[Wikimedia-l] Leadership, Wikimedia-style

[ENWP Pine]

Hi all,

I've heard the word "leadership" used a lot in WMF, synonymously with 
"management" in my experience. That makes sense in a somewhat hierarchical 
organization like WMF, although this model has received some criticism from the 
community for allegedly excessive top-down thinking. I'm not familiar enough 
with the culture in the WMF Office to comment about its strengths and 
weaknesses, but I would like to ask questions about leadership in the community.

In the community, which is diffuse and where roles are highly flexible, there 
have been some studies done done about leadership but the ones I know about 
usually focus on hierarchies within the community, especially how people get 
chosen for administrator roles on-wiki. As we are thinking about our online 
culture, we can be thinking about movement leadership. Who are the leaders, how 
are they trained, how are they selected, what do they do, what makes them 
effective, and how can they be given ongoing support and training? I think many 
of us would agree that adminship and leadership are not always synonymous, and 
there are many ways that people exercise leadership in non-hierarchical ways. 

I hear frequently about stress from members of English Wikipedia's Arbcom, and 
I hope WMF is thinking about how to train and support people who get chosen for 
such visible, important, and often stressful volunteer roles.

I would also like to point out that Wikimedia is developing training materials 
for leaders of chapters and programs.

Is there anyone at WMF who is taking a holistic view of community leadership 
and how to understand, train and support it in ways that support the strategic 
plan goals?

Training that might be relevant could include how to create friendly spaces 
online, 
resolve online conflicts, engage in cross-cultural communication, encourage 
strategic thinking, influence change, and maintain morale. I think a series of 
five-minute training modules could be helpful for online and offline 
volunteers, along with dedicating some Program & Evaluation or Research time to 
understanding leadership in the non-hierarchical community. These initiatives 
could help with encouraging teamwork and collaboration online by influencing 
and training "leaders".

I would also be interested in hearing about how WMF thinks about "leadership" 
internally, since there seems to be some community feeling that WMF's thinking 
about leadership is incompatible with the community's. I don't have an opinion 
but I would like to be more informed, and hopefully encourage WMF to think 
about how the organization as a whole interacts with the community. 

Thanks,

Pine


  
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[Wikimedia-l] The costs of freeing up knowledge

[Bishakha Datta]

An amazing story on the costs of freeing up knowledge in some contexts:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/innovators/2014/04/140421-haidara-timbuktu-manuscripts-mali-library-conservation/?utm_source=NatGeocom&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=inside_20140514&utm_campaign=Content

There is a wikipedia page on this [1], but the behind-the-scenes story is
incredible, so sharing widely.

Best
Bishakha

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamma_Haidara_Commemorative_Library
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Defining "impact" for Wikimedia programs, grants and evaluation

[Michael Maggs]

Details of the ways we define and measure the ‘impact’ of our programmes at 
Wikimedia UK can be found here:

https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Strategic_and_operational_models

Best regards

Michael


Michael Maggs
Chair, Wikimedia UK 


On 19 May 2014, at 02:23, ENWP Pine  wrote:

> Hi, I spent a few minutes searching on Meta for how "impact" is defined. What 
> is the WMF definition?
> 
> Some examples of places where "impact" is used:
> * https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/Impact_report_form
> * https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Impact_report_form_Q%26A
> * https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Learning/Round_1_2013/Impact
> * 
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/05/02/beginning-understand-what-works-measuring-impact-programs/
> * 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program_evaluation_basics:_efficiency,_effectiveness_and_impact
> 
> I am not fond of the Boulmetis / Dutwin definition used in that last 
> reference because short-term effects can be important and much easier to 
> measure than long-term effects. For example, an administrator protecting a 
> page can have the short-term effect of preventing editing and preventing an 
> edit war, and the long term effects of that can be impossible to know, such 
> as whether preventing an edit war prevented the situation from escalating to 
> an Arbcom case with imposition of long-term blocks, and also whether 
> preventing editing prevented important information from being added to the 
> page by an occasional IP editor. 
> 
> I might suggest a rewrite of that entire page on "program evaluation basics" 
> to make it simple. Right now it's a wall of text that's difficult to follow 
> and, I feel, at least partly wrong. I think that Edward Galvez is working on 
> some of these issues and I would be happy to have him or someone else in 
> Evaluation thoughtfully redesign and rewrite that page to make it easy to 
> follow for everyone including non-native English speakers. If I have a hard 
> time with that page, you can imagine how difficult it is for someone who only 
> understands English at an intermediate level. I would like to start with 
> having a clear and simple definition of "impact" that makes sense in 
> Wikimedia contexts, and some examples that are easy to follow.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Pine
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to Criticize with Kindness

[ENWP Pine]

Have a look at 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Learning_patterns/Safe_space_policy

Making our *online* culture be friendly has turned out to be a big challenge. 
We have lots of due process and vague definitions for civility, so pushing out 
bad actors and keeping good citizens feeling somewhat protected from personal 
attacks can be surprisingly difficult. Not surprisingly, good people leave.

Pine
  
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[Wikimedia-l] Defining "impact" for Wikimedia programs, grants and evaluation

[ENWP Pine]

Hi, I spent a few minutes searching on Meta for how "impact" is defined. What 
is the WMF definition?

Some examples of places where "impact" is used:
* https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/Impact_report_form
* https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Impact_report_form_Q%26A
* https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Learning/Round_1_2013/Impact
* 
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/05/02/beginning-understand-what-works-measuring-impact-programs/
* 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program_evaluation_basics:_efficiency,_effectiveness_and_impact

I am not fond of the Boulmetis / Dutwin definition used in that last reference 
because short-term effects can be important and much easier to measure than 
long-term effects. For example, an administrator protecting a page can have the 
short-term effect of preventing editing and preventing an edit war, and the 
long term effects of that can be impossible to know, such as whether preventing 
an edit war prevented the situation from escalating to an Arbcom case with 
imposition of long-term blocks, and also whether preventing editing prevented 
important information from being added to the page by an occasional IP editor. 

I might suggest a rewrite of that entire page on "program evaluation basics" to 
make it simple. Right now it's a wall of text that's difficult to follow and, I 
feel, at least partly wrong. I think that Edward Galvez is working on some of 
these issues and I would be happy to have him or someone else in Evaluation 
thoughtfully redesign and rewrite that page to make it easy to follow for 
everyone including non-native English speakers. If I have a hard time with that 
page, you can imagine how difficult it is for someone who only understands 
English at an intermediate level. I would like to start with having a clear and 
simple definition of "impact" that makes sense in Wikimedia contexts, and some 
examples that are easy to follow.

Thanks,

Pine
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] How to Criticize with Kindness

[Everton Zanella Alvarenga]

That seems a really cool presentation Romaine! Thanks for sharing in this
thread. Unfortunately I won't be able to attend Wikimedia this year, but I
hope to see the video from this presentation and the discussions about it
later! :)

Hugs, Tom


2014-05-16 14:13 GMT-03:00 Romaine Wiki :

> Hello all,
>
> I had a discussion with Fabrice about how a culture of Kindness and
> Fabrice also made a submission for Wikimania about it:
> https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/A_Culture_of_Kindness
>
> In the past years I notice very much how easy discussions can go in the
> wrong direction as all the facial expressions and intonation are lost when
> users write a message on a talk page. Many many times this goes wrong, and
> users have a different interpretation of what someone else said what causes
> a fight on the wiki. If users are smart they find out that in fact the
> difference between them is very small with (usually) only a very slight
> difference in focus, but in general they agree with each other, but they
> don't realize that on the moment of the discussion. (If users with good
> will aren't that smart to discover that, such can grow out to a fighting
> situation for many years.) If I estimate I would say at least 50% of all
> troubled discussions are causes by miscommunication as the result of words
> being read differently as result of missing facial expressions and
> intonation what most people are used to have in the communication with
> people around them.
>
> If certain users are deaf, autistic or dyslectic, or have such background,
> this is even worsened.
>
> For some years I say that if I can follow a training to improve textual
> communication to better understand how things are perceived, I really like
> to follow such training. As I don't know of any, I started to figure out
> and collect what communication mistakes are made what cause troubles
> between users with the intention of creating a guide for users, to let them
> understand why some communication gives worse results.
>
> Romaine
>
> --
> Everton Zanella Alvarenga (also Tom)
> Open Knowledge Brasil - Rede pelo Conhecimento Livre
> http://br.okfn.org
>
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