On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 6:44 PM, Stephen Bain <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 1:26 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen > <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> "We do realize that what we did was wrong, and this is clearly not a >> situation where we can go on with the 'your opinions have been >> duly noted' haughty attitude. We apologize for even going that route >> ever in the first place. The community rules, we serve, that is what >> we are being payed for." > > "Let us now prostrate ourselves at the feet of that segment of the > community which opposed this idea, who we realise are the just and > righteous leaders of the Wikimedia movement due to having the loudest > voices, and beg for their absolution." > >
You may have missed a couple of things. A good portion of the loudest critics of _the_ _process_ (not the result) ; I hesitate say the majority, because I haven't done the numbers; were in fact people in favor of the proposal itself, but who had the integrity to recognize that a result gained by such flawed means has little or no legitimacy. Secondly, a leadership prostrate would have even less legitimacy than one hunkering down in a bunker somewhere, surrounded by stalwart loyalists. Not that I genuinely believe the latter is the case here. I have enough faith in the integrity of many of the actors at the highest level of the foundation that my gloss on the situation is that likely people are still sorting things out in the usual manner and don't want to gross people out by how the sausage is made, and we will have a public sausage, er, I mean statement, shortly. Thirdly, there never has in the past been *any* hierarchy in wikimedia, that is the beauty of it. And any attempt at empire building, now, or in the future, is doomed to fail. There is a governance structure, but that should be ring-fenced away from the community. What we have here is the governance structure trying to leap over the fence. We simply can't have that. What is needed here is not a prostrate leadership, but one which acknowledges what happened, and offers a crisp plain apology. That wouldn't repair the damage, but it sure would staunch the bleeding. -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]] _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
