[Foundation-l] Transparency

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

>> As I write that, it occurs to me that there isn't even a clear point of
>> contact for project participants who want to contact the Foundation with
>> questions or requests.  As far as I know, there is no prominent page
>> anywhere that amounts to "Instructions on Contacting the Foundation for
>> Help", so when "Foundation Issues" come up people are mostly left to
>> guess
>> on what to do.  Eventually very experienced hands get a sense of when to
>> A)
>> call the office, B) post to foundation-l, C) email Jimbo/Anthere/Brion,
>> etc., but as far as know there isn't any place that actually tries to
>> explain best practices for interacting with the Foundation.
>
> I would start with the Volunteer Coordinator
> <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Volunteer_Coordinator>, and as a
> bonus Cary is as a rule very helpful. :)
>

Actually, we must also realize that many (if not the majority) of the
editors of even big wp projects like French, Japanese, or Russian, do not
speak English or do not feel themselves confident enough in English. This
means that they get all the messages about WMF through their own wp
project (through the people who speak both languages, are involved somehow
on a broader scope, and just select the material to be translated). For
instance, there is no chance they can read this list, possibly they would
even never know  that the (open) list exists. I just do not see how the
volunteer coordinator idea would work for these people. Unless, of course,
we find the translators - but then, again, this is not the only point
where translators are needed, and I just do not see how this could be
done. In the end of the day, participants of even bigger projects feel
disconnected from all decisions done at the WMF level, and do not feel
like they influenced these decisions at all.

Cheers,
Yaroslav