[Foundation-l] Criticism of employees (was VPAT)

[FT2]

I stayed at the WMF offices a couple of months ago and checking out this gap
was one of the aims of my visit. It was quite an eye opener.

Although WMF staff can learn to communicate better, the position seems to be
that the community grossly under-estimates what they are doing, their
competence, and their focus.  In a number of key areas it's the wider
community, and the experienced users on lists like these and wikis like
Meta, that  are mistaken in their view and not got their act together, not
WMF staff.

Why is that? It's because users on lists like these and sites like Meta are
precisely the users who are self-selectedly comfortable with  reams of
written data, lengthy "rules", a technical interface, mailing list norms,
typical online "bitey" debate (a tendency of many online discussions where
people are represented only by their written words), and so on.

That's a tiny minority of our potential editors and collaborators though.
WMF staff - especially technical staff - recognize this as atypical of users
much better than the active community does. They gear their efforts to the
vast majority of users who, lacking help, will never be able to get engaged
in the project. And of course, it takes time to build that up as an
infrastructure.

This aspect is rarely seen or taken into account by active community members
on this list or at Meta. It was quite an eye opener.

The WMF office members - including the technical team - were far better
grounded in the global nature of the mission and the needs of an average
user/editor, than most individual community members seem to be.  List
contributors might want to recognize and respect their wider perspective.

In the meantime speculation too easily becomes bad faith at times. WMF staff
may need to communicate better, but it's far from one sided. Active
community members must also understand and listen, and measure their words
in good faith and thoughtfully. Many WMF staff were only recruited in the
last year and excellence comes with time and experience, it's still bedding
in. The offices were functional but still being built internally when I was
there. There are very many pieces of existing software to maintain and bring
up to date, and staff working on new code have limited resources and time as
imposed by budgetary limits and the newness of much of the organization.
That may give some idea what the staff are dealing with. It's got the right
basis and ethos, but growth (including improvements) cannot easily happen
overnight. My own personal impression is that another year or 18 months is
likely to be needed for this to all bed in.

A minor cultural change would be good, where people engaged more collegially
and were more patient, recognizing we are all passionate about and working
in the same mission. WMF staff learning to communicate better with the wider
community is part of that, but community members learning to respect the
foundation's focus and the work roles of those who contribute to the mission
by working as staff is the other.

Hope this is of use or interest. Peace.

FT2


On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 5:00 AM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:

> It's not about assuming that Wikimedia's positions are "wrong," that's a
> bad
> and unfair characterization. But Wikimedia has a tendency, as an
> organization, to not be as transparent as it sometimes likes to think it
> is.
> Looking at the long view, more and more decisions _are_ being made
> privately
> among Wikimedia staff rather than with community consultation (or even
> notification). That's the reality, but to blame this shift (and the
> resulting skepticism from the community) on foundation-l is a red herring.
>
> MZMcBride
>