in breaking up (spinning parts off) the WMF we run the risk of creating silos of information, knowledge and disconnecting one speciality from another preventing cross pollination of ideas and innovation. It also breaks the collaborative core of the projects which has created what we enjoy and at the heart of our volunteer driven successes.
The movement works because diverse group, diverse cultures and diverse ideas are able to come together through a shared principle, when the movement has issues its because of fragmentation, them vs us, or closed cabals acting out their own desires past experienced shows our greatest failures are when we act in isolation and secrecy.
Before spinning of parts or isolating programs from each other we must be looking at ensuring that which has given us the greatest success and which is at our heart the collaboration, the sharing, the diversity are not disrupted because no matter how much is rebuilt the distrust will linger long after the experiments have failed
On 20 March 2016 at 02:44, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On Mar 19, 2016, at 7:41 AM, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com
wrote:
at the end it all boils down to money. spending all money available and wanting more money never has been a problem. if there is dissent it was always about who has the say what the money is spent on, and where it is spent. i am convinced if we get the responsibilities right, the dissent will stop, and the output will be better.
sizing organizations and distributing responsibilities on a global scale seems to be a very difficult task, close to the soviet empire's task to plan its next 5 years. one could argue to resolve it via setting a financial targets, just as multinational companies do. two simple long term key performance indicators might already do the trick for the wikimedia movement: first "maximum 50% of the money is spent on persons whose life depend financially on the movement", which is employees, or long term contracting persons, organizations, foundations, enterprises. and second, "50% of the money stays in the country where it is donated." the rest will auto-organize, and auto-change. finding intelligent spending for the rest of the 50% should not be a too difficult task, there is sufficient universities and students around the world who would be happy to compete for this money. the success, means and outcome will change over time, in areas and ways nobody can predict today. the 50% are a made up number, a little bit influenced by public spending of 40% - 50% in many industrialized countries nowadays. it seems people accept such a ratio.
I... This line of thinking worries me.
In Programming / IT / information companies, there are a number of well known examples of organizations with legendary ineffectiveness measured on a per dollar or per employee basis.
Logic of "we will just control or manage the money flow" is focusing on the wrong end entirely. We need organizations that are effective, and secondarily (for a host of reasons) which people enjoy working in. Neither of those is a result of any accounting focused reform or management approach.
George William Herbert Sent from my iPhone
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