On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 12:11 PM, Bod Notbod <bodnot...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I think you're wrong. > > Try to get any sense out of the upper echelons of your phone company, > your gas providers, whoever gives you your electricity. > > The Wikimedia community is huge. The staff relatively small. It's > unthinkable you'd write to AT&T and get a response from the CEO. > Looked at in that light, the WMF is very transparent. The WMF office > would be incapable of turning over every query the wider public has. > We're a community and we should be supporting the office folk in their > roles. They do not have a call centre and nor should they. > > However, should you have a question that needs to be looked at by > someone high up, my best recommendation is to be a good community > member. If you have a rep for doing lots of good work on the projects > you will come to the attention of WMF staff and they will communicate > with you because they have to come to know and respect you. > > To illustrate; I worked on the Wikimedia Strategy website for two or > three months. During that time I had a few exchanges with Philippe who > is now full-time (he was a contractor, I believe, when I was > interacting with him)... and I just know that if I have any > deep-seated problem, something I think is important *that the > community can't answer for* I can go to him. And I can say to him > "Hey, here's this thing. Who would you recommend I contact on this > issue?" > > However, that's on the trust that I won't pester him on any old thing > that crosses my mind. It would have to be something big. And for the > most part I would go to the community first, and if I felt there were > a groundswell of opinion behind me I'd write to someone in the WMF and > say "hey, look, there's a couple hundred people here taking one side > on this issue and I think someone at WMF should take a look". > > We cannot expect such a tiny staff to be open to all of us. You have > to build out from your own opinion/idea, nurture and grow it and if it > gains ground then go to the WMF. > > User:Bodnotbod >
It doesn't make sense to compare the WMF to AT&T. I agree that compared with large corporations nationwide, the WMF is enormously communicative and transparent. On the other hand, it is after all a corporation designed to promote and preserve a set of community developed projects; the community in this case is not a group of passive consumers, but the most essential element of the entire corporate mission. More importantly, criticism of communication is not generalized pissyness - it is prompted by specific actions of the WMF or its staff / board on the projects, and applies to imperfect or incomplete communication around those actions. When the WMF makes a decision to intervene in the projects, full and informative communication isn't just a nice-if-you-can-get-it side benefit of dealing with a small company - it's essential to maintaining the fabric of a massively participatory and cooperative endeavor. Nathan _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l