[Wikimedia-l] Patience

[Anders Wennersten]

Your comment remind me of my strong belief - take time to reflect before 
to take action and/or react

My golden rule in complicated/heated issues -  let it take 24 hours 
after an urge to act/react before it is made a reality. About two third 
of your thought reactions then disappears and the rest is mostly 
readjusted to be more sound. :)

Anders

Michael Snow skrev 2013-05-15 08:45:
> I originally wrote this message last year on a nonpublic list. It 
> seemed to be well received, and some people asked me to share it 
> publicly, but I didn't get around to it then. I think this would be a 
> good time to share it here now. It is not specifically directed at 
> recent issues here, but I think it does have some relevance. (I have 
> some thoughts more directly related to those matters as well, which I 
> hope to share when I have time to write them down. That might not 
> happen until late Friday, which is probably not the best time for it, 
> but based on recent history perhaps I can still hope some people will 
> be reading then.)
>
> Internet technology is known for letting things happen much faster 
> than they did before we were all so connected. This speed now seems 
> normal to us and, being immersed in that culture, we have come to 
> expect it. Wikis, as one aspect of that culture, have the feature of 
> making that speed a personal tool - you can make something happen 
> right away. How many of us got involved because we saw a mistake and 
> figuratively couldn't wait to fix it? And when we discovered that we 
> literally didn't have to wait, we were hooked.
>
> One result of this is a culture that caters to impatience, sometimes 
> even rewards it. And that's why we are often tempted to think that 
> being irritable is a way of getting things done. We imagine: this 
> problem should be instantly solved, my idea can be implemented right 
> away, I will be immediately informed about whatever I care about. But 
> as our culture grows in scale, none of that remains true (and perhaps, 
> we get more irritated as a result).
>
> I wish I could say that because it's a matter of scale, technology 
> will take care of things because that's how we handle scaling. 
> However, the issue is not about whether the technology will scale, but 
> whether the culture will scale. On a cultural level, scaling issues 
> are not handled by technology alone. They are handled by establishing 
> shared values (be bold, but also wait for consensus), by agreeing upon 
> standard procedures (which provide important protections when designed 
> well, but also introduce delays), and by dividing up responsibilities 
> (which requires that we trust others).
>
> That last bit is critical; people have repeatedly suggested a certain 
> mistrust underlies the repeated flareups. Well, the reason that 
> mistrust has grown so much is because we are often impatient, and take 
> shortcuts in order to "get things done" (or so we believe). The 
> impatience manifests on all sides--to illustrate: volunteers get 
> impatient about the effort needed for any kind of policy change, 
> chapters get impatient about requirements to develop internal controls 
> and share reports on their activities, staff get impatient about time 
> involved in consulting with the community. Everyone thinks it would be 
> so much better if they were free to just do things and not have to 
> deal with these hassles. But in every one of these scenarios, and I'm 
> sure I could come up with many more, if we let impatience guide us, 
> inevitably more trust will be drained out of the system.
>
> Patience as a virtue is in short supply on the internet. It is not 
> native to our culture, but we must apply it in order to scale. 
> Fortunately, it is simply a matter of maturity and self-control at 
> appropriate moments. I encourage us all to practice it.
>
> --Michael Snow
>
>
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