Lethargy, indecision, internal strife, and an abiding commitment to
self-enrichment and constant bureaucratic growth? Isn't that what every
maturing community with more than a handful of participants grows up to be?
:P
The strategy process is certainly not except from these flaws. Why would it
be? They are endemic across the movement throughout it's history and seen
at all levels today. But the strategy process is, like many other
processes, attempting to operate in a good faith manner and it is
definitely trying to take the movement in a better direction that it has
travelled so far (from an organisational standpoint). It consists of smart
people, working together in a good faith manner to effect positive change
within the movement.
For people like yourself who are dubious about the processes merits I think
you should still engage. Ensuring that it has the right focuses doesn't
necessitate prolonged engagement with the process. You don't need to go
through the slog of coming up with solutions necessarily, just make sure
someone will.
Regards
Seddon
On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 2:35 AM Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think questioning the strategy for sustaining the
movement's projects is
worthwhile, particularly as part of the strategy discussion. I'm not sure
if sniping on this list is as fruitful.
I considered Fae's question as well; not just the mechanical "do we need an
archive site" that seemed implicit, but the fundamental question of whether
new action needs to be taken to ensure the Wikimedia projects can be
preserved. I hadn't considered that the strategy process would abrogate the
core promise of these projects, that worthwhile content would be largely
preserved to make that worth perpetually available to others.
If that's truly in question I find it hard to imagine what else the
strategy discussion could find as a substitute. I haven't engaged in the
strategy discussion for lots of reasons, but one is that I long ago
acquired a deep skepticism of movement bureaucracy, whether within the
projects or without. The entire edifice seems to have adopted the worst
attributes of bureaucracy - lethargy, indecision, internal strife, and an
abiding commitment to self-enrichment and constant bureaucratic growth.
All that rescues the movement is the persistent desire of its contributors
to add, improve and conserve and the simple demand that the bureaucracy -
if it does nothing else - keep the lights on and stay out of the way. If
that changes, then perhaps we will need the Internet Archive to step in
after all.
PS: Thanks, Seddon, for your thoughtful reconsideration of your earlier
post. To muddle the words of Michelle Obama, always go high. You can't go
wrong.
On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 7:49 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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Seddon
*Community and Audience Engagement Associate*
*Advancement (Fundraising), Wikimedia Foundation*