On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 9:14 AM, Mike Christie <coldchr...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm not a fan of me-too posting, but I am breaking that rule to reinforce > the point that there are those who, like Gregory and me, did not see any > problem with the survey. Those who don't like it are, naturally, posting > to comment; those who found no issues with it are probably not. I would > not like to see anyone deducing what the majority opinion is from these > comments. Having said that, the opposition that has been expressed is > quite rational, and I think the proposed changes to the banner are > sensible, but to me it was unproblematic as originally designed. > > Mike >
Agree with Mike on almost all points, except that all the opposition has been quite rational. Some of it hasn't been. While you wouldn't guess it from the outside, many of the most vocal Wikipedians are actually quite conservative and risk-averse when it comes to the project, and there is also (and this won't be surprising) a very strong anti-authoritarian streak that manifests itself as pushback against independent decision-making on the part of the WMF.[1] There is some irony in that what appears to have been the most key discussion about this particular event took place in secret on internal-l, even while critics on that list blasted the research project for not including the whole community. The rejection of leadership and the insistence on involving everyone in everything has its benefits, but also fairly significant drawbacks - with the upshot that we're inconsistent and, to outsiders, confused about what we want. ~Nathan [1]Jimmy made some of these points well in a post on his talkpage on this issue. Hopefully he doesn't mind that I reproduce it here: "Well, I'm unaware of the Foundation being secretive about anything, so it seems like an easy enough thing to ask them. But I'd like to challenge the assumption here that everyone needs or has a right to be informed about every detail of everything affecting the website at all times. That's just not generally a good use of the Foundation's time and resources, and it also reinforces what I think is a very unhealthy conservativism in the community about change. We need to break out of the idea that every software feature (for example) needs get "consensus" support (defined as high as 70% in some people's minds!) for even some very major software changes. We need to break the idea that the Foundation needs to get permission to run banners in support of research projects. We really need to break the idea, which is preposterous nonsense, that if we don't scream bloody murder and get out the pitchforks, that the Foundation is going to start running paid advertising soon. Not every slope is slippery, and most things are better handled by getting informed before protesting.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 1:34 pm, Yesterday (UTC−5)" _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
