You do not need people to generate ideas. I am sure a lot of ideas can be generated in an unstructured way onwiki. They will be contradictory and will require some effort to select something useful. For this selection, one would need indeed a small committee or staff or may be both.
To implement these ideas is a totally different story. I guess here is where you need people to be paid to work on. Best Yaroslav On Thu, Jul 2, 2026 at 10:25 AM Christophe Henner via Wikimedia-l < [email protected]> wrote: > There were different level of support: > * External consultants (williamswork I think but probably others) > * Internal paid facilitators (mostly wikimedians paid to facilitate > discussions) > * Internal staff resources (mostly form WMDE and WMF) > > Whether we need external consultants or not, I would say such > endeavor does need some people to be paid to work on it. > -- > Christophe > > > On Thu, 2 Jul 2026 at 09:51, Amir E. Aharoni via Wikimedia-l < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> >> בתאריך יום ה׳, 2 ביולי 2026 ב-9:51 מאת Michael Snow via Wikimedia-l < >> [email protected]>: >> >>> Movement Strategy efforts have relied in part on the Foundation hiring >>> consultants who could assist in framing discussion, and also provide some >>> of the sustained presence that makes it easier for volunteers to contribute >>> even when they can only do so with intermittent intention. Could that be >>> helpful piece of responding to this call? I think it might need to be >>> something more than a small working group. >>> >> >> No. >> >> I was there. Those consultants only got in the way and provided no value. >> Wikimedians from all over the world came together and brought up good >> ideas. Then those consultants, or facilitators, or coaches, or whatever, >> said that those ideas are "too narrow" or "too broad" or "too detailed" or >> "too general" or "too low-level" or "too high-level". They said it about >> every single idea that Wikimedians brought up. And then they insisted on >> rewriting those ideas and rewriting them yet again into mush. >> >> I said back then that I'm afraid that it's not going to work. Six years >> later, here we are. >> >> So please, no. No consultants, facilitators, or coaches. They cost a lot >> of money, and they may be "professional", and their professionalism may >> work well (or not) for other organizations. I don't care very much about >> other organizations. I care about Wikimedia. Wikimedia is special. For more >> than twenty years, Wikimedia volunteers have been building the best, the >> most popular, and the most multilingual encyclopedia in history without >> consultants. >> >> Wikimedians do need money, but this money should be invested directly >> into what Wikimedians say they need and not into consultants who look >> professional, but only get in the way. >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimedia-l mailing list -- [email protected], guidelines >> at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l >> Public archives at >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/message/BAF6DDWB64B4ISO5ZYNWPWT3QRRYF5QI/ >> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list -- [email protected], guidelines > at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > Public archives at > https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/message/MTV6EWTJ3Q5L3WIYSICKR7LKL3ONDEWI/ > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
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