[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation Mid-Year Presentation to the Board of Trustees

[Liam Wyatt]

On 3 March 2012 10:34, Chris Keating <chriskeatingwiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> >
> > 23, 2012 at 8:43 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > > Hi folks,
> > >
> > > on February 3, the Wikimedia Foundation senior staff gave a
> > > presentation to the Board of Trustees as part of its Board meeting in
> > > San Francisco, recapping the fiscal year so far (our year begins July
> > > 1) and looking ahead. The slide deck is now available here:
> > >
> > >
> >
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Mid-Year_Review_February_2012.pdf
> > >
> >
>
> Thanks for this - very interesting :-)
>
> For me, the most reassuring part is at the end. (It feels a bit odd
> highlighting this, given the amount of cool stuff in the report, but I
> suppose it's cool stuff I already knew about). I am very glad to hear that
> these issues are on peoples' minds and I think identifying them is a really
> helpful step.
>
> ● Everybody at all levels of the WMF needs to stop spending
> social & political capital accidentally, or on stuff that doesn't
> matter;
> ● We need to stop surprising the community: we need to
> acknowledge that time works differently for volunteers, and
> they need lots of advance notice for everything. Overtransparency has never
> harmed us, but lack of transparency
> has;
> ● Internally in the organization we need to shift from the
> assumption that our scarcest resource is money, to the
> acknowledgement that it's time. We need to get better at
> conserving energy, focusing and saying no;


I too agree that this was a very interesting reading. Much of it I knew
from being an avid reader of the Signpost but it's very good to be able to
see an overview like this. I appreciate the honest about the failure of the
Indian Education Program (slide 37) and learned a lot from the Technology
section (slides 9-22). I, like Chris, found the three points on slide 56
(quoted above) under the heading "stop doing this" to be very enlightening.
There are also some related points on the subsequent slides (under the
leading "start doing this") that are also related, which include:
●Assign other resources to explicitly earning social & political
capital for the org, so it can be spent on editor retention;
●Actively monitor the bank balance (social & political
capital);
●Assess community views and factor them into the total cost
of projects before green-lighting. In some cases, community
opposition will be a dealbreaker;
●Develop easy routinized methods for assessing community
sentiment (RfCs, polls) in multiple languages, and routinely
dedicate resources to community input-seeking and
facilitation of discussions (TOU, AFT);
●Better support editors along language lines and activity lines
(e.g., page patrollers, ArbComs, OTRS workers): find out what they need and
give it to them;

In all the focus on reversing the downward trend of new-user retention
(which I wholeheartedly agree with, don't misunderstand me), I've been
feeling a bit like the WMF has seen the existing community as "the problem"
rather than part of "the solution". I think that these points that Chris
and I have quoted are pertinent because they seem to be aimed at trying to
reverse that feeling. They argue for the WMF to dedicate resources
specifically to support the existing community, to make their work easier,
and to take the time to bring the community along with changes rather than
announcing 'surprises'. But most of all, I'm interested in the repeated
phrase "social and political capital". If I read the text cynically that
phrase could look manipulative, but I don't believe that to be the case.
Rather, I'm pleased to see that the WMF is overtly addressing the fact that
*trust* is the most valuable form of currency in a volunteer project - and
that Chapter-WMF-Community trust levels have been less than ideal lately...
So - I look forward to seeing this proactive effort to build "social and
political capital" with the existing community put into practice :-) After
all, there's no point in increasing the number of new users if the existing
community is so frustrated that they're unwilling to train and acclimatise
the newbies.

However, on a different note, I note with interest (though not surprise)
that it seems the exec have decided that the recent fundraising debates
between Chapters-WMF have already been concluded and that the decision for
the WMF to centrally manage all future fundraising is now a *fait accompli*:
- From slide 28 "Collaborated more closely with *remaining* payment
processing chapters to improve their donors' experience" and "Improved
experience for donors in several countries where chapters processed
payments last year".
- From slide 40 "*Reposition* the grants process as a core funds
dissemination mechanism for the movement with strong community ownership
and tight accountability"
[*my emphasis*]

Finally, a question. Slide 31 says that in the future the WMF will run
"Worldwide convenings of highly active contributors in mature Wikipedias".
I know the noun "a convention" and I know the verb "to convene" but I don't
recognise the noun "a convening". What is it? Is it the same as "a
conference"?

-Liam
wittylama.com/blog
peace, love & metadata