On Feb 28, 2016 7:37 AM, "Ad Huikeshoven" <ad(a)wikimedia.nl> wrote:
Reaching out to Brion Vibber explicitly. Brion shared some long and
interesting posts last week and started a thread about what it means to be
a high tech organization. My question for Brion is to share his case why
the WMF should be a high tech organization.
I would argue that it has been one its entire history, with much budget and
staff being in web site operations support and software development.
Whether that's the best way to concentrate WMF resources or not is a
question I won't try to answer myself here, but I believe we have a decade
of precedence.
In the first breakdown above
tech(nology) is explicitly mentioned. Is the second breakdown as
'developer
inclusive' as the first breakdown? Or would
technology assume a supportive
role to the leading programs reach, communities and knowledge?
I find all of these breakdowns to be vaguely worded corporatespeak and hard
to devise actions around.
When I read the current statements of mission, vision, values and guiding
principles I hardly get the impression the Wikimedia Foundation is a high
tech organization, or an organization which employs a lot of engineers and
developers. How should the mission, vision, values or guiding principles
of
the Wikimedia Foundation be amended to give due weight
to engineers and
developers? Could you elaborate on that Brion.
Engineering does not exist for its own sake, but to accomplish some goal.
In other words, our mission/vision/values/guiding principles should not be
particularly focused on engineers it developers. They should focus on what
the movement wants to accomplish, and WMF's job is to use technology and
other resources to make those things happen.
-- brion