This is of course fine, and everybody is free to
participate or not to
participate on this mailing list, but, generally speaking, does WMF have
any channels to listen to the volunteers working on the project? They often
say so, but in practice I do not see any. This list used to be the one, but
it does not carry out this function. The corresponding part of Meta is
dead, questions never get answered. Some (very few, as far as I can tell),
WMF staff members are also active as volunteers, but they do not serve as
liasons between WMF and communities, at least I do not see any indication
that they would welcome these questions asked as their talk pages. Every
time I see a WMF staffer on one of the projects I am active in, this is a
one-way communication mode, not a dialogue.
Well, may be WMF does not need these channels, but then I do not understand
why they continue claiming they are listening to the community. In my
experience, this is not the case.
Cheers
Yaroslav
On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 3:16 PM Joseph Seddon <josephseddon(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I do not think we should assign blame to those
who left this list during
and because of the periods of toxicity, and who are disinclined to
participate here because of the memories of that and a continued perceived
unhealthiness in the tone. Their decision to leave was a valid one.
Not respecting that choice I suspect would just reaffirm their suspicions
and reinforces the lack of desire to commit here. A significantly more
positive tone needs to be made and a much more conciliatory stance taken.
Otherwise we all might as well pack our bags.
On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 2:17 AM Asaf Bartov <asaf.bartov(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Speaking as a (very) longtime member of this
mailing list, and one who is
carefully observing it for a few years now as a volunteer list
co-administrator:
On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 3:56 AM Joseph Seddon <jseddon(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
> 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 am not sure the causality here runs in the direction you describe.
It's
true that this list had some aggressive, even
vulgar participants in the
past, and that some senior staff members, as well as board members, have
left the list in protest. Personally, I think that was a mistake on
their
part: to improve the list atmosphere, you model
good behavior yourself,
and
you call upon the rest of the list -- the
"silent majority" -- to call
out
bad behavior and enforce some participation
standards (as, indeed, I and
my
co-moderators have been doing since we took
over).
By senior people's departing this list, and no longer requiring staff to
be
on this list, a strong signal was sent that this
is not a venue crucial
to
listen to, and that, coupled with the decreasing
frequency of WMF
responses
to legitimate volunteer inquiries and
suggestions, had a *powerful*
chilling effect on the willingness of most volunteers to engage here.
Especially when, as you say, they were able to get better engagement on
Facebook and other channels, despite the serious shortcomings of
accountability on those channels (immutable archiving, searchability,
access to anonymous volunteers, etc.)
Yes, this list has also seen some pseudonymous critics whose questions
may
have been inconvenient or troublesome to address.
Yet I think the
accountable thing to do would have been to respond, however briefly, to
prevent the sealioning and sanctimonious posts that filled the list --
and,
I am sure, greatly annoyed and demotivated many
subscribers. Even a
response stating WMF chooses not to respond to a certain question, or not
to dig up certain data, would have been better than the stony silence
that
has become the all-too-common stance for WMF on
this list.
As you know, I also work for WMF (though I am writing this in my
volunteer
capacity, and out of my care for the well-being
of this list). While I
have never shied away from responding on this list, I have on occasion
been
scolded (internally) for attempting to answer
volunteer queries to the
best
of my knowledge, for "outstepping my
remit" or interfering in someone
else's remit. I have taken this to heart, and accordingly no longer try
to
respond to queries such as Fae's (which in
this case I find a perfectly
reasonable question, meriting an answer). Several past attempts by me to
ping appropriate senior staff on questions on this list (or on talk
pages)
have also met with rebuke, so I have ceased those
as well.
For these reasons I do not accept this wholesale blaming of this list's
subscribers on the difficulty having meaningful conversations here:
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.
It is WMF that is not behaving collaboratively here. And it is within
WMF's power to change it. C-levels, the ED, and other managers at WMF
could all decide to participate more actively in this list; to respond to
questions or delegate the answering to their subordinates, who are
awaiting
their cue; and indeed, they could themselves make
more use of this list
as
a sounding board, a consultation room, and a
reserve of experience and
diverse context. They can be the change they (and you, and me) would
like
to see.
Perhaps this e-mail could convince some of them. And if not my words,
then
perhaps those of some of the other list
subscribers.
A.
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