Philippe you are absolutely correct. Whilst I never commented on the
importance of any individual on this list nor the questioned the record of
anyone I admit that my tone was not what this list deserves. I also concur
there are merits to Fae's point.
However the intention behind my point is one I stand by. The switch from a
sound reasonable query into one laced with bad faith, poisoned the well. It
jumped immediately to an assumption that this was down to unwillingness of
senior staff to address the point. That's not healthy.
I, like many others, wish to see this list become a crucible of good
suggestions, healthy and critical debate about ideas and as a sound
mechanism for oversight and account . A huge amount of staff time and
movement resources is taken up by the consumption of its content. And yet
it remains the greatest shame that much of the best most worthwhile
constructive discussions have moved to platforms like Facebook because this
list is viewed as hosting such an unhealthy atmosphere when emails are
written with such overt passive aggression.
I call it out because if we want people to participate on this list, the
unhealthy way in which this list gets treated by some of its most active
participants needs to be dealt with. Otherwise valid points will not get
acknowledged or answered.
I have never shied from engaging here and I and others want to be able, in
good faith, be able to recommend and encourage fellow colleague and
volunteers to participate in this venue but I and many others can't do
that.
So I recognise that I should have approached my feedback on tone in a more
constructive manner and set a good example. It stemmed from a deep-rooted
frustration that I offer my apologies for allowing that to dictate the the
tone of my response. But if we want to see staff members more actively
participating here then those long standing individuals need to really
thing about the tone in which they engage here, particularly those who do
so most often. If that does not change, this list will continue to languish
and those few staff members who continue to engage here will slowly
disappear. This now increasingly perennial topic keeps coming up and my
fear is that it will on go away through the increasing abandonment this
list faces.
On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 12:57 AM Philippe Beaudette <philippe(a)beaudette.me>
wrote:
This. What Risker said. Fae raises a fair point. And
while the Foundation
certainly does not make policy based off of small discussions on mailing
list, it should (and used to) listen to those lists, and use them to aid in
decisions about what policy to make.
I like you a lot Joseph, but I’m afraid your comment here was regrettable.
Nobody here was suggesting that the foundation make that policy based off
of the small group discussion, whether in a public mailing list or
otherwise. However, a long time valued member of the community was raising
a reasonable question. It deserves a better answer than that.
Respectfully, and with great fondness,
Philippe
On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 4:49 PM Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Well, I think perhaps Fae's question may be
considered more generally.
Fae
is knowledgeable about the structure of the
Wikimedia movement as well as
the WMF, and I think it might be best to work from the assumption that
their core question is probably more along the lines of whether (and how)
the current long-term strategy development process will, in fact, make
recommendations that are in line with ensuring that there will be (at
minimum) a publicly accessible archive of the Wikimedia projects.
The movement strategy process is very broad, and contains a lot of
diverse
ideas about how the movement/WMF/chapters/other
entities/projects can be
improved, maintained, developed and supported. I'm pretty deep in the
strategy stuff, and as far as I know, at this point there's no clear path
to maintaining (or dissolving) any of the existing structures; more to
the
point, there's no guarantee that the final
summary recommendations of the
combined strategy groups will continue to support the current WMF mission
statement - that is, the part that says " [t]he [Wikimedia] Foundation
will
make and keep useful information from its
projects available on the
internet free of charge, in perpetuity."
I don't think that's really a bad question to ask - in fact, it may be
one
of the more important ones. I hope I am not
presuming too much, but I
think Fae is saying that this is something that is really important and
valuable, and that continuity/perpetuation of that particular aspect of
the
mission statement should be a recommendation that
gets included in the
final reports - regardless of which entity assumes responsibility for it
or
who pays for it.
Risker/Anne
On Tue, 14 May 2019 at 18:03, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The Internet Archive, incidentally, already seems
to maintain copies of
Wikimedia projects. I don't know to what degree of fidelity.
Additionally,
the WMF's core deliverable is already to
provide and sustain access to
its
projects. It has an endowment for that purpose
already. Other websites
and
> media that might have ephemeral access due to their nature as
short-term
> tools need the IA to be preserved, but the
WMF's projects seem to
occupy
a
different space. It's sort of like asking if
the Library of Congress
needs
to invest in some external project to preserve
and organize its
collections. No, that is its actual raison d'etre.
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