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@wikimedia.org wrote:
Two distinct issues, I think:
- 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
- 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@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