[Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: Building a new Legal and Community Advocacy Department & Promotion of Philippe Beaudette

Lodewijk lodewijk at effeietsanders.org
Fri Feb 10 07:42:23 UTC 2012


I must say that after reading all this and the detailed page with the
beautiful graphic I am still confused what the department will actually do.
There are beautiful abstract goals which everybody would obviously agree
with, and there are highly diverse skills involved from on one end Maggie
and on the other extreme Geoff. All great. But I hope you can help me by
summarizing in one or two sentences of "mortal" English what you will *do*
everyday. Will you be the ones executing decisions from Legal? Will you be
nutshelling community decisions and act like an ambassador to the Wikimedia
Foundation? Will you be working on guiding the community involvement
processes Geoff handled so well with the Terms of Use?

Thanks,

Lodewijk

No dia 10 de Fevereiro de 2012 07:46, Theo10011 <de10011 at gmail.com>escreveu:

> On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 12:07 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Casey Brown <lists at caseybrown.org>
> wrote:
> > > "Advocacy" is a much more general term in this context than people
> > > seem to be taking it as. It does not mean lobbying or fighting for
> > > something controversial with outside organizations. As I understand
> > > it, it's the opposite: advocating to the Wikimedia Foundation on
> > > behalf of the community.
> >
> > Yeah, that's my understanding of the game plan here as well. I think
> > the announcement could have been clearer in that regard, but that's
> > pretty much what Philippe and Maggie have already been doing, and what
> > they'll continue to do in a structure that's set up for growth.
> >
> > Sometimes we have a tendency to speak in management lingo when we
> > should be choosing simple, crisp & clear terms. Honest feedback: Burn
> > the chart on
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/LCA_Announcement
> > and draft a super crisp mission statement to slap on the first page
> > for this group. I know, I've been guilty of this as well -- no
> > criticism of the team. When working in an organization this kind of
> > communication style is often expected from you in day-to-day work, but
> > it's not necessarily helpful when communicating with people who have
> > very little time and interest to parse it.
> >
> > I think the brainstorming page is a great start and hope it'll be
> > utilized and further advertised in coming days:
> >
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/Community_Advocacy
> >
> > Congratulations to Philippe and Maggie for their new roles. I think
> > it's about time that we're creating this structure, and I think it'll
> > generate lots of tangible value for the community.
>
>
> Then my suggestion would be, rename the department.
>
> I completely agree, it is about time Philippe and Maggie get more authority
> and a dedicated department. I am happy for both of them. They actually do
> and have been doing the heavy lifting for years when it comes to the
> community. I would actually be more in favor of calling their department
> the community department. ;)
>
> Regards
> Theo
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