Gerard,
Citizenship in the digital world is more flexible than in the real world, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or that it cannot be characterized. It is just a matter of providing a conceptual framework for defining rights, obligations, etc. and it avoids precisely that a person, or a group of people, or part or the community, or a sub-community, or any of the several communities, overtakes a decision-making process that belongs to the whole.
The terms of use can be considered a first approach to this tough problem, and it has many interesting keywords: "Part of our mission is to", "You are free to", "Under the following conditions", "With the understanding that". Unfortunately it just a "terms of use", not a "terms of community".
If such a thing came into being, there you could state: "Part of our mission is to promote a healthy collaboration between ourselves, you are free to represent yourself and others in our community, under the condition that they have provided you explicit consent and that you respect the interests of non-represented users, with the understanding that we work for the benefit of all humanity and not only for our own."
Cheers, Micru
On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 12:27 PM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com
wrote:
Hoi, David, who is the community and how do you get members of the community recognise and respect the decisions it does not like that are taken on their behalf by "its" representatives. We do not have one community, we have many. The interests people aim for are diverse and all too often contradictory..
Really, in the past one part of the community insisted that it ALWAYS requires to be able to have the deciding influence for "its" project.. That clearly pains the picture for me. Thanks, GerardM
On 15 August 2014 10:17, David Cuenca dacuetu@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 11:30 PM, Chris Keating < chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com> wrote:
how should this be solved?
To me it's saying that no matter who is informed, the WMF can never
expect
that their work won't be overruled.
That is problematic (regardless of who has the final authority)
A first step would be to abide to the principles of Open Process http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/OpenProcess
Namely:
- Transparency - all communications and decisions are public and
archived, so anyone interested may get all information
- No time constraints - all decisions (democratic or not) are
suggested
or announced a reasonable timespan before they become effective. So there is still time for discussion and even last minute intervention.
- Participation - in principle (this opens the chance for restrictions
in case of problems) anyone is welcome to participate (discussions, decisions *and* work)
- Reflection and reversibility - any decision may be reversed if the
results are not as expected. *
- Tolerance - any system or process should have the flexibility in the
application of its - necessary - rules
- Sharing and collaborating on visible and accessible goals and
resources
Then a second step would be to engage the community, not only as
something
that has to be "managed", but as an equal partner that has to take up responsibilities and who is able to affect decisions. This of course
means
a paradigm shift moving away from "community liaisons" and into the realm of helping contributors to constitute themselves enabling them to take
up a
shared ownership role without the need of a formal organization.
I don't think the wmf is entirely responsible for making this happen,
there
is also have to be a general will to embody such a spirit without
resorting
to staff, hierarchies, or votes. The problem is that most of us live in a world that doesn't work this way, and the attached structural flaws are imported, when there is no need to.
Anyhow, that should be something to speak about when the tensions have
been
defused.
Cheers, Micru _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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