Mailing List Archive

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 03:05, John Vandenberg <jayvdb@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 11:06 AM, Sue Gardner <sgardner@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> ...
>> Ah, Sarah, I don't think that's particularly fair. Bear in mind we've
>> just published a strategic plan that 1,000+ Wikimedians helped create.
>
> I'm more than a bit disturbed to see my name in the Acknowledgements
> at the back of the Wikimedia Strategic Plan, which is largely a
> Wikimedia Foundation business plan.
>
> In participating in strategy.wikimedia.org, I was contributing to the
> strategic planning for the *movement*.
> I don't think I edited any of the pages relating to this document.
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/2010-2015_WMF_Business_Plan
>
> Also, I looked for this "188 employees" figure in the strategy wiki
> and couldn't see it anywhere.
> Was there any attempt to have this document approved by the community?
>
It's also unclear what some of it means. In the section about
supporting quality contributions, it says: "Continue to leverage
feature articles, barn-stars and other simple rewards to recognize
excellence in a low stakes fashion that helps build the culture, but
doesn’t undermine volunteer spirit."

What does "continue to leverage" mean in terms of Foundation input?

Sarah

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Thomas Dalton wrote:
> On 6 March 2011 23:54, MZMcBride <z@mzmcbride.com> wrote:
>> So... that's a no? There's no record of who wrote what? I think people in
>> the community are interested to know how much of the strategic plan came
>> from various stakeholders, both the ideas and the actual pieces of the
>> report. If you feel that it's unfair to ask for attribution, I guess we'll
>> just have to agree to disagree.
>
> How cares who wrote what? What matters is who came up with what and
> who thought it was a good idea. I don't know if that information is
> available in any easily accessible way, but it will all be on the
> strategy wiki if you wish to search for it.

Most of the final report was posted to the wiki by a Wikimedia intern:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/AJ_WMF_Intern

I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say "that information ...
will all be on the strategy wiki." Some of the content is, but most of the
actual edits to write this report don't seem to be. I'm probably just
missing something. Do you have links?

I think it's important to know who wrote what because it complements
Wikimedia's values and it speaks to the success of the "Wikimedia way." The
"Wikimedia way" is touted throughout the final strategic plan ("we did it
differently, we did it with the community, etc."). But that doesn't quite
match reality, does it? For better or worse, the "Wikimedia way" failed
here: the community (whatever that is) chose not to write the report. The
community chose not to engage in the final and most important steps (i.e.,
producing something substantive that could be a guidepost for the future).

Wikimedia's values (of transparency, openness, and attribution) were
seemingly set aside as the report was compiled. Is that okay? I think the
same reasons that every wiki article has a page history apply to why every
section of this report should have clear attribution history. Completely
anonymous stakeholders writing large swaths of Wikimedia's plan, and then
saying it was a community effort? I don't know, that doesn't seem quite
right to me.

Here are three accounts belonging to people from Bridgespan that were in
some way involved in the creation of the final report (I think):
* http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Laura231
* http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sarah476
* http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/TylerT

The more I look at this whole process, the more confusing it becomes to me.
I doubt this obfuscation is intentional, but trying to figure out where
anything came from seems nearly impossible. Even when you can find a
specific edit, it's cloaked behind an unrelated account.

I don't think this report matches the values of the Wikimedia community.
Looking at this from a broad angle, I think anyone who has ever been
involved in a Wikimedia-related discussion would say that coming to a
consensus among such a large and varied group of people is nearly
impossible, which makes this unified report all the more dubious in my mind.
How was a cohesive, unified report able to be compiled when the community
was involved? I don't see many possibilities here.

If someone has the time to break this report down more completely, I'd
certainly appreciate it and I imagine others would as well.

MZMcBride



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----- Original Message ----
> From: MZMcBride <z@mzmcbride.com>
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Mon, March 7, 2011 6:47:35 PM
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia "Storyteller" job opening
>
<SNIP>
>
> If someone has the time to break this report down more completely, I'd
> certainly appreciate it and I imagine others would as well.
>

I really do understand what your concerns about the possible worst case
scenario are. However it would be nice if you took a crack at the kind of
research you are suggesting and post any concerns you have on find specific
items in the report that you can not correlate to the open discussion. Posting
a generalization about how bad the worst case scenario could be and asking
people to prove to you that this worst case scenario hasn't happened isn't very
helpful.


Negatives are difficult prove. So if avoid asking people to prove they haven't
incorporated any ideas that were absent from the strategy wiki and switch to
asking for more information on the origins of particular ideas you haven't been
able to find the origin of would lead to an all around a better discussion.
Right now it seems to me like you are asking people to prove to you that the sky
isn't falling.

I think there is a lot of exaggeration on both sides of this discussion.
Defending the strategy process as if it were a dream come true and deriding it
as setting aside the values of openness and transparency are both largely
inaccurate. Of course the whole process could have been better, more engaging,
better documented and produced clearer results. That statement will *always* be
true.


The last time I can recall that there was a concerted effort to clarify WMF
priorities and strategy involving paid facilitation was the 2006 retreat in
Frankfurt involving about 21 Wikimedians. [1] The more recent effort on
developing the WMF five year plan is much more open and transparent than that
one around five years ago. I hope that five years from now we will see another
significant improvement in the process. The recent effort was neither poor, nor
was it ideal. It was a very nice step forward, which is right about where I
believe we all should set our expectations. I find the whole "it was
practically perfect" vs. "it was in opposition to our very values" nature of
this thread quite problematic.


Birgitte SB

[1]
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/73086?search_string=report%20frankfurt;#73086




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