Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-08-01/Election guide/Candidate Op-Ed, Mike Peel

Here's a few questions I'm going to ask of everyone.

In the community, it's a widely acknowledged issue that the WMF has a hearing problem. Its financial resources are larger than ever, and yet we can't get the most of the support we want from the WMF, who instead spends time and ridiculous amounts of money on issues like branding. It took YEARS of screaming from the community, culminating in an open letter with 1000+ signatories to drive the very simple point that the WMF does not, should not, and will not ever stand for the Wikipedia Foundation with any legitimacy.

At the same time, we have huge amounts of support for increasing the modest resources of the community team. There are very tangible projects that have massive amounts of community support that get dropped because of this lack of resources.

So my questions are these. 1) Do you think the WMF has a hearing problem? If so, why do you think is the root cause, and what do you plan to do about it? 2) What do you make of the proposal to allocate at least 1% of the WMF warchest/yearly budget to the Community Tech team, broadly speaking?

Thanks for your time. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:40, 1 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi @Headbomb! I'm not sure if you read my statement before posting this? You know I'm very concerned about this issue, and it's one of the key reasons why I'm running for the Board. As best as I can tell, change needs to come from the top (maybe a board resolution, maybe through guidance to the ED) to make sure that the community is properly embedded in any project that the WMF runs, and community priorities are followed up on. I'm a big fan of (and repeat proposer at) the community wishlist, and I was the third person to support your proposal to increase its budget! (Although, branding *is* an issue that needs to be properly solved at some point - but in a way that the community supports.) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:43, 2 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

I did read your statement (I read everyone's), but I wanted to be fair to all candidates and have give them the opportunity to either further elaborate or clarify these things, since these areas are often not explicitly touched on in the statements.

I'll agree with you that something could be done about improved branding, but the issue with the branding efforts were that one specific thing was being pushed extremely hard against the wishes of the community, while the community insisted from the outset that that specific thing was a non-starter.

If branding comes around again, you may be interested in

There's plenty that could be done on branding (though now that the well has been poisoned, it's going to take a very skilled person to take on that mantle), but the WMF needs to tell us what problems it's trying to address in plain speak, and involve the community in the process. Because the "problem" of "a random person on the street doesn't know WikiSpecies and WikiData are related brands" is a very different problem than "Event organizers have troubles communicating the difference between Commons, WikiData, and Wikipedia".

Anyway, that's enough on branding. I'm mostly interested in your broad-level approach and views. As I told Legoktm, I can live with board members having different opinions than mine, especially when they're well-informed opinions. But the character of the answers and opinion matter, because the board really lacks a community perspective. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:58, 2 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Headbomb: Whenever I talk about Wikimedia, I have to explain that we have Wikipedia, which is the encyclopaedia, then Wikimedia, which is all of the projects/movement/organisations, then start explaining the different bits of Wikimedia. It really isn't something that is obvious to most, and that is a branding issue... But we'll see how it goes in the future - definitely any change that happens there has to have community consensus! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 06:57, 4 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

What does "community is properly embedded in any project that the WMF runs" mean to you, concretely? For example, how would you know if you have succeeded and the community is sufficiently embedded? Everyone always talks about how its important that the community be "involved", but its always vague and aspirational. What do you think concretely should be done to fix the issue? Bawolff (talk) 22:52, 2 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Bawolff: It's a really complicated issue in practice, which makes it difficult to be concrete about it. It's also a never-ending process. ;-) The ideal outcome would be that every project has community involvement at a level that makes sense for it (i.e., as much as possible...) - and that this is routinely thought through and embedded in project plans right from the start. It also links in with transparency and sharing information about what's going on - with ways for the community to get involved at any point. A good measure might be how many on-wiki controversies take place about WMF activities - which should be zero. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 06:57, 4 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

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