Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)
I just want to highlight Nathan's excellent and reasonable point: The WMF could work on: manag[ing] the implementation of a change that affects dedicated volunteers. An advanced notice, an explanation, a thank you, an expression of hope that volunteers will continue to help. That's all it would have taken to preserve this as what it ought to have been, a non-issue. There's a lot of adversarial dynamics between the Foundation and the Community. A little bit of courtesy and civility and thoughtfulness would go a long way towards avoiding antagonism. Wikipedians are mission-driven and autonomy-craving. Work with us on that, respect it, use it to your advantage. There are pain points in transition, some of them unavoidable, but WMF should still seek to minimize harm and improve mutual understanding at each step. Otherwise, we get situations that take far more energy than a simple explanation and expression of appreciation from the outset would have taken. To paraphrase one of my favorite quotes: It takes less *time *to *do* a thing *right*, than it does to explain why you did it *wrong. Easier said than done, but a worthy goal nonetheless.* Jake (Ocaasi) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] The new narrowed focus by WMF
*A letter in support of the Community Fellowship program, from past, current, and prospective Fellows:* * The WMF has expanded profoundly over the past decade, and especially in the last few years. Recently initiatives to streamline and focus the WMF have been undertaken; while these efforts are worthy in spirit and necessary at some level, one useful if not vital program has been caught in that process: The Community Fellowship programhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships. We would like to express our strong support of this valuable and important program. The Fellowship program is first and foremost a community-based program. It selects editors to work on projects -- those which are novel and have yet to be tried, those that have been tried but have not been rigorously developed or tested, and those otherwise that need financial, technical and institutional backing to succeed. It represents a direct line of support from the WMF to community-organized, community-driven, and community-maintained projects. We strongly believe that the Fellowship program is a great way to jump start many projects cheaply, efficiently, and with low-risk. Most importantly, because Fellowship projects are community-organized, there is high potential for their broad community support. We recognize that the Wikimedia Foundation’s allocation of funding must reflect the priorities of the Foundation’s annual and strategic plans, and we understand that the future of the Fellowship program is at risk under the justification that it does not fit within those plans. The Fellowship program of course has a cost, but it is one we believe is well justified by its impact. The following reasons explain why we think the program is a worthwhile asset to the WMF and one that will ultimately help it succeed in its strategic goals: 1) The program has a track record of producing successful projects, with promising upcoming efforts that would be interrupted by a loss of funding. Most recently a new-editor community called the Teahousehttp://enwp.org/WP:TEAHOUSE was developed directly through the Fellowship program. The Teahouse, as well as other projects have targeted goals which often match up with those identified by the Foundation as urgent, such as new editor engagement and editor retention. Other projects besides the Teahouse have worked on improving our dispute resolutionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute%20Resolution%20Improvement%20Projectprocesses, our small language wiki development, improving the usability of help documentationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_Project/Community_fellowship, and facilitating cross-wiki translation efforts. GLAM/Wikipedian-in-Residence positions were pioneered under the Fellowship program as were studies in long term editor trends through Wikimedia Summer of Research. (See the full list of past projectshttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships/Fellows). These projects are of great value and exist in areas that the community had or has not made sufficient advances in on its own. In the works are projects to create a sense of community around the sorely lacking female demographic, to build a game which would ease new editors through the maze of skills needed to be effective, a Wikipedia Library initiative which would outfit our most experienced editors with access to high quality resources through a single sign-on portal, and a Badges experiment to employ a proven approach to recognizing, motivating, and rewarding the efforts of our users. Without the Community Fellowship program, those efforts may stall or collapse. 2) The Fellowship program's core strength is as a laboratory of agile, community-driven creativity and innovation. The program has nurtured projects that require more investment and organization than the community alone can support, but that innovate in areas of importance to both the community and the Foundation. The Fellowship program has the asset of targeted flexibility and cost-effective implementation. Fellowship projects require few if any development resources, substantially reducing their burden on the Foundation. Through its varied portfolio of projects the Fellowship program can address any number of key goals, and do so in a lightweight but meaningful way. 3) The Fellowship program is committed to demonstrating results and making data-driven recommendations that help meet Foundation targets. Fellowship research projects have set and maintained a high standard for reporting results and making actionable recommendations. The Teahouse pilot reports and metrics reports, the dispute resolution survey results, and the template A/B testing projects are excellent examples of this commitment to transparency and accountability. The Foundation has benefitted from these data: results from fellowship projects have been featured at Wikimania. Deputy Director Eric Moeller’s presentation on supporting
Re: [Wikimedia-l] The new narrowed focus by WMF (cleaner version)
A letter in support of the Community Fellowship program from past, current, and prospective Fellows, The WMF has expanded profoundly over the past decade, and especially in the last few years. Recently initiatives to streamline and focus the WMF have been undertaken; while these efforts are worthy in spirit and necessary at some level, one useful if not vital program has been caught in that process: The Community Fellowship program. We would like to express our strong support of this valuable and important program. The Fellowship program is first and foremost a community-based program. It selects editors to work on projects -- those which are novel and have yet to be tried, those that have been tried but have not been rigorously developed or tested, and those otherwise that need financial, technical and institutional backing to succeed. It represents a direct line of support from the WMF to community-organized, community-driven, and community-maintained projects. We strongly believe that the Fellowship program is a great way to jump start many projects cheaply, efficiently, and with low-risk. Most importantly, because Fellowship projects are community-organized, there is high potential for their broad community support. We recognize that the Wikimedia Foundation’s allocation of funding must reflect the priorities of the Foundation’s annual and strategic plans, and we understand that the future of the Fellowship program is at risk under the justification that it does not fit within those plans. The Fellowship program of course has a cost, but it is one we believe is well justified by its impact. The following reasons explain why we think the program is a worthwhile asset to the WMF and one that will ultimately help it succeed in its strategic goals: 1) The program has a track record of producing successful projects, with promising upcoming efforts that would be interrupted by a loss of funding. Most recently a new-editor community called the Teahouse was developed directly through the Fellowship program. The Teahouse, as well as other projects have targeted goals which often match up with those identified by the Foundation as urgent, such as new editor engagement and editor retention. Other projects besides the Teahouse have worked on improving our dispute resolution processes, our small language wiki development, improving the usability of help documentation, and facilitating cross-wiki translation efforts. GLAM/Wikipedian-in-Residence positions were pioneered under the Fellowship program as were studies in long term editor trends through Wikimedia Summer of Research. (See the full list of past projects). These projects are of great value and exist in areas that the community had or has not made sufficient advances in on its own. In the works are projects to create a sense of community around the sorely lacking female demographic, to build a game which would ease new editors through the maze of skills needed to be effective, a Wikipedia Library initiative which would outfit our most experienced editors with access to high quality resources through a single sign-on portal, and a Badges experiment to employ a proven approach to recognizing, motivating, and rewarding the efforts of our users. Without the Community Fellowship program, those efforts may stall or collapse. 2) The Fellowship program's core strength is as a laboratory of agile, community-driven creativity and innovation. The program has nurtured projects that require more investment and organization than the community alone can support, but that innovate in areas of importance to both the community and the Foundation. The Fellowship program has the asset of targeted flexibility and cost-effective implementation. Fellowship projects require few if any development resources, substantially reducing their burden on the Foundation. Through its varied portfolio of projects the Fellowship program can address any number of key goals, and do so in a lightweight but meaningful way. 3) The Fellowship program is committed to demonstrating results and making data-driven recommendations that help meet Foundation targets. Fellowship research projects have set and maintained a high standard for reporting results and making actionable recommendations. The Teahouse pilot reports and metrics reports, the dispute resolution survey results, and the template A/B testing projects are excellent examples of this commitment to transparency and accountability. The Foundation has benefitted from these data: results from fellowship projects have been featured at Wikimania. Deputy Director Eric Moeller’s presentation on supporting Wikiprojects drew extensively on Fellowship project findings, and E3’s template testing presentation was based substantially on Fellowship research. Fellowship research has been a frequent feature on the Wikimedia blog, and has generated good press for the Foundation. 4) The Fellowship program been instrumental to our
