Hi Brion
When you refer to patches with other movements / affiliates, are you
proposing that WMF sponsors more Gibraltrapedias ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibraltarpedia
Have we forgotten so soon the adverse media publicity about these
stealth PR campaigns
"Once Wikipedia becomes a pay-to-play platform in any sense, it's no
longer a balanced, universal wellspring of information. It's just
another commercial website, with a particularly insidious brand of
camouflaged advertising. Any company with a sly enough PR person could
promote ostensibly fascinating facts about its products" [1]
"payment of money to Wikipedia editors represented "the greatest
threat the [Wikipedia] brand has seen to date" [2].
Lila had taken the first technical / automation /AI steps to identify
/ weed out the paid editing claques which rule the roost. That she was
eased out in this way shows that WMF is in terminal disrepair, and I
resent Flo's attempt to deflect this thread away from the numerous
paid editing controversies which have dogged the projects since the
very beginning and systematically driven away all competent potential
long-term contributors.
At the risk of being unpopular, I suggest the long-term health of our
projects require that its not about empowering our volunteers but
about regulating them.
David
[1]
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/09/20/roger_bamkin_gibraltor_s…
[2]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/20/wikimedia_uk_scandal/
On 2/29/16, Brion Vibber <bvibber(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Two distinct issues, I think:
1) about improving community representation in power structures, I think we
have to think more about what representation we want and what structures
would accomplish it. I have no answers but think we should consider looking
beyond WMF alone:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082703.html
2) about support for volunteers to get stuff done effectively: I'll have
mostly tech-focused thoughts on that because that's where my expertise is,
so you need to hear from other people who interact with a wider set of
volunteers than patch contributors and the people who manage to figure out
our feedback systems. :) whether that should be funded by / staffed within
WMF or our other movement orgs or both is an open question.
-- brion
On Feb 28, 2016 11:51 AM, "David Cuenca Tudela" <dacuetu(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> Brion,
> so far in the discussions I have seen more weight to the idea of the WMF
> as
> a tech provider for the community, and not so much conversation about
> other
> roles that the organization could fulfill besides of tech / grant making.
> So when you see that we are agreeing, do you mean that there should be
> more
> power transferred to the communities and that there should be a greater
> focus in empowering volunteers?
> How would you increase the participation of volunteers in the direction of
> the movement? And how to offer volunteers the opportunity to become more
> dedicated without paying them directly?
>
> Cheers
> Micru