I've thought about institutional memory quite a lot since I stopped working
at WMF in 2011. A few points I think are worth considering:
1. Often, institutional memory is measured in terms of
staff/executive/board turnover; while there has indeed been a very high
rate of turnover at times, I would argue that another factor (see #2) is
actually more important.
2. An organization can do a great deal, with a well-planned top-down
approach, to ensure institutional memory is *generated* and *retained* even
if there's a lot of turnover.
3. The main thing that can be done is to ensure that significant events
are *debriefed and summarized *("documented") in a way that is clearly
and concisely articulated, supported by evidence and logic, and fair to
various good faith perspectives.
4. We might call that an "encyclopedic" approach. (The skills required
are almost exactly the skills that tend to be cultivated in our Wikipedia
volunteer community, as codified in its policies and norms, and learned
through practice by its core volunteers.)
5. The Wikimedia Foundation has not historically done very much in terms
of thorough encyclopedic documentation of important events in its history.
There have been exceptions, and I believe that where it has been done and
done well, much good has come of it. The best example of this, in my
opinion, is the Assessment of Belfer Center Wikipedian in Residence
program
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Assessment_of_Belfer_Center_Wikipedian_in_Residence_program>.
This was initiated by then-Executive Director Sue Gardner and her deputy
Erik Möller, who participated actively in it. Specific programmatic
improvements in the Grants department were a direct outcome.
6. But many events have never been documented with
guidance/resourcing/participation by the WMF. It's worthwhile to debrief
and summarize both positive and negative experiences.
7. If you don't document positive outcomes, WMF staff may have
difficulty replicating that success, because the experience is not widely
understood within the WMF (or in the community, etc.) The example foremost
in my mind is the 2012 rewrite of the Terms of Use, overseen by
then-General Counsel Geoff Brigham. He made changes to his process to
leverage the knowledge and experience within the volunteer community, and
ended up with a document substantially superior to his initial draft, and
that also had the buy-in of many volunteers whose fingerprints were on the
final document. (I hope to write this up myself some day; if I ever get
around to it, it'll be linked here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Peteforsyth/governance#Organizational_governance>
.
8. If you don't summarize/debrief negative outcomes, you don't learn in
the moment what went wrong (so as to avoid repeating the mistakes), and you
leave anybody impacted by the problems (e.g. volunteers) with the
impression that you don't care. The example I think of is Superprotect
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Superprotect>. As the author of a
diplomatic letter, signed by more than 1000 people, making straightforward
requests of the WMF, I am not too bothered that they didn't do what we
requested; but I am very bothered that they never acknowledged the
existence of the letter, nor stated which parts of it they agreed/disagreed
with, or what motivated the subsequent decisions they did make. (These are
things they could still do, even several years later, that would still make
a difference.)
9. As any seasoned Wikipedia writer/editor knows, there is an important
difference between writing that aims first and foremost to be useful and
informative ("encyclopedic"), vs. writing that aims first and foremost to
present an organization in a good light, or to advance an agenda ("public
relations" or "communications" for an organization). People who excel at
one of those types of writing are not always great at doing the other kind;
the two types of writing require a different mindset.
10. The kind of writing required to summarize and debrief
important events, to create and preserve institutional memory, is (in terms
of the ways I defined them above) *encyclopedic* writing.
11. In closing, I'd like to make a point about the skillset the WMF
board has hired. I want to be really explicit -- I like and admire the
WMF's Executive Director/CEO; she is highly skilled, and a kind person. But
I am continually surprised that there has been little acknowledgment of
what the board did by hiring her, and the direction the WMF has
(unsurprisingly) taken since her hire. She was previously the WMF's
Communications Director, and her earlier career was largely in
communications. I would urge others to consider that it is not surprising,
if an organization is guided by an executive with a Communications
background, that it would not embrace an encyclopedic approach to its own
self-knowledge.
If the Board wants to build an organization that learns about its assets
(first among them, IMO, is its extensive and passionate volunteer
community) and its history, and retains what knowledge it gains, I believe
it is entirely within the power of the Board to make that happen. The Board
has several tools at its disposal to ensure that kind of outcome. It can
make its wishes known through directives and motions passed in its
meetings, and it can exert its influence on documents like Annual Plans and
budgets.
So, I would argue that if there are observable patterns that the WMF is not
doing a great job of retaining institutional memory, and if anybody has the
energy to try to change that (I don't), advocating to the Board is the most
worthwhile way to bring that about. Anything less, it seems to me, is
rather pointless.
-Pete
--
[[User:Peteforsyth]]
p.s. If interested, please review my own (work in progress) list of
significant events in Wikipedia's history, with links to more detailed
information. I'm interested in feedback, additions, or criticism of this
list. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Peteforsyth/governance
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Peteforsyth/governance#Organizational_governance>
On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 1:52 PM Strainu <strain...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It seems the WMF is going through another crisis of institutional
> memory, with the T&S team taking center stage. It's not really
> important what they did wrong, it's minor compared with other faux-pas
> they did in the past.
>
> I was wondering though if the organization as a whole has learned
> anything from major crisis in the past and if there is a formal way of
> passing to newcomers information such as when and how to contact
> communities, what's the difference between a wiki, a community and an
> affiliate etc.?
>
> Strainu
>
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