The community has heard a lot from the WMF about courage, honesty, integrity and leadership – and rather too much of the latter of late: let's remember that the Wikimedia Foundation's values[1] speak of *community-led* projects.
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Our community is our biggest asset
We are a community-based organization. We must operate with a mix of staff members, and of volunteers, working together to achieve our mission.
We support community-led collaborative projects, and must respect the work and the ideas of our community. We must listen and take into account our communities in any decisions taken to achieve our mission.
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Instead of peacock statements about courage, integrity etc., it would make a nice change to hear about competence and ability from the WMF, and to see *that* demonstrated, along with a readiness to listen and serve rather than *lead*.
[1] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Values
On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 2:02 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Hello and welcome, Damon.
One thing I've long appreciated about the Wikimedia movement is that it is not political, and indeed the flagship project is explicitly neutral. This distinction has become a little more nuanced as the movement has taken political positions that are congruent with the overall mission, but I think it remains the case that Wikimedians have been able to avoid entanglements with general political issues. This has been especially the case with most deeply controversial and current political debates.
So while I agree with your sentiment, that leaders must model values such as courage and integrity, I think it would have been better expressed without the ringing endorsement of Che Guevara. As you say, we should choose our words carefully and ensure that our language is positive and inclusive. This is obviously an area where we can all make progress.
~Nathan _______________________________________________ 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