-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Thank you Phoebe, you've been of a great help. I'll ponder your answers for a while.
On 03/06/2010 07:21, phoebe ayers wrote: > Hi Noein, > > With no comment on the issue you were interested in, you raise good > questions about internal communication, which has indeed been chaotic > for as long as I've been around, but is -- if you can imagine -- > better than it used to be! > > On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Noein <prono...@gmail.com> wrote: >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >> Hash: SHA1 >> >> I've been watching the dialogues between the WMF and this mailing list >> for a while now and most of the conflicts are the same: bad >> communication. This is apparently not due to individuals but institutional. >> >> I'm still ignorant of many aspects of the internal mechanisms and >> interactions of the WMF, its projects, chapters, communities, sites, >> tools, pages, agendas and mailing lists and to be honest I think it's a >> maze. >> One has to invest months, maybe years of investigation to really know >> where he should be communicating, searching or waiting for certain kind >> of information. Maybe these very considerations should be put instead on >> the meta, on the strategic, on the village pump, on another mailing >> list, or on several lists, or directed to the WMF, globally or to >> certain dedicated persons only? > > There should be a how-to-communicate-internally guide, no doubt. The > problems are a) there are no easy answers (a lot of where to ask > questions is contextual, it depends on the question); b) often there > is no single point of contact -- to raise a discussion or ask a > question of the community means putting it out there for whoever has > time and inclination to answer. This is the way that many, many > aspects of the projects work, which can be frustrating. > >> So let me ask some genuinely ignorant questions: >> - - are there somewhere an organizational map and schematics of the >> overall components of the Wikimedia institutions, projects, foundations, >> chapters and communities, their governance, roles, duties and >> interactions, synthesized in one main page instead of dozens, each one >> in a different part? > > Not that I'm aware of, though there has been recent talk of trying to > define this and there are probably attempts somewhere. The Meta-wiki > is where such things would be found if they existed. Again, there is > an issue in that these relations are not static, fixed, or typically > well defined. In general: > > * everything having to do with project (e.g. wikipedia, wikiversity, > etc) content & policies is defined by the editor communities on those > projects, that is, the people who show up and do stuff on the wiki > over the long-term. Very, very little is done by the Foundation etc. > in this regard, nor has the Foundation ever historically had this > role. > > * The Wikimedia Foundation, specifically meaning the 30-odd people > employed in San Francisco, have historically run the servers that host > the projects, issued press releases, done fundraising, managed legal > threats (against the WMF itself), and a few other administrative > tasks. This is slowly changing as the WMF gets more in the business of > supporting outreach and editor activity, but in general it is still > true that the projects are autonomous and editors have little to do > with the WMF itself as far as day-to-day interaction. > > * The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation provide guidance > to the WMF, generally concerning themselves with big-picture issues. > > * The Chapters are organizations in their respective geographic > locations that do outreach, events, etc as independent charitable > organizations. They are hooked to the WMF through name and mission, > and a few shared activities, but stand apart in their day-to-day > activities. > > It's important to realize that there are large volunteer communities > surrounding *all* of these institutions, including technical > development, and community members do a lot of work in all areas. This > work is not necessarily (in fact usually is not) directly managed by > the WMF or another formal group. > > So you can see that defining precise relationships is hard. > > >> - - is there one main page instead of dozens for announcements and news, >> with a RSS feed system, with selectable categories to choose what kind >> of information one wants to follow ? > > Nope. That's a fantastic idea though. It's related to the idea that > was recently re-raised on the English Wikipedia Signpost talkpage > about having a centralized community newsletter for everyone on Meta. > >> - - why, simply, the activity of the WMF is not published each day or >> week? For example why the Gallimard letter and negociations were not >> made public? why the confidentiality instead of a transparency policy? >> why the causes, debates and decisions of Jimmy and the board in the >> recent censorship controversy were not published in time? I sincerely >> don't understand. > > To answer the general question: you would not believe how much news > there is on a daily basis from 11 projects in 250 languages with an > additional 29 chapters, active Foundation, and enthusiastic volunteer > community! You'd be doing nothing but reading news all day. Maybe it > still should be aggregated somewhere... > > If you are asking about just the news of the WMF, e.g. the activities > of the Foundation that is based in San Francisco, that is easier and > should be done better; though the announcements list is a pretty good > way to keep up with major announcements, and most news does come > through Foundation-l. I didn't pay attention to the letter you're > concerned about, but the debate over censorship is a community-wide > issue -- not WMF specific -- that *was* debated on this very list > immediately and rapidly, pretty much as it happened. I don't know what > you mean by not being published in time. > >> - - how a newbie could understand the current activities and projects? >> where to start? who to contact? > > Start with: wikimedia-announce-l. Check out: > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Goings-on. Consider reading: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:POST and, if it's ever revived, > http://www.wikizine.org/. Beyond that, you might specify the *kinds* > of projects you're interested in -- outreach is one thing, tech issues > another. > >> - - in case of emergency like the Fox News attack, is there a plan? >> protocols? a priority channel? plannified meetings and groups of >> reflexion/discussion? plannified ways of updating the situation, of >> sharing official declarations and resources? > > Sort of. For instance, press inquiries go to Jay Walsh at the > Foundation and his team; in turn he works closely with a community > committee called the Communications Committee (ComCom). That's where > press releases come from. There is no regularized public forum for > reflection on every issue that comes up; Foundation-l is as good a > place as any. Announcements go out the normal ways. In other words... > re the Fox News story, if you read the threads on commons, and read > the many emails on this list, and participated in giving your views, > you were as much a part of the debate as any other community member. > >> - - are there ways to delegate, federate, synthesize, communicate opinions >> and information between each community, chapter, board members? > > I don't know. Are there? Everyone that I know involved with any kind > of Wikimedia governance and decision making struggles with this, in > large part because of the complexity and amount of information > involved, and because it's not so simple as getting a "community" > opinion -- we are both a part of the Wikimedia community, but we may > well disagree. > > This is a fundamental and important question though and one a lot of > people care about. > >> I don't mean to force a type of governance or another, but simply to >> organize the information so it's easier for everybody to know what's >> happening. >> >> Everything seems so fuzzy and chaotic currently. It seems that it all >> depends of the charism of hyperactive community members and the good >> will of board trustees. Please enlighten me. > > Yes, but also the long-term perseverance and work of many community > members (which designation includes staff and board, by the way) -- > not just the hyperactive ones! Things are chaotic but they are not as > fragile as they seem, either -- just very, very complex. > > -- phoebe > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJMB3FBAAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6Lyz0H/3lv2yLNPS9DPaTkEBht5+kD KSdl/K8xcasHr2iB8P4pMKQ/POtoaB+Qf/CUkEjmL1VtEo3Wt6hpMGuoIm49dfy9 ovaobtaqMUtr7vrSxEmxpB6kWKcUYm0xPHf/9iEycd0ey/XbXl463p29msaJTn8Y 1mZetj+uer+IWiKJcuGvZaCwprgDou5o87syXsFkz6FK9Wpp+2BWBkDL59wjY1gR dwYYEfDsA8NYSkJ3xI2dc1YjQfl4nAI1gZN5nZ+4H+zrmMVY2LUePc/JKFE+SKjX LEiLGdHXqZNRNON4Pw2fRUi4DD+PqN1xkVMh//xt2zRiTjff4T4gU9HVTZHrHNg= =NXuu -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l