[Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 6:44 PM, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 1:26 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
> <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> "We do realize that what we did was wrong, and this is clearly not a
>> situation where we can go on with the 'your opinions have been
>> duly noted' haughty attitude. We apologize for even going that route
>> ever in the first place. The community rules, we serve, that is what
>> we are being payed for."
>
> "Let us now prostrate ourselves at the feet of that segment of the
> community which opposed this idea, who we realise are the just and
> righteous leaders of the Wikimedia movement due to having the loudest
> voices, and beg for their absolution."
>
>

You may have missed a couple of things.  A good portion of the loudest
critics of _the_  _process_ (not the result) ; I hesitate say the majority,
because I haven't done the numbers; were in fact people in favor of
the proposal itself, but who had the integrity to recognize that a
result gained by such flawed means has little or no legitimacy.

Secondly, a leadership prostrate would have even less legitimacy
than one hunkering down in a bunker somewhere, surrounded by
stalwart loyalists. Not that I genuinely believe the latter is the case
here. I have enough faith in the integrity of many of the actors at
the highest level of the foundation that my gloss on the situation
is that likely people are still sorting things out in the usual manner
and don't want to gross people out by how the sausage is made,
and we will have a public sausage, er, I mean statement, shortly.

Thirdly, there never has in the past been *any* hierarchy in
wikimedia, that is the beauty of it. And any attempt at empire
building, now, or in the future, is doomed to fail. There is a
governance structure, but that should be ring-fenced away
from the community. What we have here is the governance
structure trying to leap over the fence. We simply can't have
that.

What is needed here is not a prostrate leadership, but one
which acknowledges what happened, and offers a crisp
plain apology. That wouldn't repair the damage, but it sure
would staunch the bleeding.


-- 
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Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]