[Wikimedia-l] Thoughts on Admin Rights on WMF Wiki (and other things)

[Bence Damokos]

Personally I think this line of the conversation (people resigning/fired)
is taking the situation a bit too far.
At the least not having volunteers administer the WMF's wiki is just
punishment already.

It seems that the WMF is unlikely to change its policy, so the best they
can do to heal the hurt caused by their action is to apologise (and perhaps
explain their reasons), which they have done.
If they had restored the admin rights, that would have healed some part of
the hurt but not all of it, and the affected volunteers would still have
the option to "punish" the WMF by not caring about their wiki (i.e. the
same situation the WMF has chosen for itself). Apart from this tit-for-tat
satisfaction and giving enough time to heal and restore the trusts and
relationships, I do not think that further debating this decision would
lead to any good results.

I have the feeling that we will not get more satisfactory answers as the
line of questioning going on creates a situation where the WMF can only
defend themselves - I am sure they have shared their best arguments that
can be published and the harder they are pushed the more likely they are
going to scramble to make up further reasons (instead of either changing
the decision or admitting that they had no better reasons) a situation that
is unlikely to improve the situation in the way the questioners hope.[1]

I would recommend for those personally hurt by the WMF's decision to accept
the WMF's apology, stay in the movement but if they feel any satisfaction
in it, mete out the punishment of not caring about the WMF's wiki, and move
on. The people working at the WMF are multidimensional persons, one mistake
does not defy them and I am sure the existing relationships will be healed
through other channels of interaction and working together.

For those of us who were not hurt (this time), I think it would be helpful
if we moved the discussions towards more constructive areas: for example,
helping come up with some guidelines on community-WMF interactions,
including suggestions on best timing of news and the appropriate level and
venue of consultations before major decisions, and making sure this kind of
training is provided to WMF employees.

Best regards,
Bence


[1] It is just an intuition, but I fear that this property of some
questions (their pre-coded "response") can be lowering the quality of some
of the other community review discussions (FDC, GAC, AffCom) that rely on
the Q&A format.