Pete, one thing that I loved about my time at reddit was the existence of a
subreddit called “r/museumofreddit”. It was mandatory reading for every new
hire on my team and every other team I could convince and it was critical to
onboarding me.
It lived to serve just the documentary process that you mention.
Regards,
pb
Philippe Beaudette
> On Aug 25, 2020, at 6:35 PM, Pete Forsyth <petefors...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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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