Pascale: you are the best :) Let us by all means take inspiration from math and art.
Erik notes, about UX testing: > it's also possible to provide volunteers with the resources to do it. Yes, our ability to let people run A/B/Z tests, is extremely powerful. We should make more use of this, and teach more people to use it : particularly the editors already spending long hours fine-tuning designs. Lodewijk writes: > Mostly agree with SJ here, with one exception: I do think that some standing committee to rule on conduct issues is necessary Yes, elected conduct-decision bodies make sense. I'm suggesting we use a simpler process, not be too particular about it, and iterate. The more drawn-out and elaborate a selection, the more we filter out people who would prefer to be doing non-bureaucratic work. Let's combine a slate of elections into *one annual election process*. Make the range of elections intriguing rather than daunting. Also, as Steven notes, we need to rebuild norms for leadership / stewardship of individual projects + decisions. Whoever is planning and leading an initiative -- be bold and humble, responsive and iterative, empowering others to fix what's broken. SJ On Thu, May 19, 2022 at 7:34 PM Nathan <nawr...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Thu, May 19, 2022 at 5:38 PM Steven Walling <steven.wall...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> >> >> On Thu, May 19, 2022 at 10:27 AM Evelin Heidel <scannopo...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> +1 to this, my perception is that we're wasting a lot of volunteer's + >>> staff time + resources into complex governance processes without clear >>> results. In theory, the reason why you want this much transparency & >>> process is to make sure decision making (and in turn resources) are >>> allocated fairly, but in practice so much bureaucracy makes it very hard >>> for people to participate, leading to even more inequality. >>> >>> It's a complex balance to strike but definitely the current initiatives >>> are not even a good aim to begin with. >>> >>> cheers, >>> scann >> >> >> 100% this. >> >> The intentions behind the complex governance processes are good in that >> they intend to increase inclusivity. But it’s easy to forget the most >> limited resource we have is the attention of volunteers. The groups we >> include the least today have the least free time and money. Longer, >> multi-step processes to form and elect committees to set up committees to >> review processes to inform a decision then has exactly the opposite of the >> intended effect because it reduces participation to the slim group of >> people who have the time and patience for such a process. The CIA wrote a >> manual about how to sabotage organizations, and it’s like they wrote a >> perfect description of exactly how things operate right now: "When >> possible, refer all matters to committees for further study and >> consideration. Attempt to make the committee as large as possible–never >> less than five."[1] >> >> The other reason we ended up in this situation is simply a lack of strong >> leadership. People feel like they don't have the permission or safety to do >> things unless they've done the maximum amount of consultations possible. >> This is why decisions flounder in limbo for a long time, with no one really >> knowing if they are happening or not happening. We're stuck because we're >> trying to reset our governance to solve the problem where it's unclear who >> is able to decide what and when... but we're trying to solve that by >> perpetually punting a decision to some other committee or council of >> people. It's turtles all the way down. >> >> 1: >> https://www.openculture.com/2022/01/read-the-cias-simple-sabotage-field-manual.html >> >> > I think that means we need to acknowledge some culpability for this > phenomena - in environments like this list, folks learn that no decision is > too benign to spark controversy and any actually controversial decision is > guaranteed to garner a vitriolic backlash. > > Combine that with the normal tendencies of bureaucracies, magnified by the > special nature of the WMF, and the result is explosive growth in > distributed decision-making organs. > > Accurate insights from SJ and others, if not necessarily new, but unlikely > to lead to change because all the incentives that led to this place remain. > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines > at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at > https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/UKFPEJYU5HYLOGFMJFTPPLVG5LBAUVI4/ > To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org -- Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266
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