wiki reorg - Documentation Team

Justin Wong stryderjzw at gmail.com
Fri Jul 25 06:16:27 CEST 2008


Hi!

I just want to address some of the concerns there are about having
leadership on a project. Having a leader doesn't mean you'll be taking
orders or you'll be doing work that you're not interested in - that's
what paid jobs are for. :)

Project leads are there to maintain direction and focus of the
project. They need to set out directives, so people who volunteer will
always be able to measure and see if what they are currently doing are
actually helping the project.

While it's great to "move pages into categories" and "create
templates", how do we know that these categories and templates will
make sense to the users of the wiki? Are these categories created to
fit the content or the user? Do we know how competent our user base is
with wiki's?  Perhaps one of the main initiatives should be Education.
The project needs to go through the proper cycle and that is what a
leader can provide.

I see that there are many great ideas coming out of this list, but we
need to do the proper homework beforehand so we know that these ideas
will actually fix the real problems.


Cheers!
Justin


On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 7:31 PM, Stroller
<stroller at stellar.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On 24 Jul 2008, at 23:46, Josh Monson wrote:
>> ...
>> I completely agree with your "take this team in a direction" comments.
>> ...
>> Of whom would lead this or be in charge of it, in terms of
>> coordinating
>> the efforts of the volunteers. The response I received from OM was
>> that
>> Brenda has been leading this already and will continue to do so. I
>> see a
>> lot of back'n'forth on the list about who is doing what, but I do not
>> see responses from Brenda or another person in listing out tasks,
>> assigning work, goal orientation, etc...
>
> I don't see a collaborative project as needing a leader.
>
> Honestly, if someone "assigns me work" it ain't gonna get done unless
> I'm interested in it - I've got about a zillion other things to do,
> including paying work.
>
> Many projects - including, I believe Wikipedia itself - operate very
> successfully by volunteers getting on with the tasks that interest
> them. I'll say more about this in another message in a minute. Yeah,
> some tasks are going to be boring & uninteresting - Openmoko has paid
> staff and might be persuaded that its in their own interest to
> contribute, however.
>
>> William Lai wrote "In fact she has been actively 'leading' since
>> day 1,
>> before any of these discussions started."
>
> As I see it Brenda's role is mostly administrative. Since Openmoko
> has asked the community for a wiki team, I see no reason why we
> shouldn't say to Brenda "hi, we need these pages moved into this
> category" and "we need this template created". Brenda has already
> undertaken tasks suggested by this list (removing "User Guides"
> category in favour of existing "Guides" category [1]).
>
> Brenda:
> Sorry if you don't like the suggestion that you'll have to do a lot
> of menial work. But if you want a leadership role instead, you're
> have to assume it. The "Eastern Vs Western" modes of communication
> were mentioned on the -community list, but Openmoko has sanctioned a
> community effort to clean up, reorganise & contribute to the wiki,
> which is what this list is about. If you approve of an idea or think
> it inappropriate then you need to speak up. Just reply to the list
> quoting only the relevant parts of the message and say "Great idea!"
> or "This might be a problem (because...)".
> You have in the last few days responded to a suggestion by saying
> "I'll do this". It hasn't been a problem at all so far, but please
> note the difference between a suggestion and a decision! You would be
> supporting our community role if instead you said "I think this is a
> good idea, too. I'll do this unless there are any objections". If you
> then wait 48 hours before undertaking the task it gives other
> community volunteers the chance to point out any problems before the
> task is committed.
>
> Stroller.
>
>
>
>
> [1] http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/documentation/2008-July/
> 000031.html
>
>
>
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