[Foundation-l] Wikimedia "Storyteller" job opening

Sun Mar 6 23:59:30 UTC 2011

On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 3:54 PM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:

> Philippe Beaudette wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 11:06 AM, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Sue Gardner wrote:
> >>> Ah, Sarah, I don't think that's particularly fair. Bear in mind we've
> >>> just published a strategic plan that 1,000+ Wikimedians helped create.
> >>> I'm not denying that some Wikimedians may feel alienated from the
> >>> Wikimedia Foundation: I'm sure it is true for some. But "something in
> >>> which we have no input" is, IMO, not a fair characterization.
> >>
> >> This is an interesting comment given who actually authored the strategic
> >> plan. It's my understanding that several people (Eugene, you, Erik, and
> >> others) wrote different parts of the report, which were then compiled by
> >> people from Bridgespan. Is that accurate?
> >>
> >> Is there a record of who wrote which parts of the report? It would be
> >> particularly interesting to see how much of it came from volunteers.
> >>
> > She didn't say they sat down and banged out the plan on their IBM
> > Selectric.  She said they helped create it.  That's entirely accurate.
>  It
> > grew from the work of the task forces, research around the proposals,
> > research in general... all of those done by volunteers. While the final
> > wording may have been "smithed" by a relatively smaller set of people,
> the
> > first attempt was actually to have community members do that as well.  It
> > didn't work well - either because it's a task that was poorly facilitated
> > (and if so, I'm to blame), or a task that was poorly defined, or simply a
> > task that the people who were there weren't interested in doing (and as
> > volunteers, that's their right and privilege), the writing had to be
> > assigned to a number of people.
> >
> > I dislike this posts like this one, which (at least from one perspective)
> > engage in a game of rhetorical "gotcha".
>
> So... that's a no? There's no record of who wrote what? I think people in
> the community are interested to know how much of the strategic plan came
> from various stakeholders, both the ideas and the actual pieces of the
> report. If you feel that it's unfair to ask for attribution, I guess we'll
> just have to agree to disagree.
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
I don't think I actually answered that part of the question, because - as I
told you privately  - I was gone from the project long before then.  I
simply don't know.

But this is further rhetorical "gotcha" - you took my response to one part
of your post and tried to twist it to be a non-answer to the other part of
your post.