Kropotkine_113 wrote:
Thank you very much all of you (Brigitte SB, Ting Chen, Mickael Snow and others).
To close my participation in this thread I just add three points :
...
- Even more important point is the cultural gap between Foundation's
intentions and communication, which are very "north-american slanted" (I don't know how to say that), and its perception by a very multicultural community. The gap is particularly large concerning financial/executive power relations. You have to be very careful about this and to be very pedagogic when you report such decisions, because when the story will appear in french village pump (for example) it will be hard tuff for chapter's members to explain it correctly (if possible). The answer often used is : "It's not evil, it's just the way american people deal with it every day". Just let me tell you that's not a sufficient answer for many people (like me ;)). I think that a non-used but very efficient solution would be to share informations before the official report and to work closely with local chapters ; but this is a more wide problem and slightly out-of-the-scope of this thread.
Kropotkine_113
Using the chapters as intermediaries between the Wikimedia Foundation and the communities is actually a solution that has been used in the past.
It certainly feature a certain efficiency (proximity with the community and common language).
However, I am not convinced it is a good idea to go this way.
First because it requires the chapter to actually agree to a certain degree with the action of the Wikimedia Foundation. Which requires internal discussion within the chapter, information of all board members, agreement over the action, and planification over the communication need. In itself, that's quite an achievement.
Even if there is no clear agreement, it seems very odd that, say, the chapter would somehow give arguments to justify and explain something done by WMF to editors, whilst it does not support this action. In case the WMF does something that the community does not like, there is little reason for the heat and light to fall on the shoulders of another organization.
That's WMF responsibility to assume their decisions, to inform stakeholders of their decisions, and hopefully to offer channels for stakeholders to give their feedback.
I am not convinced it is within the role of chapters to be the intermediaries. And doing it regularly would possibly mislead WMF to get further apports from contributors.
Ant