[Foundation-l] Bounties and expenses

Tue Jun 22 10:25:00 UTC 2004

On 06/22/04 07:32, Delirium wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:

>> Face-to-face meetings are much more productive than IRC simply 
>> because  real human interaction has a much higher bandwidth than 
>> letters in a  window on a computer screen. That was obvious at the WOS 
>> in Berlin, as I  know that some people are still reeling from the 
>> whole experience. ;-)  Getting Angela to mingle with the French 
>> Wikimedia community will benefit  the whole project.

> I disagree with this---meeting with a tiny fraction of the Wikimedia 
> community and making decisions at such meetings is detrimental to the 
> project.  Real work and decision-making should be done online, in 
> public, where everyone can participate.  If people want to socialize in 
> person, that's fine, but we shouldn't be making decisions at meetings 
> either behind closed doors or at which only a small fraction of 
> Wikimedians are present.

It's getting ideas flying back and forth at high bandwidth. Based on the
London wikimeet, just all being in one place supplied piles of good
ideas and the energy to do something about them. I really do think you're
completely wrong here.

> And, I don't think calling such meetings "perks" is an overstatement.  
> I've observed quite a few non-profit meetings, as well as meetings and 
> conferences in academia, and they rarely have much real work being 
> done.  They're social and networking events, and the most "real work" 
> that gets done is at best finding out about something that you make a 
> note of to look up and read later.  The actual real work gets done via 
> email or telephone (or both) either before or after the conferences.  H. 
> Cheney's recent email indicated he's had similar experiences on the 
> non-profit boards he's sat on, so this seems to not simply be my 
> personal experience.

My personal experience of a wikimeet says otherwise. (My anecdote can beat up
your anecdote.)

- d.