Joe --
I'm not clear on what you intend to accomplish with sending this email
to us. Not that I don't agree with much that you wrote, but I feel it's
not reaching anyone by posting it to this list.
One point I'll raise here is that all of this talk about a "Wikimedia
movement" means nothing to me. My role in the projects has been to
contribute content, which I've done for almost 21 years, usually funded
out of my own pocket or using public resources: I started with only the
books from my shelves or those my local public library provided, & today
I still rely heavily on both to create content (although much more
useful information has since emerged on the Internet), the stuff that
brings people to Wikipedia (& the other projects). The Foundation has
done little more to help in this endeavor than keeping the servers
online & the software patched.
(A side note here. Many years ago, I mentioned to Danese Cooper the
possibility of providing grants to average contributors like me. Her
response floored me: "And how do you contribute to me?" I was
speechless. Bitch, I am one of hundreds who helped to build the website
that pays your salary. BTW, I didn't miss her when she left a few months
later.)
I'll confess that part of this disconnect between Foundation & volunteer
community is due to the fact we volunteers expected little more than
those two -- running the servers & maintaining the software -- from the
Foundation. On my part, I doubted the Foundation would ever raise the
amount of money that they have. But having this money allowed the WMF to
hire people who then had to find stuff to do to justify their jobs, &
due to the Common Carrier law the staff felt they had to keep the
projects at arm's length. This has given us, on one hand, the UCoC; on
the other, donations to admittedly worthy causes that have nothing to do
with Wikipedia or any Wikimedia project. As well as led to this interest
in this undefined "Wikimedia movement".
So far I suspect all this "Wikimedia movement" will accomplish is an
excuse to fly people around the world in order to have meetings that
will only produce more meetings that require people to fly around the
world, regardless of what anyone inside or outside of the Foundation
sincerely intended. Oh, & it'll also produce impressive-sounding lines
on their resumes.
I don't know if this is helpful feedback, Joe, but I appreciate the
opportunity to vent here. I can think of less productive places to do
that.
Geoff Burling
en.wikipedia: llywrch
On 2023-08-29 14:30, Joe Mabel wrote:
The following is *not *a "strictly confidential communication." Still,
I'd appreciate that if you want to quote me in a broader forum, please
clear that with me first. Thanks. (The obvious exception is what I've
already said publicly, which I've noted below.)
This morning I attended one of the eight "engagement sessions" for the
2024 Wikimedia Summit at which I will represent Cascadia Wikimedians in
April. The Summit will probably be the last meaningful chance for input
to the Movement Charter, which will probably determine a great deal
about Wikimedia governance going forward, including (indirectly, but
almost without a doubt) a lot about how money and resources are
allocated. I think the process is well-intentioned and may well
produce positive results, but I have some concerns.
Before anything else, let me note that relations between the upper
echelons of the WMF and the community of editors and contributors are
tremendously better than it was a decade or so ago, where it seemed to
me to be primarily oppositional. I do think we are now at least
generally trying to pull in the same direction, and that the WMF is
genuinely trying to do what they think is best for the community, and
even has at least a fair understanding of what that entails. I would
not have said any of that in the mid-2010s.
Now the concerns:
1) I raised this one publicly at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons%3AVillage_pump&oldid=796979832#Commons_and_the_upcoming_Wikimedia_Summit,
which you may quote freely.
Because the "community" (vs. Foundation) involvement for the conference
is entirely through affiliates and user groups -- not through
"projects" such as Commons -- there is no overt representation at the
Summit either for projects (such as Commons, or WikiProjects) or the
many users, probably the majority of users, whose involvement is
strictly on-wiki. If you are part of an online Wikimedia community that
has concerns you would like represented in Berlin in April, you would
do well to identify those concerns and organize them in a way that they
can be brought into the discussion by one or more of us who are already
attending. I do not think the organizers are going to do anything
proactive to address this concern.
2) It looks like the tentative intent is to create a Global Council
(https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Charter/Content/Global_Council)
that will represent the broader "movement" community. This is clearly
well-intentioned but (a) I think it at least potentially suffers from
exactly the same flaw in terms of omission that I mentioned in the
section above, and the people who are liable to be disenfranchised by
that will not be in the room to discuss it. Also, (b) I fear something
like the UN General Assembly: a "talking shop" with little or no actual
power, thick with bloviators and boondogglers.
3) Related: I think there is a bit too much focus on structures that
correspond to overt money flows (hence that failure to recognize
on-wiki activity). And, I have to say, money is often spent in weird
ways in the WMF world. I do think face-to-face national and
international gatherings can be very valuable, but it's worth realizing
that about 90% of what WMF has ever spent on Cascadia Wikimedians has
been to fly some of us halfway around the world and put us up in hotels
for conferences. When it comes to doing locally-focused events, where
we might be able to do quite a bit with a small budget, let alone
hiring a grant writer of our own, we are lucky to have a budget for
paper plates and cookies, let alone any publicity, or anyone
compensated for their time and effort. I'm guessing that the
drinks-and-food budget for an event at a Portland bar that Peaceray and
I attended a couple of months ago with several of the C-level WMF
people was about the size of the biggest annual budget Cascadia
Wikimedians ever had. (Could be off by a factor of two, but not more.)
What it costto fly half a dozen people from the Bay Area to Portland
dwarfs that annual budget.
4) Combining points 2 and 3: WMF has its own, effective, fundraising.
The only other entity I'm aware of in the Wikimedia world that has a
comparable budget is Wikimedia Deutschland (it's no accident that the
Summit is in Berlin). Money is power. And I have a lot of doubt about
the power of any entity that is set up that does not have its own
source of money. (Cue Billie Holliday's recording of "God Bless the
Child".)
-------
Open to any feedback, especially thoughts on the draft Charter and
things people want me to bring into the discussion in Berlin next
spring.
JM
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