User:Tom Morris/WMFers Say The Darndest Things

This page is just a lighthearted listing of quotes from the Wikimedia Foundation which all use jargon, buzzwords or unclear language. It is created in a spirit of honest and constructive criticism. The mission of creating and sharing free culture is best served by writing clearly. Only through clear writing and communication will the good work of the Foundation and others in the Wikimedia movement be shared and transmitted. Bullshit may persuade those in business, but volunteers see fuzzy, bullshitting language as either being a reflection of the fuzziness and confusion of the speaker, or as an attempt to deliberately befuddle.

Gallery of shame edit

  • Must enjoy supportive, service oriented administrative work
  • You thrive when creating efficient systems and processes that provide internal client-oriented service to an international, mission-driven organization.
  • [You will...] Develop and oversee an innovative, cross-departmental onboarding process; in conjunction with hiring managers, provide orientation procedures to help new employees to align to Wikimedia’s mission and values, and equip them to be effective in their roles;
    • Director of Human Resources job advert, Foundation wiki
      • Imagine this instead: Work with hiring managers across departments to dramatically improve how we hire and welcome new employees, to make sure they understand our mission and values...
  • your primary objectives include the building and operating the new Tools and Labs Virtualization infrastructure using OpenStack and LAMP-stack technology and the on-ramping of the community to use this new platform
  • The project’s foremost objective is to bring about a win-win-win-situation
  • make sure everybody is on the same page... Create an action plan
  • We analyzed the data based on a number of outcome metrics.
  • I would like to ask Kat to also speak here, because she has written some lovely things on the mailing lists, that I think provide thought leadership on this issue.
  • socialize something
    • Used transitively for all sorts of things: semantic neologism for "inform about something in a friendly/sociable way". Interesting derivation from the brainwashing/subconscious implications of the verb socialize someone, i.e. integrate a child in society. It's still to be determined whether it's the community or the thing being brainwashed: the community integrates in the mindset of the WMF office's society, and/or the changes decided by the WMF (e.g. a new software feature) grow up like children learning how to behave in a socially acceptable way (to preserve themselves and avoid being beaten by the other children community in the kindergarten projects).
  • We are going to conquer the global south.
    • Toby Negrin at the 2015 Lyon Hackathon

Movement roles edit

Broader movement edit

  • Relevant educational communities perceive WEF-USCA as a valuable and integral partner in improving student learning and information fluency through Wikimedia classroom assignments. Benefactors and funding organizations value WEF-USCA and its work as a professional, innovative way to improve education and are providing enough financial and marketing support to sustain the organization's activities. The English Wikipedia community, as well as any other communities involved at this point, respect and actively participate in the program.
    • Education Working Group Proposal
      • The English Wikipedia community values prose that is "engaging, even brilliant, and of a professional standard". A necessary precondition of that is being able to understand it.

Candidates say the darndest things too edit

  • I stated in my release to Signpost that I move for a common financial accountancy and reporting model throughout the Foundation and Projects to move towards triple bottom line & lifecycle costing through all reporting of the Community and proposals for development, resource allocation and importantly, purchasing, etc. This includes triple bottom line impact statements on the necessity of travel and includes a lifecycle costing which subsumes greenhouse gas emissions. This would also necessitate retrofitting assets contained on the asset register currently in place where they are unsound, as well as a strategic aligning with all eco-friendly and sustainable technologies and processes in future.

See also edit