[Advocacy Advisors] Does the Foundation intend to propose any actual actions?

Mon Feb 18 04:11:22 UTC 2013

Amgine wrote:
>...
> can you suggest a reasonable
> methodology for sampling and weighting the diverse communities which
> make up the WMF's projects, donors, and non-active readers?

Select them at random and send them an email. I know from experience
that inactive admins respond at about a 15% response rate, so it would
be easy to get a statistically significant number of editors to
respond. Recent donors respond at a greater rate.

(I doubt that the Foundation should try to survey readers who do not
edit about advocacy actions, because I don't think there should be
actions on behalf of the reader-only community. Having said that, I
think the Foundation most certainly should be taking actions in
support of the broad editor community, not just Foundation staff.)

> As someone occasionally involved in population research, there are a
> number of questions I would have about learning the community's
> expectations regarding frequency of actions, including what instrument
> would be used, where/how it was normed, and the reasoning suggesting
> the instrument would have sufficient validity and reliability, as well
> as sensitivity and specificity, when applied to WMF communities.

What questions, in particular?

I'm growing increasingly concerned that there is a whole class of
information that Foundation staff will actively try to prevent
learning, especially when the answers might be embarrassing. At first
I thought it was isolated to the proportion of impoverished long-term
volunteers. The reactions to my survey attempting to determine the
answer were positively shameful, including repeated false allegations
by Foundation staff that I had violated policies including one that
they knew had never been approved. But now I'm not so sure it is
isolated: The Foundation apparently does not want to know the opinion
of donors and the community as to whether staff should be paid
competitive salaries (my preliminary survey suggest that those
opinions are very much opposed to the status quo) and now it seems
there is no interest in determining how offen the community thinks
advocacy actions should occur.

It would not take very much time, effort, or money to learn the
answers to these questions. Who would have thought that the Foundation
would be opposed to finding them?

Sincerely,
James Salsman