2010/10/15 Aryeh Gregor <simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com>: > But instead of seeing volunteers' frustration as something that needs > to be addressed by staff if you expect to keep a healthy community > going, you see it as a problem in its own right which is the fault of > the volunteers. This perspective has, unfortunately, been typical of > Wikimedia staff for some time now. > To repeat the subject line of this thread: it's a two-way street. I acknowledge that the current tensions are a byproduct of certain crises, and by no means meant to imply that staff members are practically innocent and that it's all the volunteers' fault. I also acknowledge that the staff has a part to play in fixing this situation (I literally said this), but the volunteers have a part to play too. That's what two-way means. To reiterate: I am *not* saying this problem is somehow disconnected from the other one or is somehow exclusively the volunteers' fault and responsibility.
What I *am* saying is that both sides have roles to play. The staff's role is to collaborate with the volunteers better: this has been discussed extensively, so I won't go into detail there. Instead, I chose to highlight the volunteers' role in this thread. Their role, IMO, is to keep the collaborative environment positive. This means being welcoming to new staff, embracing them, pat them on the shoulder when they to things right and correct them when they do things wrong, while keeping their patience. I feel that especially the shoulder-patting and patience parts have been lacking lately, at least in the perception of the staff members I spoke to. This leads to them perceiving the environment as predominantly negative towards them, which does not encourage them. To expand on the patience part a bit more: staffers coming from outside the community need to adapt, and adapting takes time. If they, while still in this process, demonstrate that they "don't get it" (which may very well be the case, but I'd like to add "yet!" to that), they should be cut some slack on the grounds that some of this stuff is new to them, even after having worked at WMF for quite some time. Don't underestimate how long this process takes. We as a community go way back, and "outside" staffers have missed all that history. Roan Kattouw (Catrope) _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
