in.

In short: Most people have neither the time nor inclination to get 
involved in meta-level activities that require a time committment.  This 
is particularly true of some of the types of people I think we'd like to 
have more of, like professors.  So if the Foundation is to represent a 
movement that includes those people, they need to continually be kept in 
the loop and repeatedly brought back into the debate.  A professor who 
edits Wikipedia in his spare time is probably not going to also read a 
dozen mailing lists, show up to IRC meetings, and volunteer to serve on 
committees, but could still be kept in the loop.

-Mark