Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
On 6 Jun 2010, at 22:54, Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@gmail.com wrote: Let's start a meta page where people can register thoughts/complaints/grievances/joy/sorry to WMF staff. If it is a serious concern, the staff can respond after someone consults with them and receive either a you can handle it or I can handle it response. I always thought that the mailing lists filled this role, albeit off- wiki and in a less rigid way. AGK ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
AGK wrote: On 6 Jun 2010, at 22:54, Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@gmail.com wrote: Let's start a meta page where people can register thoughts/complaints/grievances/joy/sorry to WMF staff. If it is a serious concern, the staff can respond after someone consults with them and receive either a you can handle it or I can handle it response. I always thought that the mailing lists filled this role, albeit off- wiki and in a less rigid way. Sorry, but I think both implementations above fail in one respect in terms of what I was proposing. My idea was that there would be a mechanism where an implicit trust between the community experts and the foundation ( == staff and trustees - as long as we are going to sadly progress on the course of professionalizing even the board of trustees) would be gradually engendered. There is the aspect of signal to noise ratio that would be adequately addressed by an arrangement where the foundation actors themselves were the ones recruiting who they thought could provide insightful comments on the concerns and realities of the various communities. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
Sorry, I was using an idiom for good idea, let's get started :) On Jun 6, 2010 10:26 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Keegan Peterzell wrote: On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 2:51 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail I am sorry, I just can't parse what you are suggesting here. This doesn't correspond to anythi... Only in cases where the senior functionaries come with a bull-dozer. Usually benign lawn-mowers are welcomed. I think the point is that it would be nice if there was somebody from the community who would... Sentence of what? I don't understand what you are wanting to write? I am talking about a group of people, who would represent the communities. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l maili... ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 3:24 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 12:51 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Keegan Peterzell wrote: Okay, so from my perspective, here's where we are: The WMF staff cares about the projects and we respect the work that they do [snip] but this is what a thread like the ones we've had recently fosters: Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I think this is totally true and needs to be remembered. Working with the community shouldn't be a frustrating experience. [Or maybe it's just that long-term community members have gotten inured to a certain level of frustration and therefore don't even notice anymore? I can't tell]. Personally, I expect that the folks that work for the WMF understand this concept and work within the confines of it. In any environment in which you invest your time, energy, and emotion this is just another run of the mill thing. On the other hand, internally while still collected your brain is still screaming I get it, shut up. Naturally it is inappropriate to actually say that, and you have to swallow that very bitter pill. Doesn't mean you can't explain or defend yourself, which they are expected to do as part of the job (and by they, I mean any person with advanced permissions on WMF projects and life in general). From my position, like the commons deletion debate, there is a time to act and then discuss, and other times vice versa. Doing this in the wrong order will cause...well, this. As Mike tried to point out in an earlier thread about the commons deletions, sort out that first and THEN talk about Jimbo's role and how the process was managed. Something out of process occured, so we need to rectify what the issue was first, and then move on to the theoretical debate. Again, speaking only for myself, the communications break-downs occur when you want to talk about something while feeling passionately about it. In reality, damned if you do, damned if you don't. -- Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 2:51 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.comwrote: I would suggest that instead of a wall between the community and the foundation, there should be built a bridge. A form of consultation by a small group of wise heads from the communities, who know how they work; not as a decision making body, but purely informing about the realities in the various communities. Oh, I didn't get to this earlier because I replied from my mobile device. Cimon, seriously give me a pen and I'll write the first sentence. I'm one for stepping up to the plate. Let's start a meta page where people can register thoughts/complaints/grievances/joy/sorry to WMF staff. If it is a serious concern, the staff can respond after someone consults with them and receive either a you can handle it or I can handle it response. How would selection go? I dunno. But it would facilitate communication issues, and if you have enough experience working with staffers it should be an easy thing. I can shoot about all of the ones that matter in the programs department an email and get a quick response. You could too. So could everyone on this list, for the most part. If you really want to do this, I'm game and I'm sure others are as well. ...'cept that pesky MZMcBride :) -- ~Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 8:04 PM, Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com wrote: I think if you look at what we did with regard to the Gallimard takedowns... Going back to the original issue regarding communication, the appearance of Mike on this thread shows me that this mailing list is one good way to get the Board's attention. If Mike hadn't been able to deal with an issue and he felt it was important he would just walk across to or email someone who is better placed to respond. On that basis I would say there isn't a communication issue. It might be hard for a newbie to know where to go, but in a way that protects the staff from being overwhelmed by the many millions who visit the site and have a query. I actually think it's a good thing to have barriers to communicating with WMF staff. In that way, we the community become sort of receptionists for them; we can either deal with a complaint or question ourselves or, if it so warrants, bump it up here or directly email the WMF. User:Bodnotbod ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Thank you for your opinions. I'd like to clarify my criticism. What Mike has done and is doing is honorable; he's dedicating efforts and patience to the community. He has nothing to do with my questioning. What I see is that WMF doesn't always publish the problems they're addressing, not in time, not entirely and not in a defined and known place. It seems that the WMF feels it is the correct way to communicate their actions once they're done, synthesizing briefly why to a selected (or random?) sample of the community. Some answers here even suggest that secrecy is necessary, that informing the community about what and why the Board is doing is not feasible or desirable as a norm and as a duty, and that communicating about the situation, intentions and actions of the WMF should be exceptional and under the community pressure, pressure that should be channeled and controlled through trusted community members. I'm not trying to accuse but to put in relief a certain vision of WMF: an enterprise that must survive legally and economically, like any other enterprise. The community is some sort of public, clients and users that one must manage through public relations at best or indifference. In summary, this seems a vision of little accountability towards the community. In contrast, I think the community has other expectations. They feel they own the projects because they made them, they're making them, they will make them. They're not consumers. They're the engine. They identify with the project. They share (more or less) a vision and they search for an ethic together. I think that in their minds, though they owe a lot to the founders, they now are the main part of this adventure. The WMF is paid by them to address what they will tell them to address. According to this vision, the accountability towards the community is total. My words are not good and my vision short. I beg someone with better eloquence and diplomatic skills, with more experience and insight to develop the idea. What I propose is to create a public space where the WMF would announce immediately the claims and pressures they receive, and how they will respond. (just a copy/paste of mails for example). People who want to follow, comment or act upon these kind of news would subscribe to a RSS feed, maybe with a filter for chapters. Correctly set up, this channel between the WMF and the community could be synergetic. It could avoid triggering anger, edit wars and demissions. It could be used as a brain tank to collect data and ideas about the problems that the WMF is facing, even when the WMF is doomed to act on short terms. If the WMF accepts to feed the community with its problems and intentions and listens to the corresponding feedback, most of the communication problems would be defused, in my opinion. I think it is worth an experimental try at least. If it yields positively constructive results, then maybe there should be such a page for each big category of problems that the WMF usually deals with. Oh well, just a (badly expressed) idea. On 05/06/2010 11:29, Bod Notbod wrote: On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 8:04 PM, Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com wrote: I think if you look at what we did with regard to the Gallimard takedowns... Going back to the original issue regarding communication, the appearance of Mike on this thread shows me that this mailing list is one good way to get the Board's attention. If Mike hadn't been able to deal with an issue and he felt it was important he would just walk across to or email someone who is better placed to respond. On that basis I would say there isn't a communication issue. It might be hard for a newbie to know where to go, but in a way that protects the staff from being overwhelmed by the many millions who visit the site and have a query. I actually think it's a good thing to have barriers to communicating with WMF staff. In that way, we the community become sort of receptionists for them; we can either deal with a complaint or question ourselves or, if it so warrants, bump it up here or directly email the WMF. User:Bodnotbod ___ 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/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJMCjbtAAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6LDUcH/jv3bi/kkrOnSmIMS4eSbVA6 L79gd/+TVFY9Nk6+B1XkhyMfrc9Q6sZeZ/iv+CQBPEZqRer/ghR7brouTqAhZAL7 7wvTV9Z14OxmHzVCAtEKC8TwsvmwZ8hrBuHbOmP1B9qKmfC16TPuYwJLhRFb+Cd0 1mrftXOvB9sGjWPYoaaBZJuSSTT4bgH0dBN/sdVp9rkNUtjk/Zh/Vyz4pSQJM5gz 0vll3WBhlIiGSb9CAdU6SUN12dicxPB698XZXrWD1ThzHP7WaFkQSwSwfsqWr1xj Fdt9nyKdeH+32hHF9cs0ikEN8iBVf7ROHjX5OfWY8h87FujD39hyjmLwXRFuuGI= =rFAs -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list
Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
Okay, so from my perspective, here's where we are:
The WMF staff cares about the projects and we respect the work that they do.
Additionally, they do a much better job than the other top...well, one
hundred websites in the world in communicating with their volunteers and
their userbase. The flip-side is that this is the reason that most
organizations put up a wall between administration and staff. Not that this
is healthy, and I certainly don't encourage it, but this is what a thread
like the ones we've had recently fosters: Damned if you do, damned if you
don't.
1. MediaWiki software support
Damned if you don't: Volunteers won't necessarily jump on fixing the
software patches/extensions if they are to hard and there is not enough
time or energy to go around.
Damned if you do: You didn't listen to the community and implemented
these changes without review.
2. Project support:
Damned if you do: We demand that the office intervene in pushing
through community requested enhancements, and we will complain about them
when you do.
Damned if you don't: Why do we pay these people?
3. Takedown notices/other staff or founder actions:
Damned if you don't: The Wikimedia Foundation does not care about its
userbase, and requests that all issues about content being directed at the
uploader (at their own legal expense).
Damned if you do: GET OFF MY LAWN
I'm sorry if this seems terse. Well, actually I'm not. The Foundation is
as actively engaged as it can be and hands off as it can be. Say an
engine as it was put doesn't like vector. Well, I don't either. But what
do you want? Polls? Noticeboards? Even more discussion than we already
have now?
I'm a big fan of discussions, I'll talk about most anything endlessly. This
is talking about running a business, and sometimes that requires stifling
discussion until the appropriate time for ideas and reforms have come about
as well as {{sofixit}}. Criticism is what should build a business model,
and I'm certain that the WMF takes this to heart because, as mentioned, they
don't have the steel heart wall that most major websites do.
Long story short: chasing+tail=killing time.
Just my opinion.
--
~Keegan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
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Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 12:23 AM, Noein prono...@gmail.com wrote: 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 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 ATT 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
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 ATT 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 ATT. 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
Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
Bod Notbod wrote: On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 12:23 AM, Noein prono...@gmail.com wrote: 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 think you're wrong. To paraphrase a common bromide in Finnish, I think he is right, wrong, and grand-daddys long-johns. 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 ATT 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. I think the big issue is that communication goes upwards, downwards, and laterally, and those are three issues that correctly shouldn't be mixed up, when examining how well we as a whole are doing in the field of internal communication. 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. Absolutely true, but when the information is going downstream, there have been instances where there hasn't been a clear presumption that people in the various communities themselves know what they are doing, as a default, taken as a whole. I genuinely think this is just a learning curve people who have come from more traditional top-down organizations have to pass through; and I have seen very encouraging signs that the staff can learn new tricks, and are gradually getting it. The big unadressed problem is lateral communication between particular organs. Top-down and bottom-up communication are things that generally tend to have a dynamic that is self-correcting (though sometimes drama-filled). But communication between parts that are nominally on the same level, is not so easily fixed. Chapters are organizing as a conduit for such communication between languages -- though it has to be said at a snails pace, and in fits and starts. On the foundation top level we all know that there is on-going work on how to optimize the advisory committees usefulness. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
Nathan writes: 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. I think if you look at what we did with regard to the Gallimard takedowns -- 1) Consulting with French legal experts before taking any action 2) Compelling Gallimard to narrow and specify their takedown demands 3) Enlisting community members to implement the takedowns 4) Including (though not required to do so) contact and identifying information for Gallimard 5) Providing a complete list of what Gallimard demanded to be taken down -- you see both a high degree of deliberation on our part (we didn't simply jump to comply) and an effort to make clear to the community what we were doing and why, and to involve the community, even at the same point in time at which we followed through on the takedown demands. You may remember than Yann originally asserted some kind of double standard (maybe that we're more afraid of French publishers than of British museums?), and Andre suggested that we simply (and fearfully) comply with facially invalid takedown requests. Neither notion is true. Somehow those notions didn't exactly feel cooperative. I think it's essential to maintaining the fabric of a massively participatory and cooperative endeavor that one first give some attention to the full facts of how we responded, rather than jumping to (negative) conclusions about our motivations and interests. My view is that, to the extent possible, I want to minimize the exposure of community members to legal risk even as I'm doing the same for the Foundation. Partly this means adhering to the framework of the applicable laws, including copyright laws -- so, yes, we will normally comply with a formally correct takedown notice, just as we will comply with a formally correct put up demand. We'll also help targeted community members find independent legal counsel when we can, and we'll support chapters that seek to provide professional legal advice to the community as well. We do generally have to obey the rules, however, and we didn't create them. --Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com wrote: I think if you look at what we did with regard to the Gallimard takedowns -- 1) Consulting with French legal experts before taking any action 2) Compelling Gallimard to narrow and specify their takedown demands 3) Enlisting community members to implement the takedowns 4) Including (though not required to do so) contact and identifying information for Gallimard 5) Providing a complete list of what Gallimard demanded to be taken down -- you see both a high degree of deliberation on our part (we didn't simply jump to comply) and an effort to make clear to the community what we were doing and why, and to involve the community, even at the same point in time at which we followed through on the takedown demands. You may remember than Yann originally asserted some kind of double standard (maybe that we're more afraid of French publishers than of British museums?), and Andre suggested that we simply (and fearfully) comply with facially invalid takedown requests. Neither notion is true. Somehow those notions didn't exactly feel cooperative. I think it's essential to maintaining the fabric of a massively participatory and cooperative endeavor that one first give some attention to the full facts of how we responded, rather than jumping to (negative) conclusions about our motivations and interests. My view is that, to the extent possible, I want to minimize the exposure of community members to legal risk even as I'm doing the same for the Foundation. Partly this means adhering to the framework of the applicable laws, including copyright laws -- so, yes, we will normally comply with a formally correct takedown notice, just as we will comply with a formally correct put up demand. We'll also help targeted community members find independent legal counsel when we can, and we'll support chapters that seek to provide professional legal advice to the community as well. We do generally have to obey the rules, however, and we didn't create them. --Mike At this point I'm familiar with what the Foundation did and did not do in this particular instance; while my note mentioned that the complaints about communication directed towards the WMF were usually prompted by specific instances, my point about the general responsibility of the WMF to communicate fully is just that - a general point, and not an implied restatement of Yann's complaint. On the other hand, while no one can say that the Foundation did not attempt to inform the French Wikisource community at all, the steps you did take are still open to some criticism and suggestions for improvement. Cary posted a very brief summary of the rationale for the takedown notice, Gallimard's name and contact information, and a list of content deleted. He did not describe the Foundation's effort to limit the scope of the demand, or its contact with French counsel (which was described later, on the talk page, in the form of a copy of an e-mail from you mentioning Hugot Avocats), nor was any effort made to inform project participants how they could contest or counter Gallimard's demands. You can argue, and have argued, that participants should know this already or can easily discover the relevant information with some digging. But why not spare them the effort? It's fully possible that the folks most interested in the specific content are no longer paying close attention, or will be discouraged enough to just give up. Is posting a link to a useful description of put-up procedures really a liability for the WMF? The idea here is that some communication is not necessarily ideal communication, and we can acknowledge that an effort was made while still asking for just a little bit more. -- Your donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation today: http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 12:47 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: You can argue, and have argued, that participants should know this already or can easily discover the relevant information with some digging. But why not spare them the effort? It's fully possible that the folks most interested in the specific content are no longer paying close attention, or will be discouraged enough to just give up. Is posting a link to a useful description of put-up procedures really a liability for the WMF? I see nothing preventing the community from adopting a template including information about put-up procedures. If the community were to do this, it would not create liability for WMF. I believe David Gerard has suggested something similar. The idea here is that some communication is not necessarily ideal communication, and we can acknowledge that an effort was made while still asking for just a little bit more. I'm pleased, of course, that a few people do acknowledge that the effort was made. --Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
Hello, 2010/6/5 Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com: Nathan writes: 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. I think if you look at what we did with regard to the Gallimard takedowns -- 1) Consulting with French legal experts before taking any action 2) Compelling Gallimard to narrow and specify their takedown demands 3) Enlisting community members to implement the takedowns Yes, but the community was only informed _after_ the texts were deleted. What's surprising to me, and most members of French Wikisource, is that some of the deleted pages are in the public domain in France (works by Jean de La Ville de Mirmont and Charles Péguy, who both died in 1914, so their works became public domain in October 2009). If actually you contacted the community _before_ deleting these pages, you could have informed Gallimard about that, and avoid deleting them. We still don't understand how the French lawyers made this mistake. Did you know that some of the deleted pages were in the public domain in France? Do you understand that is what led us to think that the decision was not well informed? (...) --Mike Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Communication
-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? 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? - - 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 ? - - 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. - - how a newbie could understand the current activities and projects? where to start? who to contact? - - 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? - - are there ways to delegate, federate, synthesize, communicate opinions and information between each community, chapter, board members? 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. On 02/06/2010 23:49, Mike Godwin wrote: On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 2:15 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: Yann suggests that he (and the Wikisource community) did not know about the takedown in a timely manner; anyone not watching the files or the deletion logs might have missed it if the only note was in the deletion log. But of course, the deletion log was not the only notice. And Yann Forget knew about the deletions at the time they occurred. If you can't communicate certain facts during negotiations, why not do so afterwards? Sometimes you can. I just did. But of course sometimes you can't, for reasons I've already outlined. (There's nothing magical about the passage of time that eliminates the disincentive effect of disclosing negotiations.) There is some tension built into this general issue, though; Cary advises that the fr.wikisource project needs to make its own decisions about what content to allow, based on a local interpretation of applicable law -- and then the Foundation deletes content without (a) providing advice on what is acceptable and what isn't and (b) without referring to the local decisions the project was advised to take. I'm not sure what advice you think it is even theoretically possible that the Foundation could have offered. Are you suggesting that the Foundation is acting as the lawyer for everyone who posts content to Wikisource? There are obvious reasons that is not a sustainable or feasible model. You seem to have the impression that the Foundation staff directly deleted the content. Actually, I shared the list with Cary, who shared the list with community members who implemented the takedown. (I deleted no content myself.) So you can see why the whole notion that the takedown wasn't shared with the community seems flatly wrong to me. We absolutely engaged community members in implementing the takedown. Yann seems to suggest that our actions have been some kind of big secret. The reality, however, is that we did nothing in secret, and that Yann in fact has known what we did for quite a while now. We even made it trivially easy to contact Gallimard and complain about the takedown. But I do understand that it is easier to complain about WMF than it is to pursue Gallimard directly, even though doing the latter might be a more effective choice. I'll note also that the real complaint, as I
