Re: [Wikitech-l] Code of Conduct committee meeting at Wikimania

[Fæ]

Thanks for the update. It's great to see the CoC processes improving
transparency and potentially accountability to the community.

It's worth noting how old the discussions are, with comments dating
back more than a year ago, especially in the context of how relatively
young the committee and the CoC is. Perhaps the members can discuss
with each other how improvements can be implemented and iterated more
manageably?

Thanks,
Fae

On Thu, 29 Aug 2019 at 21:25, Amir Sarabadani  wrote:
>
> Hello,
> The CoC committee had a meeting with four members out of five (Lucie, Tony,
> Tonina, and Amir were at Wikimania and MusikAnimal wasn't present). These
> notes are the public outcomes of the meeting.
>
> * The committee chose Amir as the chair (Amir requested to be the table but
> it got rejected)
> * The committee is currently composing the anonymized report of its cases
> and will be published soon.
> * The committee soon will decide on the two amendments currently under
> discussion. Feel free to comment on these two:
> ** Public logging of bans:
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Uikcu1emvmw6e4z8
> ** Modifications on the appeal process:
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Uay0vz6no8ayac3m
> * The committee is willing to introduce a new internal role which for lack
> of better term, we call it secretary for now. The role's main
> responsibility is to help the committee on organizational bookkeeping. Like
> reports, documentation of cases, etc.
> * At the end, the committee wants to remind people that its role is
> reactionary and we won't interfere when there's no report. If you see a
> behaviour you find unacceptable, stand up and send us a report and don't
> wait for the committee to jump in.
>
> Regards,
> Amir on behalf of the committee
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Gerrit outage

[Fæ]

Thanks to everyone who helped sort this out.

In some ways, the vandalism neatly demonstrates how Wikimedia projects
rely on trust. When these things happen, it is a nice reminder that
our open values mean that we should take a light approach to security
whenever the potential exposure is always going to be recoverable.
Resilience rather than impenetrable, for our community at least, is a
healthy way to prioritize. The occasional predictable idiot is no
reason to change that approach.

Cheers,
Fae

On Tue, 19 Mar 2019 at 13:28, Alexandros Kosiaris
 wrote:
>
> Gerrit is back up. Almost all of the vandalism has been cleaned up,
> some minor stuff remains, we will clean that up as well.
>
> On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 1:42 PM planetenxin  wrote:
> >
> > Am 19.03.2019 um 12:21 schrieb Andre Klapper:
> > > planetenxin: Sorry for my previous message, was not meant to be rude.
> >
> > no worries. Hope, that Gerrit is back alive soon. :-)
> >
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Re: [Wikitech-l] My Phabricator account has been disabled

[Fæ]

On Thu, 16 Aug 2018 at 03:14, bawolff  wrote:
> Thank your for your well considered response. I know this can be an
> emotionally draining topic and I appreciate your engagement.
>
> Thanks,
> Brian

This has been one of the longer email discussion threads, itself made
controversial due to quasi-official interventions apparently made with
the intention of closing it down early. I agree, this does make the
topic draining but it has been an important one to have, if the CoC
and the non-transparent procedures that seem to enforce it and
interpret it are to be seen to be held to account.

I would like to join in the thanks from Brian, and extend that to
thank all those that have expressed well supported views in the
discussion. Naturally, we should all be thankful to the original
whistle-blower, as whether you feel this was undue or not, it has
resulted in an opportunity for improvement for a fairer and more open
process. It would be jolly nice if CoC Committee members might use
this case as a reason to re-examine the ethical need for the Committee
to adopt a governance policy that respects and protects
whistle-blowers, even if the contents of such a complaint or query may
damage the reputation of the Committee, and even if the whistle-blower
uses an external forum like this email list.

Around the middle of the discussion there was mention that the way
that WMF employees and unpaid volunteers are handled under the Code of
Conduct is different. A later response was framed in a way that made
it appear that this was a false statement. Though the CoC itself does
not mention employees, this was discussed in detail during its
creation, along with requirements being firmly stated by WMF legal. As
far as I am aware, the Committee does process complaints involving WMF
employees differently, because it will share evidence, and presumably
any statements made even if these are not "objective evidence", with
WMF legal and WMF HR. It is also clear from past statements by WMF
legal that any information shared with the WMF is not guaranteed to
remain confidential, there are no guarantees as to who will have
access to the information or allegations or if they will ever be
deleted from WMF databases, and that WMF internal procedures and
policies will offer no protection or compensation for
non-employees.[1][2] If my understanding of the current state of
affairs is wrong, I welcome a factual and supported correction.

1. 
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_Conduct/Archive_1#Reports_involving_WMF_employees
2. 
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_Conduct/Archive_2#September_22,_2016_revision_by_WMF_Legal

Thanks
Fae
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Re: [Wikitech-l] My Phabricator account has been disabled

[Fæ]

The CoC does not exist in a vacuum and is itself ultimately only has
any authority through the largess of the WMF board and its
resolutions. The Code of Conduct Committee is dangerously arrogant if
its members believe they are independent of the WMF's policies or WMF
legal. For the Committee to make any claim of good governance, the
committee must be seen to demonstrate that:

1. The Code of Conduct Committee fully applies the Wikimedia values.[1]

2. The Committee commits to transparency and (credible external)
accountability, and is taking positive steps to assure the wider
community that it is itself /seen/ to be well governed.

3. The Committee is committed to ensuring natural justice in its
actions, i.e. its decisions are evidence based, unbiased and those
being acted on have a right to a fair hearing.


There is no such thing as "good governance" if it all happens behind
closed doors. The defensive reactions to the whistle-blowing of this
case against a long standing volunteer, rather than attempting to
improve or learn from the views of the wider community is especially
worrying.

No Amir, you cannot build a logical post-hoc rationale for this block
for the debatably single inappropriate use of WTF, if it hangs on
cherry picking an essay from the English Wikipedia as "positive
evidence", while choosing to ignore "negative evidence" published at
the same place, such as a WMF Trustee using "fucking bullshit", along
with prior precedent of justifying far more vulgar language in on-wiki
debate. Wales is not a haphazard rogue in this, our previous CEO Sue
Gardner has regularly justified the use of "fuck" as a way of making a
strong point in multiple channels.[3] It is not natural justice to
hang our most productive volunteers out to dry by arbitrarily holding
them to a higher standard of super-duper nice behaviour and polite
genteel language than those at the apex of authority, where their
identical choice of words is spread over the international press, not
just Phabricator threads literally read by a handful of people.

To be seen to be wise in using its massive ban hammer, the Committee
members need to use it sparingly. Treat long term committed
volunteers, even those you may see as disruptive, as respectfully you
would any teenager or Jimmy Wales, by exhausting conventional adult to
adult talking options, before slamming them down in what now appears
to be easily avoidable escalation of a very minor infraction of
civility.

Links
1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values/2008
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_justice
3. https://twitter.com/SuePGardner/status/907625338963886080

Fae

On Thu, 9 Aug 2018 at 08:41, Amir E. Aharoni
 wrote:
>
> 2018-08-08 21:42 GMT+03:00 Federico Leva (Nemo) :
>
> > The message which was sanctioned was even of an especially thoughtful
> > kind, in my opinion, because it didn't attempt to submerge the other users
> > with walls of text, politically correct tirades or otherwise charged
> > statements. It was merely a heartfelt interjection to help people stop,
> > reconsider their actions and self-improve without the need of lectures. Was
> > this peculiar effort at constructive facilitation considered? If not, what
> > alternatives or constructive suggestions were provided?
>
>
> No, it was not thoughtful. What actually happened is that the other users
> are now submerged with dozens of emails analyzing that interjection. Sure,
> it's pretty easy to ignore this thread or even mute it in one's email
> reader, but one could just as well ignore that bug report. So no, it's not
> thoughtful. It's provocative, unnecessary, and nonconstructive.
>
> Using the f-word shouldn't be fully banned, but it should be obvious that
> it is not always OK. Every case of using such language is supposed to
> trigger a consideration: "Is it OK to use it now?". This should be common
> sense, but apparently it isn't, so it's good to have a CoC to encourage
> people to be considerate. And it's good to enforce the CoC when necessary.
>
> The fact that the f-word was used elsewhere in the code and on Phabricator
> is not an excuse. This is also what the well-known English Wikipedia essay
> "Other stuff exists"[1] is about: by itself, precedent is not
> justification. In this case it was not OK. It often happens that a bug that
> shouldn't have been closed is closed. When one thinks that this happened,
> one can reopen it with a constructive explanation. It doesn't have to be a
> wall of text, but it really shouldn't be an f-word.
>
> Can the process around the CoC be better? Probably. Could the process
> around deploying the new WMF website be better? Definitely.
>
> Is it OK to use f-words to complain about it? Absolutely not. It's not
> friendly, it's not thoughtful, it's not funny, it's not constructive.
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Other_stuff_exists
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
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Re: [Wikitech-l] coc ban

[Fæ]

So what? This is Wikimedia Board Members that are setting a precedent
for acceptable language on our projects. Jimmy Wales himself gets
lauded with virtual high fives for telling a fellow board member they
are talking "fucking bullshit", and Jimmy Wales remains the only
memorable press/public face for the Wikimedia Foundation.

Blocking volunteers because they use "Jimmy Wales" language and
attempting to defend those blocks on wiki-lawyerish grounds, is
nonsense and does not convince anyone that the CoC is being applied
fairly, rather than with dirty great hobnail boots.

Considering the "offence" is not outing or some sort of ghastly
harassment, insisting that it cannot be discussed in public, or
appealed using a public and transparent procedure, goes against the
core values of our movement. Please, go  with
these fantastic non-rationales.

Fae

On Wed, 8 Aug 2018 at 15:27, Andre Klapper  wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2018-08-08 at 15:22 +0100, Fæ wrote:
> > Wales has never retracted nor apologised for writing on the English
> > Wikipedia that a statement by Heilman was "utter fucking bullshit".
>
> English Wikipedia is not a venue covered by the CoC for Wikimedia
> technical spaces. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
>
> andre
> --
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> https://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/
>
>
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] coc ban

[Fæ]

Saying "WTF" is by default acceptable for all projects unless the WMF
board agrees a resolution and enforces it on its own board members, as
well as volunteers and WMF employees. If anyone is blocked or banned
under the Technical CoC for using similar language which has been
published by WMF board members, this should be grounds for a
successful appeal unless and until the same standards are seen to be
applied to WMF board members along with the same block and ban
actions.

Just in case readers here missed the precedent set in 2016, Wales has
never retracted nor apologised for writing on the English Wikipedia
that a statement by Heilman was "utter fucking bullshit". Both parties
were Wikimedia Foundation board members at the time, and are board
members now.[1][2]

Links
1. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales=701673700=701673178
2. 
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8q8gvg/wikipedias-secret-google-competitor-search-engine-is-tearing-it-apart

Fae

On Wed, 8 Aug 2018 at 14:45, Michel Vuijlsteke  wrote:
>
> No, this was for saying "WTF".
>
> On 8 August 2018 at 15:16, kevin zhang  wrote:
>
> > So let me just clarify, so despite a few weeks ago the decision was
> > effectively "we highly encourage but won't require", now it's if you do not
> > include the coc then we will ban you from phabricator?
> >
> > Just want to make sure I understand the current stance...
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Re: [Wikitech-l] FW: Warning on behalf of Code of conduct committee

[Fæ]

If you are going to quote Chatham House Rule, then look it up first please.
The secretive behaviour of the TCC, along with the habit of choosing to
suppress evidence or answer questions, to the stage where WMF employees do
not want to explain what they read with their own eyes for fear of falling
foul of extream interpretations of the CoC, even when originally the
incident was a public published record, is way more paranoid than applying
CHR.

The top level stated values of our community and the WMF are explicitly to
remain as open and transparent as possible. Recent incidents involving the
TCC and the apparent worsening relationships between unpaid volunteers and
WMF contractors/employees demonstrate a failure to meet those ethical and
good governance considerations. Hiding behind an anonymous email address is
merely the most obvious anti-transparency measure. You would think that TCC
members are worried about putting their names against their own Committee's
actions.

"At a meeting held under the Chatham House Rule, anyone who comes to the
meeting is free to use information from the discussion, but is not allowed
to reveal who made any comment. It is designed to increase openness of
discussion." See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House_Rule

Fae (from a mobile phone)

On Mon, 25 Jun 2018, 11:04 David Cuenca Tudela,  wrote:

> @Nemo: It could be that the priority change was not seen as aggressive, and
> probably it was not initially as we have the "be bold" tradition. However,
> that changes as the issue heats up and becomes an edit war. In this case it
> didn't get to that point (less than 3 reverts, although the reverts might
> be perceived more strongly in Phabricator, and because the person doing
> them had a position of power). Linguistically it is also challenging
> because maybe the person using the word "troll" was not aware that it could
> have been interpreted as "assuming bad faith". Even if an act is qualified
> as "troll" there is some judgement about something that the author of the
> action might have not intended.
>
> It is not fair to put all the blame on WMF employees, they might be part of
> the issue, but every coin has two sides. WMF employees could improve their
> openness with the frustration they get from the community, and also the
> community should be more willing to be constructive and understanding.
> Probably neither the WMF employees nor the community is getting the help
> needed to collaborate better, but whose role is to provide it?
>
> I agree that normally the weakest suffer the most, and that somebody
> (again, who?) should take the lead in this case to explain to the
> contributor what happened and offer an apology.
>
> @Fae: indeed friendly mediation seems more appropriate in this case, but
> again, by who? The people involved in this case didn't have anywhere to go,
> so I find it understandable that they resort to their only available option
> right now.
>
> If the TCC wants to create a friendly environment, they cannot tackle
> unfriendliness in an unfriendly way (unless there are no other options, or
> the gravity of the situation requires so).
>
> I am not worried about the lack of transparency of the TCC, because
> actually it should be done that way to protect its participants (cfr.
> Chatham House Rule), but of course they could document how they reached
> difficult decisions. It could be useful to assess future cases.
>
> Micru
>
> On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 11:19 AM Fæ  wrote:
>
> > The lack of transparency of TCC actions and assessment processes is
> > troubling. TCC was supposed to be a means to handle serious misuse or
> > harassment, not to use steel boots to stamp out all "non-positivity".
> >
> > Trivial cases like this should best be handled firstly by off project
> > grown-up mediation, rather than TCC warnings for which the next step may
> be
> > a global ban.
> >
> > Honestly, the TCC's actions have looked so authoritarian to my eyes, I
> fear
> > I am adding evidence to a case for a permanent ban of my account by
> writing
> > non-positive words here. The TCC is guilty of creating a hostile
> > environment that appears unwelcoming and threatens volunteers in all
> > "technical spaces".
> >
> > Fae
> >
> > On Sun, 24 Jun 2018, 22:46 MZMcBride,  wrote:
> >
> > > >Hello,
> > > >Please refrain from name calling, the CoC has received some reports
> > about
> > > >users being offended by you calling them trolls. While those comments
> > > >might not have been malicious they are not constructive and do not
> > > >contribute to a welcoming environment for contributors.
> > 

Re: [Wikitech-l] FW: Warning on behalf of Code of conduct committee

[Fæ]

The lack of transparency of TCC actions and assessment processes is
troubling. TCC was supposed to be a means to handle serious misuse or
harassment, not to use steel boots to stamp out all "non-positivity".

Trivial cases like this should best be handled firstly by off project
grown-up mediation, rather than TCC warnings for which the next step may be
a global ban.

Honestly, the TCC's actions have looked so authoritarian to my eyes, I fear
I am adding evidence to a case for a permanent ban of my account by writing
non-positive words here. The TCC is guilty of creating a hostile
environment that appears unwelcoming and threatens volunteers in all
"technical spaces".

Fae

On Sun, 24 Jun 2018, 22:46 MZMcBride,  wrote:

> >Hello,
> >Please refrain from name calling, the CoC has received some reports about
> >users being offended by you calling them trolls. While those comments
> >might not have been malicious they are not constructive and do not
> >contribute to a welcoming environment for contributors.
> >
> >Best
> >
> >--
> >This email was sent by TechConductCommittee to MZMcBride by the "Email
> >this user" function at MediaWiki. If you reply to this email, your email
> >will be sent directly to the original sender, revealing your email
> >address to them.
>
> Wikimedia Foundation Inc. employees have blocked the ability of new users
> to report bugs or file feature requests or even read the issue tracker.
> But yes, please focus on me calling Andre a troll for resetting the
> priority of . My single comment
> ("andre__: Such a troll.") is clearly what contributes to an unwelcoming
> environment for contributors, not blocking them from reading the site and
> demanding that they be vetted first. Great work, all.
>
> A pseudo-focus on "civility" while you take a hard-line and skeptical view
> toward outsiders. Maybe these people are auditioning for roles in the
> Trump Administration. :-)
>
> I'm mostly forwarding this garbage here so that there's some better and
> more appropriate context when, in a few months, someone says "well, the
> code of conduct committee has dealt with dozens of incidents! Clearly it's
> necessary!" The people pushing this campaign for more bureaucracy have
> repeatedly declined to provide specifics about incidents because it's
> pretty obvious that nobody would take them seriously (and rightfully!) if
> there were a clearer understanding of what they're actually doing.
>
> Best!
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Gerrit as a shared community space

[Fæ]

+1

The CoC was supposed to encourage collegiate behavior, not to be an excuse
for those with big white hats to /force/ others to "respect my authoritah",
to quote South Park.

Folks, get a grip. Seeing bad faith accusations and character attacks
against long term contributors, is not why any of us want to remain here.

Fae


On Sun, 10 Jun 2018, 13:33 Federico Leva (Nemo),  wrote:

> I'll only state the obvious: it's not a community space if the community
> feels forced to walk out of it.
>
> Federico
>
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Can/should my extensions be deleted from the Wikimedia Git repository?

[Fæ]

Yep. If anything, the consensus here demonstrates the opposite.

Fae


On Fri, 8 Jun 2018, 17:42 John,  wrote:

> > Where? So far it's been a few individuals.
>
>
> Here, here. Can you please cite the clear community decision you are
> referencing? Just because a few users took unilaterally actions and most
> people didn't object, that isn't
>
> consensus.
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Getting a local dump of Wikipedia in HTML

[Fæ]

On 3 May 2018 at 19:54, Aidan Hogan  wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am wondering what is the fastest/best way to get a local dump of English
> Wikipedia in HTML? We are looking just for the current versions (no edit
> history) of articles for the purposes of a research project.
>
> We have been exploring using bliki [1] to do the conversion of the source
> markup in the Wikipedia dumps to HTML, but the latest version seems to take
> on average several seconds per article (including after the most common
> templates have been downloaded and stored locally). This means it would take
> several months to convert the dump.
>
> We also considered using Nutch to crawl Wikipedia, but with a reasonable
> crawl delay (5 seconds) it would several months to get a copy of every
> article in HTML (or at least the "reachable" ones).
>
> Hence we are a bit stuck right now and not sure how to proceed. Any help,
> pointers or advice would be greatly appreciated!!
>
> Best,
> Aidan
>
> [1] https://bitbucket.org/axelclk/info.bliki.wiki/wiki/Home
>
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Just in case you have not thought of it, how about taking the XML dump
and converting it to the format you are looking for?

Ref 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download#English-language_Wikipedia

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Google Code-in: Get your tasks for young contributors prepared

[Fæ]

Do we support any equivalent events which positively encourage contributors
from other age groups?

Fae
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LGBT+
http://telegram.me/wmlgbt

On 3 Oct 2017 22:49, "Andre Klapper"  wrote:

> (An early heads-up that Google Code-in 2017 has been announced.)
>
> GCI is an annual contest for 13-17 year old students. It will take
> place from Nov28 to Jan17 and is not only about coding tasks.
>
> For some achievements from last round, see
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/02/03/google-code-in/
> For complete info about Google Code-in, check
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/Mentors
>
> While we wait whether Wikimedia will get accepted:
>
> * You have small, self-contained bugs you'd like to see fixed?
> * Your documentation needs specific improvements?
> * Your user interface has small design issues?
> * Your Outreachy/Summer of Code project welcomes small tweaks?
> * You'd enjoy helping someone port your template to Lua?
> * Your gadget code uses some deprecated API calls?
> * You have tasks in mind that welcome some research?
>
> Also note that "Beginner tasks" (e.g. "Set up Vagrant" etc) and
> "generic" tasks are very welcome (e.g. "Choose & fix 2 PHP7 issues
> from the list in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T120336 ").
> Because we will need hundreds of tasks. :)
>
> And we also have more than 400 unassigned open 'easy' tasks listed:
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/query/HCyOonSbFn.z/#R
>
> Please take a moment to find / update [Phabricator etc.] tasks in your
> p
> roject(s) which would take an experienced contributor 2-3 hours. Check
>
>https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/Mentors
>
> and please ask if you have any questions!
>
> Thanks!,
> andre
>
> --
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> http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Recommending Firefox to users using legacy browsers?

[Fæ]

On 31 August 2017 at 21:37, bawolff  wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 8:14 PM, Legoktm  wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> This was something that came up during "The Big Open" at Wikimania, when
>> Katherine Maher talked with Ryan Merkley (CEO of Creative Commons) and
>> Mark Surman (ED of Mozilla Foundation). One of the themes mentioned was
>> that our projects need to work together and support each other.
>>
>> In that vein, I'm interested in what people think about promoting
>> Firefox to users who are using legacy browsers that we don't support at
>> Grade A (or some other criteria). As part of the "drop IE8 on XP"
>> project[1] we're already promoting Firefox as the alternative option. I
>> was imagining it could be a small and unobtrusive bubble
>> notification[2], similar to those that Google pushes Chrome on people with.
>>
>> If users use modern browsers, they're going to have better security
>> support, and most likely a better experience browsing Wikimedia sites
>> too. We'd be improving the web by reducing legacy browsers, and allowing
>> us to move forward with newer technology sooner (ideally).
>>
>> And we'd be supporting a project that is ideologically aligned with us:
>> Mozilla.
>>
>> Thoughts, opinions?
>>
>> [1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T147199
>> [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bubble_notifications
>>
>> Thanks,
>> -- Legoktm
>>
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>
> I'm concerned this would be seen as an inapropriate bias.
>
> Suggesting Firefox for IE8 on XP makes sense because it is basically
> the only option for that platform that is reasonably secure and not
> super obscure. Promoting firefox is general for legacy browsers seems
> like a slippery slope to me.
>
> Additionally, I think this is more a political than a technical
> decision, and one that would require consultation with the general
> Wikimedia community (e.g. Meta RFC).
>
> --
> Brian
>
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+1 on appearing to be a slippery slope and benefiting from wider,
political, discussion.

I've promoted Wikimedia and projects as being deliberately agnostic.
Strategically, locking Wikimedia into fixed relationships with other
organizations with their own drives and timelines, is going to
increase risks downstream.

Fae
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fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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Re: [Wikitech-l] Status of Technical Collaboration Guidance discussion

[Fæ]

A biennial planning process makes a lot of sense, so long as
transparency and accountability is not lost.

In the planning year, the most resource efficient way of doing this
stuff is to make strategy and operations 6 months out of phase,
ensuring that the management and executive don't exhaust themselves
with an impossible burden. Going a step further and designing a
biennial cycle, makes it possible to be more ambitious with a 24 month
horizon rather than just the financial 12 months, so the organization
can consider significant organizational changes to complete in that
time, and be more transparent about being measured. For example, if
something new is performing very badly in the first 3 months, the fact
that you have up to 21 more months to turn it around, or completely
reset, be creative, and still deliver against the measurable strategic
targets, is much more realistic.

So, good, I hope the WMF jumps over to this way of working, they
should be mature enough by now.

Fae

On 15 March 2017 at 17:46, Pine W  wrote:
> For what it's worth, my understanding is that WMF is considering
> transitioning portions of its annual planning to biannual planning.
>
> Also, I think that it will be easier to develop a long term technical
> roadmap after WMF completes its strategy update.
>
> Pine
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 12:19 AM, Rogol Domedonfors 
> wrote:
>
>> A good way of avoiding clashes would be to publish the technical roadmap
>> showing where WMF expects to be taking its technical development over the
>> next five years or so, for the community to discuss and comment on  I have
>> yet to hear any reason why this can not or should not be done.
>>
>> "Rogol"
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 15, 2017 at 1:48 AM, Pine W  wrote:
>>
>> > Quim,
>> >
>> > Thanks for the comments.
>> >
>> > A brief note about the goal of "there are no clashes between product
>> > development teams and communities". That is an ambitious goal around
>> here,
>> > partly because there are changes planned and happening concurrently in so
>> > many places that I think it would be a challenge to surface all potential
>> > conflicts early and make them visible to relevant community members. (As
>> an
>> > example, a change that might be received favorably on Wiki A might
>> generate
>> > a commotion on Wiki B because it broke an existing tool, made an existing
>> > workflow take longer, or conflicts with their community's priorities. A
>> > current example of this kind of situation is with Flow, which the last I
>> > heard is viewed favorably on Catalan Wikipedia and unfavorably on English
>> > Wikipedia). I'm not sure that clashes can be 100% prevented, but I'm
>> > thinking that once the Newsletter extension is working, that might be a
>> > useful way of informing more interested people in a more timely fashion
>> > about planned changes, and encouraging people to enroll as beta testers
>> and
>> > translators, so that there are fewer surprises.
>> >
>> > I think that what might be a more readily solvable problem would be a
>> > standardized way of resolving clashes between product teams and
>> communities
>> > so that, when such clashes almost inevitably happen at some point,
>> > resolution comes sooner rather than later and hopefully in a way that is
>> > mutually acceptable. Perhaps that could be discussed in the Technical
>> > Collaboration Guidance document.
>> >
>> > Pine
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Personal and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote.

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