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Milos Rancic wrote:

> - For those who are interested in organizing community, I think
> that the best way is to self-organize themselves and start to
> work on sensible proposals.

A trade union can organize a strike, a church community can
organize to build a church, a political party can win an election
and a guerilla can cause a revolution. The Wikimedia Foundation
has organized fundraisers and keep the servers running, with some
paid staff. The chapters have organized various exhibitions and
information outreach events and a running toolserver. But what is
"the community" supposed to organize? What difference in the
world is this kind of organization supposed to achieve?

> - At the other side, communities should start with
> self-organizing their inter-project cooperation at the lower
> scale

Individuals and small groups are already participating in more
than one project, be it Wikipedia+Wikisource, multiple languages
of Wikipedia, or even Wikipedia+Wikitravel+OpenStreetMap which
reaches outside of the Wikimedia Foundation. They're already
talking on each other's IRC channels, mailing lists, village
pumps, exchanging interwiki links and ideas. How does this need
any further "organization"? Why should people need to contact
you, when they can just start doing these things? It's as easy as
editing Wikipedia.

Some things that individuals can't easily do is organizing local
events of a certain size. That's what we have chapters for.

> I would like to make a group for initiating self-organizing of
> inter-project coordination.

Pardon? Why do you make it sound as if all you want is to get the
role of a bureaucrat, no matter what needs to be done? Can you
point to some problems that need to be fixed, instead of just
pointing to yourself as a solution for a non-existing problem?


--
Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

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My take on the matter [hi everyone, glad to join the list!] is that
you have to bear in mind that for some of the most active editors on
Wikimedia projects, this activity is a major hobby and an important
part of their [our] social life. People want to make a difference,
even stand out in their own special way. "Organizing" stuff is just
such a way. It happens in any hobby-based club, congregation etc.
That's people!

The "bane" of the Wikimedia-editing hobby is that it's basically a
solitary experience of people sitting at home in front of the
computer. There's just so much goodwill activity of "organizing stuff"
that people can do in this environment, even if you take into account
all committees, projects, meetups etc. etc. That's also why the online
"managerial" roles are so coveted.

I think if you look this way at all attempts to form assemblies,
councils, you name it -- then they become the natural, understandable
processes that they are, even if they cannot always be objectively
justified .

Harel


On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 8:38 PM, Lars Aronsson <lars@aronsson.se> wrote:
> Milos Rancic wrote:
>
> > - For those who are interested in organizing community, I think
> > that the best way is to self-organize themselves and start to
> > work on sensible proposals.
>
> A trade union can organize a strike, a church community can
> organize to build a church, a political party can win an election
> and a guerilla can cause a revolution. The Wikimedia Foundation
> has organized fundraisers and keep the servers running, with some
> paid staff. The chapters have organized various exhibitions and
> information outreach events and a running toolserver. But what is
> "the community" supposed to organize? What difference in the
> world is this kind of organization supposed to achieve?
>
>
> > - At the other side, communities should start with
> > self-organizing their inter-project cooperation at the lower
> > scale
>
> Individuals and small groups are already participating in more
> than one project, be it Wikipedia+Wikisource, multiple languages
> of Wikipedia, or even Wikipedia+Wikitravel+OpenStreetMap which
> reaches outside of the Wikimedia Foundation. They're already
> talking on each other's IRC channels, mailing lists, village
> pumps, exchanging interwiki links and ideas. How does this need
> any further "organization"? Why should people need to contact
> you, when they can just start doing these things? It's as easy as
> editing Wikipedia.
>
> Some things that individuals can't easily do is organizing local
> events of a certain size. That's what we have chapters for.
>
>
> > I would like to make a group for initiating self-organizing of
> > inter-project coordination.
>
> Pardon? Why do you make it sound as if all you want is to get the
> role of a bureaucrat, no matter what needs to be done? Can you
> point to some problems that need to be fixed, instead of just
> pointing to yourself as a solution for a non-existing problem?
>
>
> --
> Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se)
> Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>



--
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

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Harel Cain wrote:
> My take on the matter [hi everyone, glad to join the list!] is that
> you have to bear in mind that for some of the most active editors on
> Wikimedia projects, this activity is a major hobby and an important
> part of their [our] social life. People want to make a difference,
> even stand out in their own special way. "Organizing" stuff is just
> such a way. It happens in any hobby-based club, congregation etc.
> That's people!
>
> The "bane" of the Wikimedia-editing hobby is that it's basically a
> solitary experience of people sitting at home in front of the
> computer. There's just so much goodwill activity of "organizing stuff"
> that people can do in this environment, even if you take into account
> all committees, projects, meetups etc. etc. That's also why the online
> "managerial" roles are so coveted.
>
> I think if you look this way at all attempts to form assemblies,
> councils, you name it -- then they become the natural, understandable
> processes that they are, even if they cannot always be objectively
> justified .
These are interesting observations, and all the more so because your
views have not been tainted by chronic participation. The lack of
objective justification is a frequent feature of anything that has not
yet been developed. A circular argument arises because objective
justification depends on what the feature does, but what the feature
does requires that it have objective justification to spend time on the
idea.

In a broad sense we do have a lot of people engaged in organizational
goodwill, but we also have a large segment of the population resisting
any kind of organization that is not consistent with their own vision.
The managerial roles are coveted because of their implicit power,
notwithstanding the protestations that these roles are defined as no
more than janitorial.

Ec

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On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 1:38 PM, Lars Aronsson <lars@aronsson.se> wrote:
> Milos Rancic wrote:
> What difference in the
> world is this kind of organization supposed to achieve?

Maybe no difference whatsoever. However, a lot of volunteers are
interested in putting their time and talents towards this pursuit, and
it doesn't cause any net negative effect to let them proceed with it.
We've moved past the idea of a board-sanctioned community authority.
We're now talking about self-organization of our volunteers in ways
that they deem to be personally important.

In the worst case scenario, this type of organization acheives
nothing. However, I think we've seen that groups can self-organize to
produce much good among the projects: The SWMT, the CVU, Wikipedia's
Esperanza, etc. All of these groups are self-organized to tackle
specific problems that were not being satisfactorily handled through
other methods. In large part, I think that these groups are doing an
excellent job in making our projects a better place to work.

If self-organized groups display a particular competency or expertise,
the community will willingly turn to them as an authority on those
matters. If no such competency is displayed, the community will ignore
them. These groups will tackle the problems that they see before them,
and will be taken seriously by the rest of the community if they earn
that distinction. Volunteers cannot demand respect, but they can earn
it through hard work and dedication.

> How does this need
> any further "organization"? Why should people need to contact
> you, when they can just start doing these things?

Confusing, perhaps, a "need" for a "want" of more organization.
Organized volunteers are likely to be more productive working together
then they are working in solitude. People will come to Milos for this
if they feel he has a good idea and is producing good results.
Otherwise, he will work alone as usual. You cannot force people to do
any particular task around here, but you can give them options and let
them willfully choose to work with you. Milos has put up a flag asking
other like-minded individuals if they would like to join their
efforts. Whether people are interested in joining or not, is this
really causing a problem for you?

> Pardon? Why do you make it sound as if all you want is to get the
> role of a bureaucrat, no matter what needs to be done? Can you
> point to some problems that need to be fixed, instead of just
> pointing to yourself as a solution for a non-existing problem?

And why do you make it sound like you're so threatened by community
self-organization? Milos has pointed out at least one problem here,
the lack of effective inter-project communication. I agree with him
about this, and I suspect that many other people will agree as well.
If there truly is no problem with this, then Milos and friends will
accomplish nothing, and at the end of the day there will be no
difference. If there is a problem, however, then we should all hope
that interested volunteers make those problems go away.

--Andrew Whitworth

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On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 7:38 PM, Lars Aronsson <lars@aronsson.se> wrote:
> Milos Rancic wrote:
>
> > - For those who are interested in organizing community, I think
> > that the best way is to self-organize themselves and start to
> > work on sensible proposals.
>
> A trade union can organize a strike, a church community can
> organize to build a church, a political party can win an election
> and a guerilla can cause a revolution. The Wikimedia Foundation
> has organized fundraisers and keep the servers running, with some
> paid staff. The chapters have organized various exhibitions and
> information outreach events and a running toolserver. But what is
> "the community" supposed to organize? What difference in the
> world is this kind of organization supposed to achieve?

In posts related to (P)VC I listed a number of problems with which no
one of Wikimedia bodies are dealing. Some people listed other problems
with similar amount of groups which are dealing with them. I am really
tired of repeating them and you may take a look at foundation-l
archive from April this year or so. And I have one more...

A couple of months ago I made a program which is making daily
statistics for Wikinews [1]. Today I finished the next generation of
the program, which is making daily statistics for all WM projects [2]
(and may be used for any other MW based project) and it will be in
function in the next day or two. This is some kind of benign, somewhat
useful thing for all of us. It isn't a big deal to put it, it isn't
something for which I will urge, it is interesting to some of
contributors and it may be useful.

As I am somewhat active at en.wn, I passed through a really
frustrating process of getting bot flag for that purpose because of
one person who opposed that. People from pl.wn were welcomed that; as
a sole contributor to sr.wn for the most of time, it was the first
place where I implemented that; I asked people from de.wn at IRC, but
I had to fill some form or so (something which is not only a request
for bot flag), so it was too much for me (as I said, bot doesn't do
anything very important); I asked people from it.wn at their bot
request page, but as I didn't see any conclusion in a two or three
weeks (only one supporting vote), I forgot for that.

BTW, I gave up from regular asking for localization and updating it
because I realized that I don't have any appropriate tool for that.
Finding some way for making a good localization process will be my
next task for that bot.

Wikinews has projects in 20 languages and there are ~700 more projects
for the full version. I will not ask every project particularly for
that. (I'll just ask wn communities for changing the process and,
maybe, a couple of other projects in which I am somehow involved.) It
is not because I am frustrated or so, but because I needed a month for
dealing with 5 projects. If we have just 500 active enough projects, I
would need 100 months for dealing with all projects, which is
something more than 8 years. No, thanks.

At the other hand, Wikipedian interwikis are much more important and
people with interwiki bots have to pass ~250 times bot approval
process. And, sometimes, even very well known persons, like Andre
Engels is, are not getting a bot flag at some projects, as well as
their bots are being blocked because of that -- which usually may
destroy a lot of time spent on working for the common goals.

> > - At the other side, communities should start with
> > self-organizing their inter-project cooperation at the lower
> > scale
>
> Individuals and small groups are already participating in more
> than one project, be it Wikipedia+Wikisource, multiple languages
> of Wikipedia, or even Wikipedia+Wikitravel+OpenStreetMap which
> reaches outside of the Wikimedia Foundation. They're already
> talking on each other's IRC channels, mailing lists, village
> pumps, exchanging interwiki links and ideas.

Yes, i know for some of the collaborations and I am happy to see them.
However, such collaborations are rare and we have much more basic
problems than, for example, WP-WT-OSM collaboration aims to cover
(but, as I said, I think that such projects are useful).

> Some things that individuals can't easily do is organizing local
> events of a certain size. That's what we have chapters for.
>
>
> > I would like to make a group for initiating self-organizing of
> > inter-project coordination.
>
> How does this need
> any further "organization"? Why should people need to contact
> you, when they can just start doing these things? It's as easy as
> editing Wikipedia.
>
> ...
>
> Pardon? Why do you make it sound as if all you want is to get the
> role of a bureaucrat, no matter what needs to be done? Can you
> point to some problems that need to be fixed, instead of just
> pointing to yourself as a solution for a non-existing problem?

It seems that you didn't read carefully enough what did I say. I
explicitly said that groups in which I am participating shouldn't be
the only groups for particular purposes. You are free to organize your
own group. I would like, for example, to see the revival of
Wiki[mp]edia Scandinavia idea.

My work is public. I am agreeing for non-public work (let's say, a
private mailing list) only if people with whom I am working have
strong concerns against working publicly. And initiating cooperation
between projects is not something which should be done privately.

* * *

I would like to know what do you have against self-organization of Wikimedians?

[1] - http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Template:Statistics
[2] - http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A8%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BD:%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B5

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Working on specific proposals -- or better yet, specific /projects/, strikes
me as an excellent plan. Here's a list I put together a few years back that
may be a useful framework for organizing project ideas:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Initiatives

SJ


On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 12:22 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com> wrote:

> After a lot of time, I think that it is fair to conclude that Meta
> community and WMF are not able to move toward organization of the
> whole community (or the communities). But, we need organization for a
> lot of reasons, already mentioned here. So, I suggest the next:
>
> - As we have enough different suggestions, I think that personal
> proposals are not very useful anymore. OK, it may be useful, but it is
> not *very* useful.
>
> - For those who are interested in organizing community, I think that
> the best way is to self-organize themselves and start to work on
> sensible proposals. Let's say, groups with at least 5 Wikimedians
> should be large enough. PVC is the first of those groups, but not
> necessarily the only. I would ask interested persons/groups to
> announce their existence, as well as to make a page at Meta about
> them, with at least some basic informations, which include: who is in
> that group; is it a close or open group; what are your ways of
> communication -- as well as to inform the rest of the community about
> their conclusions (here and at their Meta page).
>
> - At the other side, communities should start with self-organizing
> their inter-project cooperation at the lower scale -- from two to a
> few projects interested for cooperation (I am thinking here only about
> projects with developed communities; a couple of very active users
> would be good enough). The best for the beginning is to start to talk.
> The first product of cooperation may be common place for giving
> interwiki bot flags.
>
> I am already a member of PVC (or whatever the future name of that
> group will be), as well as I started with asking close communities to
> initiate their cooperation. Everyone else is free to do the same, of
> course.
>
> I would like to make a group for initiating self-organizing of
> inter-project coordination. So, if anyone is interested, let me
> contact personally.
>
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>
>
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