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

[Abbas Mahmood]

Liam,

Regarding the word convening, WMF has held one with the Arabic Wikipedia folks in Qatar. Check this blog to better understand the term/context: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/23/arabic-wikipedia-convening/

--Abbas.

> From: liamwyatt at gmail.com
> Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 09:57:27 +0000
> To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation Mid-Year Presentation to the Board of Trustees
> 
> 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
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