>... list of causes - many of which have little or no correlation with > anything even vaguely related to the operation of the WMF, its core > philosophies, or its purpose....
If the Trustees have decided that we should pay advocates, why not advocate on the issues most likely to increase the number, persistence, and availability of our volunteers? What proportion of past Wikimedia volunteer surveys asked about any issues which would tend to attract new editors, retain existing editors, or increase the time availability of potential editors? I know of three, and only one was produced by Foundation staff. Just because Foundation staff avoid advocacy questions out of an abundance of caution concerning their nonprofit organization restrictions, there is no reason to censor the assessment of volunteer opinion on those topics. On the contrary, the restrictions cause a clear systemic bias in the formal statistical sense, and I would be professionally negligent if I did not recommend countering that bias. If there are actual reasons to believe that the additions I have chosen "have little or no correlation" with such factors then I would like to read them, because they can be expected to improve the ability to attract, retain, and ease the contributions of volunteers for concrete reasons in the most reliable sources. > very americo-centric If there is some reason to say more than 4 out of 32 of the items are US-specific, I would be surprised. Some of the items can easily be internationalized further, and I will endeavor to do so. For better or worse, the Foundation is in the US, and Foundation employees have to live with, e.g., the US healthcare system, US tax incidence, US working hours, US public education, US infrastructure, US national security eavesdropping, etc. Therefore all of those issues affect all of our volunteers. > Just as importantly, it says that 12 topics will be "elected". Elected for > what? Why 12 of them? The cut-off is arbitrary and was intended to be roughly proportional to the number of issues listed in the abstract of the most recent EU survey. > What about if lots of people think one of these topics is really important, > but for different reasons? Advocacy staff should have access to volunteer opinion data in ways which would allow them to tailor advocacy opportunities to those which are considered most important by the largest number of volunteers, and also in ways where the subset of volunteers who consider less popular issues important can still help to act on them when the evidence suggests the outcomes would justify the effort. Best regards, James _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
