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@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@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@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. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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-- Philippe Beaudette philippe@beaudette.me _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe