I stayed at the WMF offices a couple of months ago and checking out this gap was one of the aims of my visit. It was quite an eye opener.
Although WMF staff can learn to communicate better, the position seems to be that the community grossly under-estimates what they are doing, their competence, and their focus. In a number of key areas it's the wider community, and the experienced users on lists like these and wikis like Meta, that are mistaken in their view and not got their act together, not WMF staff. Why is that? It's because users on lists like these and sites like Meta are precisely the users who are self-selectedly comfortable with reams of written data, lengthy "rules", a technical interface, mailing list norms, typical online "bitey" debate (a tendency of many online discussions where people are represented only by their written words), and so on. That's a tiny minority of our potential editors and collaborators though. WMF staff - especially technical staff - recognize this as atypical of users much better than the active community does. They gear their efforts to the vast majority of users who, lacking help, will never be able to get engaged in the project. And of course, it takes time to build that up as an infrastructure. This aspect is rarely seen or taken into account by active community members on this list or at Meta. It was quite an eye opener. The WMF office members - including the technical team - were far better grounded in the global nature of the mission and the needs of an average user/editor, than most individual community members seem to be. List contributors might want to recognize and respect their wider perspective. In the meantime speculation too easily becomes bad faith at times. WMF staff may need to communicate better, but it's far from one sided. Active community members must also understand and listen, and measure their words in good faith and thoughtfully. Many WMF staff were only recruited in the last year and excellence comes with time and experience, it's still bedding in. The offices were functional but still being built internally when I was there. There are very many pieces of existing software to maintain and bring up to date, and staff working on new code have limited resources and time as imposed by budgetary limits and the newness of much of the organization. That may give some idea what the staff are dealing with. It's got the right basis and ethos, but growth (including improvements) cannot easily happen overnight. My own personal impression is that another year or 18 months is likely to be needed for this to all bed in. A minor cultural change would be good, where people engaged more collegially and were more patient, recognizing we are all passionate about and working in the same mission. WMF staff learning to communicate better with the wider community is part of that, but community members learning to respect the foundation's focus and the work roles of those who contribute to the mission by working as staff is the other. Hope this is of use or interest. Peace. FT2 On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 5:00 AM, MZMcBride <z...@mzmcbride.com> wrote: > It's not about assuming that Wikimedia's positions are "wrong," that's a > bad > and unfair characterization. But Wikimedia has a tendency, as an > organization, to not be as transparent as it sometimes likes to think it > is. > Looking at the long view, more and more decisions _are_ being made > privately > among Wikimedia staff rather than with community consultation (or even > notification). That's the reality, but to blame this shift (and the > resulting skepticism from the community) on foundation-l is a red herring. > > MZMcBride > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
