On 13 Aug 2014, at 21:12, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 12:57 PM, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:
There is no such thing as "the community"; we have a huge collection of communities joined loosely over a number of ambigously shared principles that often - but not always - move in more or less the same direction.
Anyone who claims to speak for "the community" is - put simply - full of shit.
So very true! All of the arguments that claim knowledge of what "the community" wants, or what "the readers" want, need to be regarded with a strong dose of skepticism, or put aside entirely.
{{citation needed}}
There are some community members who spend a lot of time thinking about what "the community" and "the readers" may want, who actually have a good understanding of what is needed to support those stakeholders. There are others that say that their views represent the community/readers when they don't. A distinction needs to be made there - don't confuse the former with the latter.
Additionally: there is no guarantee that what has worked well in the past will continue to work well in the future. The internet is always changing and improving, and a lot of organisations that dominated a decade ago now only exist in historical record. Wikimedia really needs to match the current state of the art, otherwise it will likely also cease to exist. I'd like to see the Wikimedia community leading the way with the internet's development, but right now it feels like it's lagging by about a decade, and the WMF is having to play a leading role to keep it relevant. If the Wikimedia community can catch up with the current state of the internet, that would be great, but if it can't then supporting the WMF while it does so would make a lot of sense.
Thanks, Mike