Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Iteration 1/Community Health/Agile and responsive support of community health

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it.
Most likely, new comments will not be taken into account by the new three Working Group members in their work of developing the final Recommendations. You are free however to continue discussing in the spirit of "discussing about Wikipedia is a work in progress". :)

A network of resources and people to support and monitor community health[edit]

"The Community Health working group recommends developing a network of resources and people to support and monitor community health across the movement." - No, please not yet another "community-run" AffCom-like structure, this time purporting to act also in the online communities. We already have anough problems with the malfunctionment and misuse of AffCom for power games and influence peddling, no need for yet another problematic structure in our movement, where a lot of power mix with a lot of incompetence and lack of preparation. Much less another T&S-like entity, which despite supposedly being a professional body, incompetence inside it seems to have been rampant in the last years, with a significan number of recent scandals and quite traumatic cases related to it. We shoudl work to solve the problems and disfunctionalities with the existing bodies with similar functions, namely AffCom and T&S, prior to envisage the creation of yet another body, and a possible new source of trouble for the movement, as those two have been, specially in recent times.--- Darwin Ahoy! 12:28, 15 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

yes, please more resources for community health.
we need to train more leaders, and responders in addressing community health. we have community health debt, which if not maintained, dependent entirely on voluntary effort, will continue to decline.
we need sociological and anthropological analysis and solutions to community problems. we need periodic monitoring of health by surveys. we need annual reports on community health using survey data.
we need therapeutic approaches to user behavior, rather than prescriptive. Slowking4 (talk) 09:27, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"responsibility of everyone involved, be it as a volunteer, reader, partner, affiliate and so on." including WMF. --Slowking4 (talk) 13:06, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Pray describe somewhat more about therapeutic approaches. Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 12:44, 24 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Volunteer Supporters Network for instance; but i was remarking only partly in jest to Jackie Koerner that WMF needs to invest in some therapy for volunteers. clearly the anti-social behavior is harming the projects. negative feedback is a proven non-starter. Slowking4 (talk) 17:25, 25 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's not a majorly therapeutic approach (which's a term with strong medical connotations). Also, interesting stuff happens when folks follow your (last) line of thought ..... Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 17:32, 25 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Technologies[edit]

Most of the things listed under technologies are not technologies at all, but rather social processes.

The sentence "equalize who is exercising power on the platform as admins" sounds like a dystopian brainwashing exercise, I suggest to rewrite the concept from scratch without jargon. Same for "safe selection mechanism", which can be interpreted in many ways and first read to me like a proposal to change the selection mechanisms to make their result more "safe" as in compliant with some predetermined outcome, for instance by enlisting an external authority to pre-empt some people from being proposed for certain roles. Nemo 13:55, 17 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

well, they have given the dev team a feature list. perhaps some tools could be developed to become more agile. an integrated solution to the work flow is always wanted, if rare in open source.
the dystopian nightmare is the current unaccountable rule by fiat. and it invites Marxian power analysis. Slowking4 (talk) 09:19, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Be careful of what you seek. Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 10:17, 24 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Access to resources[edit]

"Access to resources should not reinforce existing privileges; the group of recipients of funds should be diverse and care taken that the identical group of recipients does not benefit year after year"
this is a worthy goal, but caution is warranted (it is a diversity, and resource allocation goal). if volunteers are benefiting the movement by filling a role with resource support, then we should continue to support them, until we train a replacement team. resources are not a benefit, but a necessary input to do mission. a healthy community will require resources to support the volunteers; if you fail to support them in the hopes a more diverse volunteer will come along, you will harm the mission and community. a general lack of support will reinforce those volunteers who can self-fund their own activity, at a lower productivity. there are more than enough resources to support existing star volunteers, and grow a more diverse community. the star volunteers are the trainers of the more diverse community. and care should be given to support minority groups in privileged regions, which may require partnering and resourcing with privileged allies. training should be given to grow volunteer resource management and accountability skills; it is not sufficient to require compliance, rather you must train the volunteers to make compliance easier.. Slowking4 (talk) 12:11, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I very much agree with Slowking4 wrote. "the group of recipients of funds should be diverse and care taken that the identical group of recipients does not benefit year after year" - The WG apparently looks at us, volunteers, as "beneficiaries" of resources, as if the volunteers were living on them. Those resources are needed to carry on outreach/GLAM/all kind of Wikimedia activities in the country. It should *never* be expected by the WMF that volunteers that already give their time and expertise, should also give their own resources to carry out these activities, which then in turn support the Wikimedia projects which are the basis for the donation campaigns that feed the WMF bank account. The current wording of the recommendation is quite insulting for all volunteers involved in funded activities, and should be corrected to promote diversity , but not at the cost of the efforts already going on everywhere.
Curiously, what I have been told over and over (and seen in practice) is that the WMF does not fund "start-up" kind of efforts, but only those which already have a degree of confidence of success, basically limiting the funding to already established communities. I really would like this attitude, which seems more proper of a business, than of a ONG dedicated to free knowledge as the WMF, to change. Of course money shouldn't be thrown away in hopeless activities, but outreach efforts in new, prospective communities shouldn't be discarded just because there is no established community there (kind of a catch-22).--- Darwin Ahoy! 11:42, 22 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A centralized structure[edit]

when you say "A centralized structure", you are then describing a network, which is more a community of practice than a formal reporting structure. unless you are considering a matrix structure where you will have w:Matrix_management. perhaps you could clarify. Slowking4 (talk) 01:09, 24 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Equitize?[edit]

Please link to the intended meaning in this context. This seems to be a non-standard usage which could lead to confusion if not defined in context. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 18:51, 25 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What about sustainability, and the impact of global heating on communities in hot climates?[edit]

We haven't mentioned sustainability, or becoming a zero-carbon emissions organization anywhere in our recommendations. (Did I miss this?)

We say we want to do outreach in places like India, Africa, and the Middle East, where extreme weather, heat, droughts, and torrential rains are a problem for human health.

To support our editors and readers in places impacted by extreme weather, zero carbon emissions is a good first step. We have enough funds to do this, so let's put it into our strategic plan. Oliveleaf4 (talk) 19:14, 25 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

From Catalan Salon[edit]

Aligning resources with CH could be a excuse to deny grants to those more critics with WMF or the movement? We don't want that. It is a danger (...).