Anna,

> As you may have noticed, threaded discussions become difficult for me to
> visually navigate after a while. Thus, the color.
>

Sorry, colour doesn't come through on the mailing list.


> Call me naive, but I’m excited by the prospect of the movement strategy
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017>. I know
> that many other things will need to happen to arrive at the state that you
> speak of, but thinking together at that scale is likely a good start in my
> mind.  It might even be a necessary but insufficient pre-requisite for the
> kind of collaboration you speak of.
>


Let us hope that it does what is both necessary and sufficient.

> The current notion being instantiated in the proposed Technical guidelines
> > is very much about a wise and benevolent Foundation steering its ideas
> > through a reluctant community.  That is frankly insufficient.
> >
>
> Would you direct me to those Technical guidelines? I don’t know the
> reference and I should.
>

They are at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_Collaboration_Guidance
which is currently under discussion.  This appears to be a successor
project to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WMF_product_development_
process/Communities which is described as stalled.



> >
> > >
> > > Maybe not. But if it could strike a deeper cord around transparency, I
> > > wanted to show up for that conversation. Talk openly. Let people know
> > that
> > > we are listening, that we believe in transparency… that’s why we all
> > fought
> > > for it.
> > >
> > > To be clear, I have no sense whether it did strike a cord around
> > > transparency, but I enjoyed the conversation nevertheless.
> > >
> >
> > My experience of the Foundations notion of Transparency has been patchy
> at
> > lest -- and that's a polite way of saying breathtakingly awful.
>
>
> That good? All jokes aside, I take this very seriously. I’d like to hear
> your notion of transparency, but first I’ll offer this one that I recently
> heard because I have the sense that it will resonate with you. We're in the
> final stages of an org-wide conversation on our values
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values/2016_discussion/Framing>. We
> invited some current and former community-selected board members as well as
> volunteers beyond the board to these conversations.  I enjoyed them very
> much.
>
> Normally, I would attribute this quote, but these conversations were
> anonymized, so I don’t have permission to reveal my brilliant source. They
> talked about how transparency was likely not the right word for what they
> really wanted. They wanted a way to join in. They wanted to know where they
> could plug in. Is that a notion of “maybe more than transparency" that
> resonates with you?
>
> That’s the problem that I’m chewing on. And so your ideas around
> collaboration are interesting to me. So I’m thinking about them. What they
> would mean, how it could be done, the myriad of constraints that make it
> seem quite difficult to orchestrate.
>

The difference between Transparency and Engagement is indeed what I have
been concerned about.  But genuine engagement cannot take place on a basis
of asymmetric access to information.  So transparency seems to be the
prerequisite



>
>
> > What has changed in the last fortnight to make me expect that it will be
> > different this year?
> >
>
> Look, if there’s one thing I think I’ve learned throughout my career, it’s
> all of the things that could go wrong. Sometimes it feels like that’s all I
> have to offer: what not to do.
>
> I also don’t think grand pronouncements are the way to go. So I’d be happy
> to explain some of the things that I do think have changed, as long as you
> know I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I’m just legitimately
> answering your question from my partial point of view.
>
> Leadership has changed. I see more people internally looking to involve
> relevant stakeholders in their work (New Readers and ORES come to mind).
> I’m also hopeful about the movement strategy process. It looks like a good
> faith effort on everyone’s part to come together and discuss the future in
> open, inclusive, documented discourse
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017>.
>
> I see progress, not perfection.
>

I see confusion.  In the last fortnight was a reference to the ED's public
pronouncement that she thought it waste of her time to engage with people
like me directly on her Meta talk page.  Her predecessor had not thought
that.

> > > In the middle ground, there is the
> > > > issue of the current product roadmap and its delivery.  Perhaps an
> > > > indication of what that roadmap is may help to refine and revise the
> > plan
> > > > that will have to be drawn up for executing the work that is left
> > hanging
> > > > by these events.
>  [...]
>

> I don’t have enough information.
>
> [...]
> >
> > Is any of those close to the truth, do you think?
> >
>
> I do not know.
>

I want to be polite here. It is very unusual for an organisation like the
WMF not to have the sort of Roadmap that I describe, and extraordinarily
unusual that a person at your level in the organisation should not know of
its existence and be able to confirm at least whether or not it exists.
You must be aware that your answer suggests at a bare minimum the
possibility that you, as an officer of the WMF, are evading the question.


> You've helped me see some new possibilities for how we might organize.
> Thank you.


Thank you,

"Rogol"
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