Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Appropriation of the Wikimedia Blog by the WMF

[Natacha Rault]

Thanks for having this conversation.
Having a balanced life is important, but why should the revenues generated by 
volunteer work not go back to volunteers also? 
In truth, wikimedia projects are addictive, time consuming, they generate 
passionate debates and I have seen many going down the black hole and finding 
it hard to manage “priorities”.
This situation is detrimental to those who struggle most to survive. Should 
contributing  be the activity of only those rich people who can afford to be 
volunteers on their free time? I dont think so.
Tackling with gendergap issues, I see many women not contributing because they 
say “it’s time consuming” and they cant afford it.
I don’t know how to deal with these issues, but at the core of implementing 
“strategic orientations” which include diversity issues, well it is a must have 
conversation.
As for the wikimedia blog I dont really have an idea on that: if the WMF does 
it, finances it, well ... At the same time it would need to remain under free 
licence so that we can use the stories in our projects, because the revenue 
paying it is generated from our volunteer work. 

Have a nice day, I have just bought myself a canoe kayak, which is the only way 
for me not to get entangled in contributing on a bright sunny day.
I cant bring my computer on the river! 
I think we should finance “wikimedians go green off wiki for the week end 
projects”. Some days off the internet walking, swimming, having chats by a fire 
wood and just taking care of ourselves off wiki. 


Nattes à chat 

> Le 10 juin 2018 à 05:38, Bodhisattwa Mandal  a 
> écrit :
> 
> Hi David,
> 
> I hear you.
> 
> I live in that part of the world where getting any job and earning money,
> by any means possible, is the topmost priority of life, as unemployment and
> corruption has become intimate part of most of the people. Involvement in
> volunteer works with no personal or financial gain, is not appreciated at
> all and sanity is frequently questioned even by family members and close
> friends. The real life is far more harsh for us than the issues we face in
> Wikipedia.
> 
> But, I have seen people, who have fought against all extreme odds to create
> contents in Wikimedia. I met an Wikimedian, who would have no food or money
> for the next day to survive, if he didn't go and look for some labour work
> and earn some money for his family, yet learned advanced computer works
> from scratch with the help of a Jurassic age broken laptop gifted by a
> well-wisher and built the most impactful project in his language, believe
> me, I have seen that laptop with my own eyes. I know someone, very close to
> my heart, who once spent the small amount of money he had with him, to pay
> the cyber cafe, he went almost everyday to edit Wikipedia, even if he knew,
> that the money he was spending, was his last resort for that day. These
> Wikimedians are no less than a legend to me and whenever I feel frustrated
> and burnt out, I remember them. I am pretty sure, everyone in this movement
> knows someone amazing.
> 
> You are absolutely right, people who build Wikipedia from their core of
> their heart are not heard or appreciated in larger Wikimedia world, some of
> them are silently contributing forl a long time , without any expectation
> from anyone. On the other hand, I have seen loud mouths  with almost no
> substantial or impactful contribution at all, being featured everywhere on
> a regular basis. That's an unfair world we everyday deal with and Wikimedia
> is not an exception.
> 
> I will totally support you, if you create a meta page for these silent
> volunteers, who needs to be seen.
> 
> Best,
> Bodhisattwa
> 
> 
> 
>> On Sun, 10 Jun 2018, 01:56 David Cuenca Tudela,  wrote:
>> 
>> Aubrey,
>> 
>> You speak so much truth in your words that I'm feeling overwhelmed right
>> now. Because like a doctor who cares about his patient, you have just very
>> lovingly and figuratively told me, "you are deeply sick". It hurts, I
>> struggle accepting the truth, but deep inside I know that the only thing I
>> can do is to acknowledge your words, and as every human before of me ask
>> the perennial questions: "why me? what could have I done differently?"
>> 
>> You are right, I put my whole being into this project, I have seen it as a
>> way to find purpose, meaning, liberation, and instead what I have found is
>> the emptiness, my own and that of the people who are in the same situation
>> as me. Maybe they also need the same things as I do, but we never talked
>> about it so I don't know what they need, they never told me. Unlike other
>> people, however, I do know what I need to find purpose here.
>> 
>> To me purpose comes from the mutual acknowledgment with my peers that we
>> are here for something bigger than ourselves. We might never achieve those
>> dreams, but being next to someone who understands you because they are in
>> the same situation, makes life more bearable. But do we share the same
>> 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Appropriation of the Wikimedia Blog by the WMF

[Bodhisattwa Mandal]

Hi David,

I hear you.

I live in that part of the world where getting any job and earning money,
by any means possible, is the topmost priority of life, as unemployment and
corruption has become intimate part of most of the people. Involvement in
volunteer works with no personal or financial gain, is not appreciated at
all and sanity is frequently questioned even by family members and close
friends. The real life is far more harsh for us than the issues we face in
Wikipedia.

But, I have seen people, who have fought against all extreme odds to create
contents in Wikimedia. I met an Wikimedian, who would have no food or money
for the next day to survive, if he didn't go and look for some labour work
and earn some money for his family, yet learned advanced computer works
from scratch with the help of a Jurassic age broken laptop gifted by a
well-wisher and built the most impactful project in his language, believe
me, I have seen that laptop with my own eyes. I know someone, very close to
my heart, who once spent the small amount of money he had with him, to pay
the cyber cafe, he went almost everyday to edit Wikipedia, even if he knew,
that the money he was spending, was his last resort for that day. These
Wikimedians are no less than a legend to me and whenever I feel frustrated
and burnt out, I remember them. I am pretty sure, everyone in this movement
knows someone amazing.

You are absolutely right, people who build Wikipedia from their core of
their heart are not heard or appreciated in larger Wikimedia world, some of
them are silently contributing forl a long time , without any expectation
from anyone. On the other hand, I have seen loud mouths  with almost no
substantial or impactful contribution at all, being featured everywhere on
a regular basis. That's an unfair world we everyday deal with and Wikimedia
is not an exception.

I will totally support you, if you create a meta page for these silent
volunteers, who needs to be seen.

Best,
Bodhisattwa



On Sun, 10 Jun 2018, 01:56 David Cuenca Tudela,  wrote:

> Aubrey,
>
> You speak so much truth in your words that I'm feeling overwhelmed right
> now. Because like a doctor who cares about his patient, you have just very
> lovingly and figuratively told me, "you are deeply sick". It hurts, I
> struggle accepting the truth, but deep inside I know that the only thing I
> can do is to acknowledge your words, and as every human before of me ask
> the perennial questions: "why me? what could have I done differently?"
>
> You are right, I put my whole being into this project, I have seen it as a
> way to find purpose, meaning, liberation, and instead what I have found is
> the emptiness, my own and that of the people who are in the same situation
> as me. Maybe they also need the same things as I do, but we never talked
> about it so I don't know what they need, they never told me. Unlike other
> people, however, I do know what I need to find purpose here.
>
> To me purpose comes from the mutual acknowledgment with my peers that we
> are here for something bigger than ourselves. We might never achieve those
> dreams, but being next to someone who understands you because they are in
> the same situation, makes life more bearable. But do we share the same
> dream or aspiration at all? Has anyone ever take a collective vow to show
> to themselves and to others that this is what matters in their life, and
> that they are committing to it? I do not think anyone has ever done that.
> You say that you have given up, but I do not want to reach that point. I
> feel I want to try to build a real community environment and give everyone
> a chance before giving up on them.
>
> My desire as I was typing my email was to be seen, to be recognized by who
> I am, to be understood even. That is something that only a true friend
> could do for me, but as you say we are not good friends even if we did some
> cool things together. We want to collect "all human knowledge", but what do
> we actually know about each other? Is that not valid knowledge or what? In
> my opinion the knowledge about the people in this movement, what they do,
> who they are, what are their dreams, their aspirations, should be collected
> with at least as much interest as we collect all other kind of knowledge.
> Yet nobody does that.
>
> If there is no collective information about who I am and what I have done
> these years, how can I expect other people to value me as much as I want to
> value them? I am as guilty as anyone else for not caring about my fellow
> volunteers in this project, but that doesn't need to continue being that
> way, it can change. I can commit to write a page on Meta about any
> volunteer who wants their work on this project to be seen and recognized,
> and of course anyone can do that for me to. We only need the will.
>
> You say that that WMF bears responsibility in the "failure" of our
> Wikisource community project, and that it is not important now. I do not
> agree about 

[Wikimedia-l] ?מה עושה אותך מאושר השבוע / What's making you happy this week? (Week of 10 June 2018)

[Pine W]

Here are some highlights:

* "Improved geocoding in CiviCRM", by Eileen McNaughton:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/06/05/improved-geocoding-in-civicrm/

* "Thank you week-end thread", with posts by hashar (
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2018-June/090126.html) and
legoktm (
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2018-June/090142.html)

* You may be familiar with the United Nations Sustainable Development
Goals. WMF commented on a draft text that is being considered by UNESCO in
regards to Sustainable Development Goal 4. You can read about SDG 4 at
https://en.unesco.org/education2030-sdg4/targets and
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg4. Nichole Saad published WMF's
comments about the draft document at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Comment_on_the_UNESCO_OER_Recommendation_Draft.pdf.


* "Rebuilding Wikimédia France", by Charlotte Matoussowsky:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2018-June/090413.html

* "Stats re new users per gender per year in Hebrew Wikipedia", by Shani
Evenstein Sigalov:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2018-June/090429.html.
Asaf Bartov uploaded a screenshot of the data table here that may be easier
to read:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:User_gender_on_Hebrew_Wikipedia,_by_year,_through_May_2018.png


What's making you happy this week? You are welcome to comment in any
language.


Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

[Wikimedia-l] Volunteering and Appreciation (was: Appropriation of the Wikimedia Blog by the WMF)

[Richard Ames]

Micru,

I think a lot of us care.  I wish you well!

Some time ago I tried to put some thoughts around volunteering at the WMF.
I thought it needed to be better planed / managed.

I could not get enough interest to progress the conversation.

You may wish to read https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Management
and the talk page thereof.

Regards, Richard.

On 10 June 2018 at 06:25, David Cuenca Tudela  wrote:

> Aubrey,
>
> You speak so much truth in your words that I'm feeling overwhelmed right
>


___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Appropriation of the Wikimedia Blog by the WMF

[David Cuenca Tudela]

Aubrey,

You speak so much truth in your words that I'm feeling overwhelmed right
now. Because like a doctor who cares about his patient, you have just very
lovingly and figuratively told me, "you are deeply sick". It hurts, I
struggle accepting the truth, but deep inside I know that the only thing I
can do is to acknowledge your words, and as every human before of me ask
the perennial questions: "why me? what could have I done differently?"

You are right, I put my whole being into this project, I have seen it as a
way to find purpose, meaning, liberation, and instead what I have found is
the emptiness, my own and that of the people who are in the same situation
as me. Maybe they also need the same things as I do, but we never talked
about it so I don't know what they need, they never told me. Unlike other
people, however, I do know what I need to find purpose here.

To me purpose comes from the mutual acknowledgment with my peers that we
are here for something bigger than ourselves. We might never achieve those
dreams, but being next to someone who understands you because they are in
the same situation, makes life more bearable. But do we share the same
dream or aspiration at all? Has anyone ever take a collective vow to show
to themselves and to others that this is what matters in their life, and
that they are committing to it? I do not think anyone has ever done that.
You say that you have given up, but I do not want to reach that point. I
feel I want to try to build a real community environment and give everyone
a chance before giving up on them.

My desire as I was typing my email was to be seen, to be recognized by who
I am, to be understood even. That is something that only a true friend
could do for me, but as you say we are not good friends even if we did some
cool things together. We want to collect "all human knowledge", but what do
we actually know about each other? Is that not valid knowledge or what? In
my opinion the knowledge about the people in this movement, what they do,
who they are, what are their dreams, their aspirations, should be collected
with at least as much interest as we collect all other kind of knowledge.
Yet nobody does that.

If there is no collective information about who I am and what I have done
these years, how can I expect other people to value me as much as I want to
value them? I am as guilty as anyone else for not caring about my fellow
volunteers in this project, but that doesn't need to continue being that
way, it can change. I can commit to write a page on Meta about any
volunteer who wants their work on this project to be seen and recognized,
and of course anyone can do that for me to. We only need the will.

You say that that WMF bears responsibility in the "failure" of our
Wikisource community project, and that it is not important now. I do not
agree about the timing, I find it is very relevant now, because the same
pattern that has happened before, it is happening again now. And the
pattern is that of the individual voice vs. the organization. We are like
ants next to a giant, we complain and say what we need, but we are so
little in comparison that our voice doesn't reach any ears. For Wikisource
we thought, ok, if we are not being heard as individuals maybe we'll be
heard as an organization, but that didn't happen either! So now that I have
this issue about the Wikimedia Blog and I complain about it, I feel
helpless because it is again an individual standing up against a behemoth
that will not listen neither to myself as individual nor to myself as an
organization. What is there for me left to do?

The only thing it is left for me to do is to question the legitimacy of the
WMF as the leadership organization of the Wikimedia movement, understanding
leadership as the capacity to listen to many individual voices and act in a
way that is beneficial to all of them. If the WMF is incapable of listening
to my individual voice, then I want either a reform in the WMF to include
people who are able to listen at the top of the hierarchy, or a new
organization who can listen and create a common vision out of what it
hears. Things like the Strategy process are supposed to help with this
goal, however I feel it doesn't offer the space for day to day activities
or to challenge participants with new ideas, then it has no use for me.

So yes, I will follow your advice and I will pick my battles, putting
myself first. In this case my battle from this moment on is to recognize
the authority of the Wikimedia movement as a whole, and build leadership
legitimacy for me and all those in the movement who are able to listen. I
do believe that such people exist in our movement (I know a few), and that
they have a very high capacity for listening, but they themselves are not
being heard, and that is extremely unfair, and it is something I would like
to correct because me and the movement would benefit greatly. And as you
said money is necessary, so it has to be paid.

@SJ: as you 

[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Appropriation of the Wikimedia Blog by the WMF

[Frederick Noronha]

Dear David,

I'm really sorry to hear this, and feel your pain.

Having been through this in the past, I know (a bit) of how it feels.

I just disagree with your analysis of seeing money as a mere tool. It can
empower us, it can destroy us. Whoever said money is the root of all evil,
knew what s/he was talking about. It can disrupt the best of movements and
also make us selfish.

I hope I'm wrong here.

Fredericknoronha
In Goa, India.
+91-9822122436.

PS: Regardless of whether it's related or not, I'd like to make a general
observation: burnout over volunteer work can be a real (if unaddressed)
concern for many of us. Why do so many end up feeling so under-appreciated
and taken-for-granted? Are there some tools to cope with this?

-- Forwarded message -
From: David Cuenca Tudela 
Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2018 at 03:56
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Appropriation of the Wikimedia Blog by the WMF
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 


Since Ed Erhart didn't honor my request of posting in this mailing lists to
discuss the plans to appropriate the Wikimedia Blog for the Wikimedia
Foundation [1] (although I would have preferred that he had done it himself
as he is the visible face behind this change, and therefore the burden of
proof is on him to prove to the community that this is the right change), I
am posting to this list with the hope that it can be discussed with people
for whom these things matter.

The Wikimedia Blog [2] has the title "News from Wikipedia and the Wikimedia
movement", and in case you don't know it it is run by the WMF [3]. This
blog has been operating under the existing URL for many years, and I
believe there was a general satisfaction with the way is run, the quality
of the stories, the amount, etc. However, as I mentioned in the Phabricator
ticket [1] I find the idea of moving the blog to the Wikimedia Foundation
site not adequate and not in the spirit of the Wikimedia movement.

I do not find the intention to move the blog to the WMF site to be in the
spirit of the Wikimedia movement because our movement is a diverse field
that is based on the idea of "commons" [4], and I feel that the Wikimedia
Blog is one of those commons. As I see it now the blog sits in the middle
of the community, and although it is run by the WMF, it can be seen as a
shared space between the WMF, the affiliates, and the community. By moving
the blog to the WMF site, the blog would lose its status as a commons and
it would become "the blog of the WMF". I think that if the WMF wants a
blog, they can create a new one, but they should leave the existing blog as
it is, as a shared space.

Intentions like this makes me think that in the WMF there is not enough
"wisdom", that strange quality that I am trying to make important in our
movement without much success [5]. This lack of wisdom is not only present
in the WMF, also in our movement I percieve, if not lack of wisdom, at
least lack of empathy [6]. It saddens me and it makes me stressed.

Issues like this one about the blog make me think that the movement needs
dedicated people that cultivate wisdom and encyclopedic knowledge about the
movement (I might have the former, but not the later), and that we put the
qualities of those people to the service of our community. I feel like a
little kid who wants to play a nice game with his friends, and then he sees
a big bulldozer coming to destroy his playing field. If it is not clear for
you, the "bulldozer" is how I see the "corporate WMF" coming to destroy the
soul of what I love most.

Tracking these kind of "behind the scenes" events takes me too much time. I
feel that I have reached more than the maximum of my capacity as a
"volunteer" (ha, what a joke of a word), and that I would risk losing my
current job if I am caught again participating in the Wikimedia projects
during my work hours, which I do without restrain. Not only that, it also
takes most of my waking time, specially because the movement has grown so
big that I feel overwhelmed in my capacity as metapedian [7]. I also feel
that it has started affecting my mental health. I do not know if I am the
only one, but as it is right now contributing to the Wikimedia projects is
*very* stressful, and since it is my main activity, I don't have time to
wind down, and since I do it as a "volunteer", I do not have free time to
recover. I also fear that if I would not do it myself nobody else would do
it, and if nobody would take their individual responsibility seriously,
then nobody would care for the good things in this world, and if nobody
would take care of the good things in this world, then we better start
saying goodbye to it RIGHT NOW, because the world is a fucking mess and
nobody is standing up to say the things as they are, or as they should be.

I spent 14 years of my life in the Wikimedia projects with various degrees
of involvement, working for free, and receiving compensation [8], and I
must say that the quality of my work has been exactly the same, my

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Appropriation of the Wikimedia Blog by the WMF

[Andrea Zanni]

Hi David,
we're not good friends, we saw each other in real life very few times, in
Berlin and in Hong Kong,
but I always remember our work for the Wikisource IEG¹ one of the coolest
projects I've ever done in my life as a wikimedian.
We did well, I think, even if our results were small and there was a need
of some follow up work that didn't actually happen, even if I recall it as
a failure².
I'm writing here in the spirit of our movement: we like common things, and
I think yours is a common struggle.
I hope this little advice is at least bit helpful, and hopefully not for
you alone.

I think that you're misinterpreting the role of the Wikimedia movement in
your life.
Wikimedia can be an amazing place where you can find friends, a community
of peers, like-minded altruistic people, maybe even love,
but never, never, never *purpose*.
You can find purpose in other, more concrete and especially more close
things: family, friends, relationships, love, good careers, children, you
name it.
Wikimedia can be a great, awesome *accessory*, but it will never replace
those black holes that everyone of us stares in our lives.
Everytime I've seen this happen, everytime I've seen people trying to put
everything they had in Wikimedia, I've worried.
I know quite well this feeling: it took me quite a few years to understand
my own relationship with wikimedia was not ideal, and it was sucking life
out of me. As a chairman of a chapter I was quite stressed, and above all I
saw that wiki things constantly conflicted with other things in my life.
Eventually, I gave up, because I saw that this path as not going to end
well.

I've even seen few members of our community took their own life: some of
them were heavily invested in our wiki movement. Although I don't think
Wikimedia was the reason, I think it had became part of the problem: often,
people try to find something in Wikimedia that Wikimedia cannot actually
provide. Sometimes it's even the contrary: the more you give to wiki the
more it will ask you: we strive for "world domination", we want an
impossible thing, enormous thing all together. We want to give free access
to the all human knowledge to everyone, and we do this as a hobby.
It's a dream, and you work towards it: it's not something that you will
ever achieve. We've done incredible things in the last 18 years: but we
always get this feeling that we haven't even started yet... This leaves a
lot of room for stress, for anxiety, for not working properly and break
things.
You don't want to do that.

So, I'd encourage you (I'm encouraging everyone of us, myself included) to
pick your battles, check your priorities, start from the fundamentals:
health first, work first, daily important relationships first.
You need money to live, eat, pay your bills: don't put yourself in a worse
position than your current one.

You come first than Wikimedia. You can't do good if there's no "you" in the
first place.
I mean it.

I hope this helps,
Aubrey

¹ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Elaborate_
Wikisource_strategic_vision

² To be fair, I think we did a good job, and I think that WMF bears
responsability in the "failure" of the project. But it's not important now.

On Sat, Jun 9, 2018 at 4:23 AM, Pine W  wrote:

> Hi Micru,
>
> It sounds to me like there are a few different topics that are on your
> mind. I'm wondering if it might help to clarify the situation if we could
> meet on Hangouts for some near-real-time communication. I'd be glad to try
> to find a time to meet with you. I'll be coming and going from the Internet
> for the next few hours, and if you happen to be online then I'd be glad to
> talk with you on Hangouts for a voice conversation when we're both
> available. Please feel free to send me a text message on Hangouts if you're
> available and would be interested in having a conversation there. I may not
> respond immediately, but I should respond within half an hour of receiving
> your message.
>
> Personally, I am looking forward to seeing the new WMF website, and I
> generally have a positive view of Ed Erhart. The topic of where certain
> publications should be posted is a complicated one, and I would like to
> hear your perspective.
>
> Pine
> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: