On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 9:29 PM, Brian<[email protected]> wrote: > Austin, your page says nothing about the kinds of conversations you would > like to see on foundation-l.
You're right, it doesn't. I don't see it as my place to dictate, and I'm looking for most of the input to come from others. I do, however, hope we can all agree on a bare minimum of "a civil forum for anyone interested to discuss Wikimedia Foundation issues." As a practical matter, improving the signal:blah ratio makes the forum more accessible—to community members, to trustees, to WMF Inc. staff (who, often new to the community, may feel intimidated jumping in). > To me, this is the thing that has gone most wrong about this list. The > Foundation just isn't here. They may be subscribed, and they may read, but > they do not participate. They do not lead by example (with a few notable > exceptions) by raising the level of discourse, and most all of Foundation > business is conducted either in person, or in private e-mails. We feel like > we have to shout in order to get their attention, and that not only do we > not know what they are up to, but we have no say in it. That's what I'm hoping we'll improve. > I have seen it said several times that this list has too much traffic. I > think that's an overgeneralization - it has too much negative traffic. This > list can handle as much productive traffic as the foundation cares to seed > it with. Rather than having that conversation over private e-mail, consider > whether it could benefit from the voices of a few community members. If > nobody replies that's fine because by sending it the foundation has both > increased the level of transparency in its thinking and operations and also > let the community know that it takes what they say seriously. I agree, but also assert that this isn't going to happen as long as 95% of the traffic comes from 1% of subscribers and an extremely high percentage of the overall volume is spent disputing minor points of semantics and prose. Volume is a problem, and it may not be one we can solve, but maybe we can put more effort into the art of pith? Austin _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
