[Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

[Mono]

There's been a long-term conflict with volunteers & staff on
wikimediafoundation.org. As a user, I understand. Each staff member likes
to keep everything their way. They frequently revert changes (take a look
at the discussion and user talk pages, especially for MZMcBride) on 'staff
authority'. This is a logical next step against these users (most likely
MZ) so there's no conflict.

Is this a bad thing? Most likely not. Is the reason behind it a bad thing?
Yes.


On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 4:06 PM, K. Peachey <p858snake at gmail.com> wrote:

> (Inline comments most likely, So shoot me)
>
> On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 2:48 AM, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
> > …
> > But, my understanding is also that occasionally volunteers have
> overridden
> > decisions made by staff on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki. I don't think
> > that's ever been a huge problem:
> > …
>
> Can you expand on this? I haven't really involved in foundationwiki
> and I'm not going to go check all the edits for this, But this seems
> like a kindly odd-shaped argument in my view. (The only time I was
> involved with a staff-vol spat on wmfwiki, is when the staff member
> decided the to need to take it to another wiki and then onto IRC as
> well, where I and others had to bug staff members to find out whom
> they were reporting to)
>
> I highly doubt volunteers are just "randomly" undoing edits of staff
> "just because", We should be looking at the underlining issues behind
> this, with what they are trying to fix and improving the workflow of
> staff and volunteers. Just /randomly/ revoking seems counter-proactive
> and detrimental to this.
>
> > …
> > So I would say this:
> >
> > This decision is not about "the community" versus "the WMF." This
> decision
> > is about the WMF staff, and making it possible for them to do their work
> on
> > the WMF wiki with some reasonable degree of efficiency and effectiveness.
>
> How many staff members that have jobs that rely on editing
> foundationwiki? I did a quick scan of the last ~1000 or so edits and
> really couldn't see any examples that stood out, If a volunteer
> changes a staff edit, Yes it should be looked at but there is
> generally a good reason (I've seen plently of staff members editing
> other wikis that are clueless about the wiki world and people have
> been fixing up their edits), And just removing admin rights doesn't
> seem to have anything to do with that at all, Because the volunteers
> can still edit (afaik the only rights they really loose are delete and
> protect now)
>
> > …
> > This decision clarifies roles-and-responsibilities…
>
> Not really, It was done "randomly" and at the end of a Friday when
> most of the foundation stops working for the weekend, with lack of
> meaningful communication to those involved (or in some cases,
> communication at al), Personally it leaves more questions than
> anything.
>
> > …
> > Personally, I feel like
> > we're moving into a period now in which things are getting clearer. We
> > don't pay staff to edit the projects:
>
> I know at least one staff on a project, that has a bit to do with
> there work, and has been directed to append "staff" to all their edit
> summaries.
>
> -Crazed ramblings out,
> Peachey
>
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