[Foundation-l] thoughts on leakages

Wed Jan 9 10:14:55 UTC 2008

Hi!

> Regardless of why people leak, it still feels like you're being
> dudded, to find out information through unofficial or even hostile
> channels. It seems like something has been out of balance of late.

In any organization there might be private stuff, simply because we  
have to deal with other organizations.
Though Wikimedia is essentially quite open, other organizations  
respect confidentiality, because of many reasons. Because they want  
to stay in business, because they are publicly traded and have to  
follow quite a bunch of regulations, or simply because they want to  
help us without too much of bragging and boasting, or just want to  
prepare for nice publicity, by doing lots of nice work. If we deal  
with folks, we'd have to respect their wishes, if they respect ours.

Wikimedia does love competition, and can disclose lots of things it  
is doing - like our operations are by far one of most open. We end up  
discussing lots - and achieving together lots.

Now, any leak makes people sad.
That means that people you'd love to trust, are doing something you  
wouldn't do.
That means that people you spend your time communicating to end up  
backstabbing with their "journalism".
That means that projects you keep supporting end up telling that  
"hey, we leaked, this is our featured story". Sorry, folks, if thats  
the only way you can feature yourself, I'd suggest finding other  
things to do. At least I really would like not to waste my time at  
tabloid activities. There's more sense in supporting Pokemon articles.

I understand when information about acts against humanity are  
revealed. Frauds, scams, whatever.
But now it was just taking a piss at people doing their job and  
trying to get projects supported, extended and elevated.

Meh, anything foundation does has to get community support anyway.
People should at least allow to package raw ideas into proposals.

My personal opinion - with a flavor of sadness. Though it is not all  
that bad yet - we can still maintain absolute trust with quite a few  
people in the project. :)

BR,
Domas

-- 
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]