This strikes me as yet another example of a WMF department forgetting to inform relevant stakeholders as soon as is appropriate, when decisions are made...
In just the last few days, on this mailing list alone, there have been controversies on: - not telling chapters' treasurers that a team had been hired and a financial auditing process initiated (the Finance Fellows), until after it had already begun. - Not informing the Russians that their country's donations were no longer accepted, leaving them to fend off angry media/donors. - Not informing the Dutch that donations in their country's most popular online money-transfer system was being temporarily stopped. None of these things needed to be controversial or a problem if they'd been explained to the relevant people up-front. None of them required advanced notice if that was not possible for operational reasons (although it would have been nice). All of them are the WMF's preogative to make those decisions. But, crucially, ALL of them have people in the Wikimedia movement who are affected by the decision. According to the complaints raised on this list, None of those affected people were informed as soon as reasonably possible. Furthermore their initial, private, enquiries produced apparently-unsatisfactory answers, leading to them feeling forced to raise their concerns here. All of this chips-away at community good-will, makes the WMF feel under-siege (and I do acknowledge my own contribution to that feeling by this email, for which I apologise), and creates a disjointed public-face when press/donors/readers ask community members "what's happening with xyz?" and the community-member forced to reply "this is the first I've heard about it". To help avoid similar things happening in the future, can I propose that any time a public-facing decision is being made by a WMF team, the question "who in the community is likely to be affected by this decision?" be asked as a standard procedure. Then take the time to proactively inform those people. (Some WMF teams do this really well already, I want to acknowledge!) In the examples above that would be the treasurers' list, the Russian media contacts, and the Dutch OTRS team. Ideally those people could be involved/consulted in the decision itself (but that's not always possible) and they will be able to help respond to the issue in the appropriate way. We're all on the same team... -- wittylama.com Peace, love & metadata _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
