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

[MZMcBride]

Philippe Beaudette wrote:
>At the expense of sounding trite, I think I can safely say "Mistakes were
>made."  Gayle was trying to solve a real problem, and she got a lot of
>advice on how to do that.

At every introductory wiki workshop, new users are taught to be bold, as
any mistake they make can easily be undone. The wiki is built to be
resilient. With any project involving (m)any people, mistakes are to be
expected. And growing pains have their name for a reason. But wikis give
us the opportunity to learn from—and rectify our—mistakes.

As for the "real problem," perhaps I'm too close to the situation to see
it, but based on comments in this thread, there seems to be fairly
widespread confusion about what the real problem is. Any clarification you
or anyone else could provide would be welcome. (That is, a series of
actions were taken; the missing piece continues to be _why_.)

>With that said: I'm afraid we're headed toward a precipice.  What I'm
>seeing scares me.  I see less and less good faith being offered toward the
>WMF.

This is not a fair statement to make, at least not in the context of this
discussion. There cannot be any good faith when you take the people who
have spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours volunteering for your
organization and strip them of their user rights on a whim, without any
warning or notice. While I think everyone acknowledges that mistakes were
made, I don't see how we can even begin to discuss good faith being
offered toward the Wikimedia Foundation when volunteers like Casey and
Alex and others were treated in this way.

Several people in this discussion have sought an exigency. People have
looked for a reason for such a seemingly rash series of actions. Nobody
has found one yet. And many people are still searching for a rationale.

MZMcBride