[Foundation-l] Blink tag jokes are now obsolete.

[Nathan]

On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 12:28 PM, Tom Morris <tom at tommorris.org> wrote:
>
> Would it be an idea to have some kind of RfC or something like that on
> Meta where community members could come up with a list of things we
> roughly agree are the limits for fundraising.
>
> I think the fundraising team have done really well, but there have
> been a few things we really need to fix for next year, starting with
> the limits that the community are comfortable with regarding banner
> length, tone, graphical style etc.
>

The WMF isn't a wiki, unfortunately, and can't be managed by one or like one.

In fairness to the Foundation, they did have a very public strategic
planning process and they do seem to be adhering to the outcome of
that process. From what I saw, a pretty fair amount of the strategic
planning output and outcomes were driven by employees and contractors,
but there was a more than adequate opportunity for public / community
input. As a result, there is natural skepticism for any claim that the
WMF has or is tending to diverge from community standards with respect
to broad trends in spending or fundraising. Moreover, the constituency
for the WMF is often viewed as the 500 million or so unique monthly
visitors; in this light, even a torrent of complaints on a mailing
list can easily be seen as "those few people who will always complain
no matter what you do."

In the end, then, the only practical solution is to be vocal about
concerns, and to look for (or become) Board candidates with a
different approach. Rubber on the road, so to speak, will test whether
voters think there has been a divergence. Of course we don't hear much
from Board members, at least those of us without internal-l access, so
it's hard to judge differences in their perspectives and hard to vote
accordingly. But an energetic campaign from an individual or slate of
candidates would open the debate in a more real way.