User:Amgine/Sermons/Snow tracks and WMC

I don't know how many commencements I've sat through which, somewhere, include the aphorism "Start as you mean to go on". It seems the writers of these speeches have not figured out their audience are already well beyond the beginnings of their lives, their careers. Either that or they're as bored with the whole ceremonial schtick as the graduates and are just wallowing in cliché and the unutterably obvious to fulfil expectations.

But it reminds me of another chestnut of a fable which has peculiarly Canadian resonance. Bear with me if you've heard it a million times. It's at least as full of obvicopters as a commencement speech.

A group of elementary school children are out playing after a fresh, deep dump of light fluffy snow, the kind that's no good for snowballs or forts and it's too deep for easy sledding. It's just sort of smooth and bright and makes getting anywhere a lot more work, especially nearly waist-high on a grade-schooler. After a period of "unstructured play" (I think that's current phrase for it), someone organised a competitive activity: Who can walk the straightest across a pristine section of snow?

Everyone tried, of course. Some carefully watched where they placed their feet; others kept a close eye on the wake they were leaving behind. (Some, no doubt, simply romped through ignoring everyone else.) One of the children, however, left a path noticeably straighter than the others. When asked how, the child said "I didn't look at what I was doing. I picked a goal on the other side and walked directly toward it."

</Cute exemplary story>

I'm sure some of you are expecting me to indulge in a few moments of gratuitous verbiage how the shortest, most-direct route is usually best (or, alternatively, how the winding, giggling trails of some showed better social engagement, greater cardio-activity, creative if ultimately ineffective problem-solving...) No, I'm going to talk about starting as you mean to go on.

Which didn't happen in October, 2010, when an application for incorporation of Wikimedia Canada including a carefully crafted set of binding rules and by-laws was sent off to the Canadian Government. It didn't even happen Jan 7 16:43:09 UTC 2007, the oldest message in the Wikimedia-ca list archives, which talks about lawyers, legal questions which need to be resolved, and the costs of same. Nor even with Eclecticology's earliest draft for Incorporation, although that edit does show what I am trying to point out in this essay.

I don't know when the beginning of Wikimedia Canada was. But even then, at the beginning of 2006, Wikimedia Canada had begun as it intended to go on - slowly, recursively, digressively, with little attention to its supposed goal but great regard for irrelevancies. The evidence which still exist suggests it was, then as now, balkanized, with splinter regions of effort working without coordination on diverse goals and sometimes at cross-purposes. With the staggered arrival of motivated participants, the path forged by the community as a whole went off on multiple tangents, including intensive and competitive bids to host Foundation events.

This habit, this method of doing business, is not good or bad except in comparison to an outside criteria. Is it efficient of volunteer hours? no, probably not if you consider those a finite resource. Does it form a strong nucleus membership? yes, a small but consistent group of participants can be traced throughout at least 5 years of edits and e-mails.

But it does bring me to the next order of business in any sermon: the exhortation for change or resistance to same. Which I'm not going to make. There's really no point. WMC is well-set in its ways and has proven intractable to change from within.

On the other hand, maybe I will present another fine quote, this one from Thomas Huxley: Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation. There are, however, two elements to this exhortation, and in my opinion the second needs more stress than the first.