Their approach hasn't changed. There are maybe just more ongoing projects than there were in the past. But yes, it can't be fun for anyone involved.
I briefly discussed some of this above, but I'll list a few options that the WMF could take to make this process less consistently bad: 1. Determine benefits of any project to the editing and reading community. If there are none, that may be fine, but consider balancing it out with a concurrent project that is providing benefit to those communities. *Frame any project in terms of the desired benefits*. 2. Find allies and adopt a joint approach. If you are running projects that will benefit some part of the editing and reading community, find people who would benefit, involve them in the entire project lifecycle, and utilize them in communications and consultations to move the conversation away from community vs. WMF. 3. Engage much earlier than is currently done. Rather than always bringing "solutions" to the community (that the community invariably doesn't like), bring problems to the community and ask how these problems could be solved. You can even structure the problem statement and questions in a way that will get at your ideal solution. Again though, it depends on whether this is actually a problem for the editing/reading communities. 4. Do more for your primary stakeholders! Every area of the projects has outstanding technical and social issues that the communities want solved and that haven't been worked on for years. In my area of interest, we have been asking for better CAPTCHAs for years. Dial back the grants program a bit and use the money to provide services for the communities that you are supposed to be serving. If you do this, then the community appetite to accept some WMF-initiated changes will be greater once we think that you are actually on our side. 5. Bring the community, or select community members, into project governance structures. Make a steering committee, host elections for community seats, use a combination appointed/elected model, etc for major program areas. This is what the community-selected board seats should do, except the organization is too large for the board to function in that way.
Adrian Raddatz
On Mon, Sep 9, 2019 at 7:51 AM Paulo Santos Perneta paulosperneta@gmail.com wrote:
I only started following WMF stuff more closely around 2 years ago, but I don't remember it being this permanent state of crisis as it is now, with an ever increasing - now, apparently at an accelerating pace too - detachment from the onwiki communities. This is tiresome and distracting for those of us who are volunteers at the Wikimedia projects, but it's certainly painful too for the WMF staff.
What's going on with the WMF?
Paulo
Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com escreveu no dia segunda, 9/09/2019 à(s) 07:59:
It crosses my mind that I would think that some of the WMF office staff would also be getting tired of crisis, conflict, and unwelcome surprises. These types of problems are unlikely to ever be fully prevented, but I would think that the parade of difficulties in the past few months would also be testing the patience of at least some people inside of WMF who might like to not have a new earthquake to deal with on what seems like a biweekly basis.
Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Sun, Sep 8, 2019, 17:59 Yair Rand yyairrand@gmail.com wrote:
The broad proposal was clearly rejected. The community has not
authorized
the Wikimedia Foundation to let any organization speak under
Wikipedia's
name. If a formal RfC is to be held to make a final decision (perhaps
with
the question subdivided, per Pine), I recommend delaying it for a while
so
we might have a chance for some respite from permanent crisis mode.
The summary, in my opinion, is not adequate, and skips many of the most significant arguments. (The talk page itself skips some, after the WMF
had
a large portion of the talk page moved to a different page, including a string of "strong oppose"s. Those who participated in the removed
sections
were not counted in the WMF's count, for some reason.)
I do not understand what is going on within the Foundation regarding
KPIs,
but I get the impression that groups were required to establish metrics
of
some kind, without any actual oversight on how those metrics would
work.
Thus, we get things like the branding proposal's "anything less than
1800
users posting statements in opposition will be considered strong
support,
1800-2700 will be considered substantial support, 2700-3600 opposed
will
be
considered moderate support". Similar things have been happening
elsewhere,
eg, for the WMF's "Space" project. (Speaking of which, holding a
discussion
on a private off-wiki forum is not a valid method of community decision making, for branding or otherwise.)
-- Yair Rand
בתאריך שבת, 7 בספט׳ 2019 ב-20:54 מאת Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com
>:
I too think that an RfC is a good option here. I suggest having
multiple
questions in the RfC. Questions could include, "What should the organization that is currently known as the Wikimedia Foundation be named?", "Should there be a unifying brand for the online projects
such
as
Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Wikimedia Commons?", "If there is a unifying
brand
for the online projects then what should it be?", "Should there be a unifying brand for affiliates?", and "If there is a unifying brand
for
affiliates then what should it be?"
Overall I think that the report on Meta <
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wikimedia_brands/2030_researc...
makes for good reading as background information for an RfC.
I want to caution against trying to make too many big decisions at
once.
There is already a strategy process underway which has consumed a considerable number of volunteer hours, and the community has
precious
little capacity relative to normal operational demands without this
ongoing
strategy process being piled on top of everything else that people
want
the
community to do. There seems to be infinite demand for free skilled
labor,
but a finite supply of that same labor. I encourage both WMF and the community to think carefully about which questions to prioritize so
that
we
are not all overstretched and a significant number of problems slip
through
the cracks because collectively there were not adequate human
resources
to
thoughtfully address so many questions in a narrow period of time and develop consensus regarding how to move forward.
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