Arnnon Geshuri <ageshuri@...> writes: >>>>>
Hi Arnnon - nicely worded message! I can't imagine that you're feeling too great right now, but I want to give you a little hope. Wikipedia can be a forgiving place - many have been blocked and banned only to return later for second or third chances. We take who we can get, because we can't afford to be too picky. If you're really looking to prove yourself, we are in a weird way fortunate. Some of the appointed (and even nonappointed) board members don't seem highly engaged with the English Wikipedia, and you're actually facing the consequence of board neglect of the community right now. My concern with someone like yourself, given that you don't seem to have prior interest in Wikipedia, is that you're actually looking for little extra conversation filler when you're rubbing elbows with powerful folks at cocktail parties. I hope you prove me wrong. Jimbo Wales gets a lot of flak, but I appreciate the fact that he's there on Wikipedia. I prefer him over someone who is basically "phoning it in" once or twice a year. So, the "SF Bay" group of Wikimedians could use some extra love. I gather you're not too far from San Francisco? I've been in San Francisco for a year and I think I missed one or two meetups, but that's not very many and I hear DC is much more active. When I went to the 15th anniversary meetup, there were a fair number who had never edited and most of the veterans had never been to an editathon (and neither have I). I collected as many emails as I could, but I imagine you'd have more connections of potential new volunteers - let's connect and try to get a regular (even as rare as quarterly or twice a year) meetup/editathon happening in San Francisco. I've done a fair bit of editing on corporate governance and nonprofits, and I'd be happy to show you around. I understand that the antitrust settlement is, in the scheme of corporate scandals, somewhat mild. It's not Arthur Andersen and Enron or subprime mortgages. Although people do go to prison for antitrust violations (which is in some cases a felony, per the Sherman Act), this case didn't involve criminal charges. Despite what the textbooks say, I believe it's difficult to succeed as an executive without being unethical. In picking my battles I've been a part of things I'm not proud of even in my limited career. Power does funny things to people. It's been shown that powerful people are 3 times as likely to help a stranger in distress.[1] Powerful people focus on the rewards and take risks but they lack broader perspective and can easily objectify people or ignore social norms or laws, as we see over and over with executives. We need a powerful person on Wikipedia's board to help steer them towards sensible decisions. The board's judgment seems to be lacking, especially when they made the remarkably poor decision (for their reputation) to spark this controversy by removing James even though he was upholding their odd omerta by not leaking to the community the 90% disapproval of the executive director among staff and the new (yet to be fully revealed) partnership with the Knight Foundation. In the end, it's actually worked out for the best since it sparked a conversation that needed to happen. I'm not sure you're the powerful person who can pull WMF out of this ditch, but if you are, I'd say a worthwhile step would be to take a shot at getting your hands dirty in the trenches of Wikipedia as an editor and join me in trying to recruit volunteers in the Bay. Plus James should be appointed back to his rightful place on the board. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20080908051020/http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/ news/whatsnew/mbaupdate08.htm _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
