https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30208
--- Comment #94 from The Blade of the Northern Lights <[email protected]> 2011-09-17 00:00:53 UTC --- (In reply to comment #93) > (In reply to comment #90) > > Erik Moeller, and Happy Melon, > > This is indeed not the place to re-litigate a decision but I strongly > > insist that there is no case for rediscussion the consensus anyway. 'You' > > should > > make a real effort to work together with the Wikipedia community rather > > than constantly assert and reassert the notion of 'us (the WMF) and 'them' > > (the volunteers). > > I'm an enwiki administrator, functionary and contributor with thirty thousand > edits; and a volunteer MediaWiki developer who doesn't and never has taken > payment or direction from WMF. Eric is VP of Engineering and WMF Deputy > Director. You could not have chosen two people *less* comparable to claim > share an "us and them" mentality. The people who have responded to this bug > fall right across the spectrum from volunteer developers like myself through > to > senior staff members. They do not form an "us" in any meaningful sense of the > word. > > On the other hand, there *is* a separation of *cultures* here, and it's > something that an awful lot of members of the wiki communities do not > appreciate. The developers and (separately) the sysadmins/WMF form their own > separate communities with their own goals and practices; and those goals and > practices, while closely matching those of enwiki or whereverwiki, do not > necessarily precisely align. There is nothing unrealistic, or wrong, with > enwiki having goals which are very slightly different from those of the WMF as > a whole, or for their requests to not be ones that the Foundation feels bests > fits with their own strategies. > > Think of the developers, and separately the sysadmins (although there is more > crossover between those two groups than there usually is between two wiki > communities), in exactly the same way you would think of the Wikimedia Commons > community. Most WMF wikis have a strong and healthy symbiotic relationship > with Commons, and the Commons community generally does a fairly good job of > balancing the needs of the many wikis it supports. But the relationship > between enwiki and commons is certainly not without its moments of tension, > and > sometimes the enwiki community does not feel that it is getting everything it > would like. But there is an instinctive recognition throughout the community > that enwiki has no 'right' to expect any more cooperation than it gets, > because > Commons is its own project with its own values, and that they will have to > convince Commons that whatever it is that they want to do is in the best > interests of *both* projects, in order to progress. If you treat the > community > of developers and sysadmins in the same way, you'll understand the situation > much better. I'm not quite sure the two are congruous, for this reason. If I'm looking for something over at Commons, the consensus will come from a project of volunteers similar to myself- I am here entirely of my freewill and not getting paid anything (and I'm quite happy to do it), as are those who work there. I've had ideas shot down by the en.wiki community of volunteers before, and I don't greatly mind it because reasonable people can disagree. Conversely, here the consensus is not being driven by people who see it through the same lens as an unpaid volunteer- it's staffers, who we've said above do not seem to have the same vast experience as we do. Furthermore, I know when I'm being patronized, as it has happened to me innumerable times in my 21 years of living (it goes with having PDD-NOS but still being able to have a coherent conversation); I have been above. I can't say it's easy for me to hear someone tell me to approach their idea with an open mind after they have attempted to filibuster my own to death in spite of all the logical reasons that were given. So yes, there is a certain level of frustration from us. -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are the assignee for the bug. You are on the CC list for the bug. _______________________________________________ Wikibugs-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikibugs-l
