Hoi, There is one big hole in this comparison. We are a movement, the Foundation is the material part of it. It is responsible for all kinds of everything but we, as a community do not pay for a roof over our head.
We are represented on the WMF board. That is it.
Arguably, the employees have a bigger stake in the Wikimedia Foundation, they are not even represented. This whole fracas is largely about trust and relations between the employees and the ED. Other shit happened as well and as has been argued over and over again, much of that, particularly the "search" issue is not al all the issue.
Several people are so absorbed in their ideas of what the WMF should be that they lose sight of what we are about. We are not about the WMF. We are the Wikimedia Movement. The proposal is imho brilliant in that it puts trust in the employees. It recognises their ability to keep the ship afloat. When the "C-levels" (whatever that means) are indeed capable to do good we should rejoice and let them get on with it.
Going back to the analogy, when they keep the ship afloat and the employees are pumping, the water accumulated will get out of the ship. The weather forecast is positive, so the holes in the roof can be fixed for now, the engine can get emergency repairs and the ship can sail on towards its destination and if need be it may take a dry dock to fix things properly.
The best thing we can do is do as a movement is do what we are about. Build content, maintain relations in our community and not throw mines overboard in front of the foundation. Thanks, GerardM
On 5 March 2016 at 16:54, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
There's less weakness in admitting a failure honestly, retreating and regrouping, than in powering through when knowing oneself unprepared.
After months of complaints from tenants and from a few neighbors, the landlord of a large building decides to replace the roof of the building. In the process of removing the old roof, the landlord realizes that it's a really big job and that he won't be able to properly replace the roof quickly. Scrambling, he then asks a few of the building tenants to come up with a plan for an interim roof, because whoa, an open roof leaves you susceptible to rain and birds and other problematic elements. And this is a large and expensive building that lots of people rely on, so an interim roof is definitely needed pretty soon.
Sure, we can commend the landlord for recognizing that the old roof needed to be replaced. And we can commend him for realizing that he alone can't speedily fix the roof himself; he needs additional help to finish this big job. But that doesn't absolve the landlord of negligence. Removing a roof has very predictable consequences that any landlord should be able to foresee and account for. Removing a roof without also having a plan for an interim roof is a really amateur mistake. Perhaps landlords of smaller buildings could get away with this kind of mistake, but it's unacceptable for a landlord of a large building to be turning to the tenants to ask them to fix the problem. Yes, the tenants were the ones complaining for a new roof, but it's the landlord's responsibility to have the roof replaced in a professional and orderly way.
MZMcBride
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