[Foundation-l] Foundation too passive, wasting community talent

Tue Apr 5 22:11:18 UTC 2011

On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 8:22 AM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
>> On 5 April 2011 03:02, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
>>> Another example might be an UploadWizard that is focused on
>>> ensuring that Wikimedia fulfills its Multimedia grant requirements rather
>>> than actually being fully developed and ready for use by Wikimedia Commons.
>>> These examples are off the top of my head, but anyone paying attention can
>>> see the trend fairly clearly, I think.
>>
>> What I see is grants supplying money to get initiatives that have been
>> long-wanted happening. The near-impossibility of getting even quite
>> simple things through a bureaucratic kudzu-choked community process
>> has been noted on this list *many* times.
>>
>> This is far from ideal, as you note. But in practical terms, I submit
>> it's better than this stuff never happening at all, which is what
>> would occur without it.
>
> It goes back to nothing in life being free, I think. The money for (most of)
> these grants has been restricted. These projects are generally worthwhile,
> but with grant money, they immediately become top priority due to grant
> deadlines and the specifications for these products must be tailored to the
> demands of the grant. That isn't to say that the code can't be
> expandable/extensible/etc., but the primary goal of these tools is to
> fulfill the needs of the grant, not to fulfill the needs of the community.

As with any volunteer project, the efforts volunteered by
grant-writers are not optimal for the long-term evolution of the
encyclopedia (not that I think we know / agree on what that path
necessarily is, but for the sake of argument...).

All types of volunteer project are a brownian random walk in the
generally agreed upon direction.  I think it's fair to say that the
Foundation should reject grants that don't push in the generally
agreed upon direction.  But I don't think they should reject generally
agreed upon direction grants that the donor puts a scope limit on,
because they don't completely fulfil the community desires in
particular areas.

Donors have finite resources and are balancing wider concerns, too.
We can always come back and add additional features or function where
a grant didn't give us everything we want.

Lacking a large endowment, we have to take what we can get.

>> If I've correctly ascertained your essential point: you appear broadly
>> to think the WMF is becoming a self-sustaining creature *at the
>> expense* of the community; and you think it's getting bloated and
>> complacent. I think both of these are quite incorrect.
>
> Something thereabouts. It's easy enough to find people who agree with this
> view, though it's easy enough to find people who agree with any view on the
> Internet....

There is a curve in the evolution of volunteer groups into charities;
it happens because differently sized organizations have different
organizational requirements and structures and imperatives.  It's not
a straight line; some organizations at a given size are more
responsive and closer to their original constituents than others.

Some of those goals include the "We have a long term goal, and
therefore the organization must survive long-term," which then drives
one towards more PR and organized giving and donor development etc.
Those things are not in any way directly relevant to the Encyclopedia
(and other projects).  But having a Foundation is key to the
Encyclopedia (and other projects) long term successes; we long passed
the point that volunteer labor would keep the lights on, servers up
and sufficient for the load, and software development running at
acceptable pace.  The tradeoff, that a fair amount of what the
Foundation does is then necessary because it's a Foundation, was
explicit in its founding.

It frustrates people a lot at times, but we need to acknowledge that
tradeoff, that we made it, that we needed to make it, and move on.

Whether the Foundation's board, execs, and staff are as focused on
supporting the community that work on the projects as is ideal is
unquestionably no.  That's part of a dynamic trade between the
concerns of the ongoing organization and the concerns of its final end
product (the projects).  We'll never on the community side be entirely
happy with that.

What we can ask is whether the board, execs, and staff support the
goal and work diligently on it.  And as a rule, I have been satisfied
with the answers on that one.  They generally get it right; when they
get it wrong, they talk about it and are open to input.  When it's not
clear what right and wrong are they let people know there's an
unanswered question.

-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com