Values/2016 discussion/Transcripts/M

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1	== your three values ==
2	=== 1 ===
3	Preservation
4	This value came from a place of questioning the word disseminate in our current Mission Statement and also discussions/talks that I participated in at Wikimania MX. Does the desire to spread knowledge impact our ability to preserve and collect other less globally dominant forms knowledge? If preservation is put front and center, as it sort of is now as stewardship in a way, perhaps it will lead us to further question this global dynamic.
5	Empowerment
6	Perhaps a complement to preservation, emphasizing less of a paternalistic role (paternalistic may be too loaded a word but I couldn’t think of an alternative in this moment) and more about giving communities what they need for the preservation of their own bodies of knowledge in and under their own terms.
7	Humility
8	As a tech heavy organization, I worry sometimes—especially after the whole Knowledge Engine thing—that we get too caught up in the hussle and bussle of the Silicon Valley tech world and forget that our primary mission is about education, not proliferation of technologies—the latter to me is just a means to an end and doesn’t always deserve aggrandizement in its own right but has a tendency to go there, an allure.
9	=== 2 ===
10	Inclusiveness
11	This value expresses itself at many layers of the WMF.  First, our vision is inclusive with all people in the world.  We encourage diversity of forming communities around the world.  Our work and mission is based on this value.
12	To me, Inclusiveness includes the idea of transparency and shared power.  I think of it as an improvement to transparency, since inclusiveness implies shared work throughout a project, and transparency can be left to reporting at the end of a project.
13	Initiative
14	We have a remarkably complex organization that no one leader can fully comprehend and make the best choices for in a top down manner.  We also have a collaborative structure with our communities and volunteers.  This makes top-down leadership next to impossible, and requires lower level initiative to drive successful action and projects.
15	Service
16	Relates to our mission and vision-driven aspirations that drive many of us here at the foundation.  It also applies to working with our affiliates as enablers and coordinators of positive change.
17	To me, service also encompasses collaboration, community, and cooperation.
18	=== 3 ===
19	Civility: We work online, where a lot depends on communication. In order to achieve our mission, we need to make sure our discourse is always civil. Being a community that is merely "technically" open, or open on paper, is not enough. We should make sure all of our activities are civil and friendly for everyone.
20	Stewardship: Volunteers and donors entrust the Wikimedia Foundation with significant resources, like money, goodwill, and the central components of our projects. I think we have a strong duty to be good stewards of these resources.
21	Collaboration: Wikimedia is built on a good model of online cooperation. For example, we don't hire writers for our projects, we invest in supporting the people to work together to write. I think this is because our method of working is as important as what the work achieves.
22	=== 4 ===
23	“Why”:
24	Equality/Justice - making our knowledge freely available, and giving everyone a voice is essential to erasing inequality.  Inequality by birth sucks.
25	Education/Empowerment - empowering through knowledge is powerful, sustainable and beautiful because it cannot be taken away, is often self-directed, and is intensely individualized (it’s in your head).
26	Truth - The truth is hard to nail down, but what is truth is very important and has important personal and global implications.  Wikipedia offers this through a diversity of voices and collaborative framework. That is a big “why” for me.  I often am cynical about the people who don’t care if anyone reads it, but if you take away the first two, I think this is a value in and of itself.
27	“How” (this was the wrong homework I did: more like guiding principles):
28	Integrity
29	Collaborative - partner with the community
30	Neutrality (Pluralism/tolerance/open-mindedness)
31	Meta: universal (can speak to this)
32	=== 5 ===
33	Collaboration -- A spirit of working together to both determine what we want to do as an organization and how. Thinking holistically about our goals and priorities as an organization -- how each of our individual parts is working toward that goal. What we can each bring to the table to accomplish those things. Trusting each other’s expertise to do their part.
34	Understanding -- A desire to understand -- both in terms of the general spirit of understanding the world around us through the content we engage with on the sites, but also to understand where people are coming from, both those that we work with and those who we serve (users, readers, editors, etc.).
35	Approaching everything we do with the desire to first understand, not diminish, change, etc.
36	Openness -- Being part of a much larger puzzle, sharing our learnings/work, and learning from others. Feeling authentic about the work that we do, being open about what we do and how we do it.
37	=== 6 ===
38	Inclusion - We are in this together, we can’t represent the world if we can’t include everyone amongst the foundation.  The more diversity of mind and background - the stronger we will be and the stronger our work will be.
39	Caring - Care for each other and what we do.  We are here because we are passionate about free knowledge.  We need to care about our work and we need to care about each other.  Caring brings respect and collaboration.
40	Excellence/Quality - Do the best we can, giving it our all, but not seeking perfection.  We have to leave room to grow, make mistakes, and learn from them.
41	Notes on descriptions:
42	I focused on the why.
43	Equality - giving everyone a voice. Equality is important because inequality is bad. I can’t break it down any more. It’s a reason to go to work every day. Equality is justice.
44	Education and empowerment - by itself it’s a reason to get out of bed. Education is empowering. Say more about why you’ve paired these two. Empowerment is for greater equality. It’s about independence. What are the things we want to be equal in? It’s not equality of height or smell or sight. It’s about equality of power. Education does that.
45	I strongly like this association you’ve made. If you look at society it’s all about education and it is empowerment. You can be charitable and create a dependency, you are going to educate them as that gives them autonomy and power and independence. Google maps example, “people don’t get lost anymore. And they can explore because they know they won’t get lost” a different sense of education. It’s about your life, but also understanding the world around you. It sounds like there is a curiosity. A desire to understand. Not authority and not required. A desire to explore and understand. You are coming with a desire to understand.
46	The editing case is overthrowing hierarchy and writing the knowledge they have. It’s such an important counterpoint to IP and patents.
47	I’ve always liked that teachers have dissed Wikipedia. We are so fundamentally education that even educators are jealous. We’re too cool for school.
48	When I think of education one is paternalistic. I bestow this knowledge onto you. Then the other is education as a practice. Empowering people to practice education in their daily lives.
49	Truth: even if no one ever read Wikipedia we serve an important role in creating the record and the value of having so many voices integrated into.
50
51	Education is the why for me. Knowledge and information and education. If this is just about the why.
52
53	Mine were about the how. What are the things that we cannot change and still be us.
54	Civility - I see it as part of my work I see it on the listservs. I would like it to be unfailingly friendly and welcoming. Assume good faith, but civility sums it up better. Being open. It’s how you treat people. We have been doing great at so many things for 16 years. But we haven’t done civility. If we’re not being civil, that is not Wikimedia. Make a strong stance like that.
55	Stewardship - I was looking for something about efficiency. We need to act like someone who has a duty to do something. Since we are dealing with donor money and volunteers who edit all the time. We owe them a duty. It’s more about the duty. We owe to the public, the donors, volunteers. We are like a trustee. We don’t waste. We don’t go down our own personal paths. This is not a resume builder.
56	Collaboration -  we work together to solve problems. They are other more efficient options, but we don’t choose them. It’s more empowering to work together.
57	I don’t think we could subtract these.
58	I think civility as a value is important. We kind of get used to how people interact. Civility is also a spirit that you bring to the table or a mindset. A willingness to look at it with good will. There is a public service if you are an elected official. I’d like us to hold that bar.
59	I think we should have a civil space. No one here should be required to deal with jerks. It’s tough. All of us are exposed and this means that we have to hold Wikimedia to a higher standard. “If something is not civil, it’s not Wikimedia.” We should advance that idea.
60	Civility is a required qualification for collaboration. It’s already messy. But we’re not going to accept side effects of people getting hurt.
61	Is there a dark side of civility? It can shut down passionate dissenters. I’m not trying to say that we should allow abusive people. It can carry to a protectionist extreme. I work with a lot of people from a lot of different countries. Polite is different in different countries. Language and cultures across the world.
62	Civility can be used to silence people. It has to have truth in it.
63
64	Inclusiveness is the core. I see it as being fundamental to our vision and mission. We seek to reach out and build communities in every language. Our objectives are so inclusive. It goes further in terms of the collaborativeness, it requires inclusiveness. We need to work with the communities. We need to include them. We benefit when we include others. It seems like a top to bottom org value from the biggest to the smallest.
65	It supersedes transparency. If you include people. Transparency you can interpret as “we let them know what we did”. You can’t have inclusiveness without transparency.
66	Initiative. Org our size in the product sector. They produce one product. We have so many projects, programs, initiatives. If I go to All Hands, so much going on. We can’t understand everything that’s going on. We are incapable of top down leadership and being successful. Initiatives where things come from with teams and experts and run them up the line to leaders. Creating ideas and pushing forward. Structurally we need this as a value.
67	Service relates to our mission. When we think about our affiliates, volunteers, at the minimum by providing a platform. Helping them resolve disputes or providing resources. We’re too small to do it ourselves.
68	When you have service, you have collaboration, cooperation and community.
69	Did you mean initiative on the individual level? Yes. People on the teams can see the issues, the needs, and the possible solutions. And they need to push that issue up. As it can’t be seen from the highest level. Because we have so much surface area in terms of projects. There are not enough eyes. When that happens, I see great results.
70	Is the responsibility on the individual? A team is the best. Because we know what the needs are. And how we might solve this. So that the next people up can understand it. It would be cool to take risks and experiment. A lot of times there are people that do it, but they do it anyway.
71	Distributed decision making. I argue that we cannot have effective top down leadership.
72	Inclusiveness, I wanted to add, when you were making the distinction between transparency and inclusion, one other distinction that came to mind, it’s about making space for everyone to feel included. It’s also inviting them to come and join.
73
74	Collaboration - the way I see it shape out is the spirit of working together collectively. Thinking holistically about our goals and priorities. If we just look at one goal as a team without looking at the bigger picture, it’s not always the most effective way to collaborate.
75	Understanding: I framed this as a desire to understand. Both in understanding the world around us, but also making it a priority to first understand when we approach anything. How are they thinking? First wanting to understand.
76	Openness and authenticity - being part of a much bigger picture in sharing our learnings and work as an organization. It also ties back to feeling authentic about the work that we do. We’re excited to come to work everyday. Open internet, open licensing, but there is also a philosophical component. Transparency ties in, but for me openness takes a step further. Communicating and being receptive to input.
77	Openness seems like more of an action.
78	The philosophical component - it’s more proactive in the sense of how you approach and talk about everything you do here. I like feeling that I can be authentic and it’s true to my voice, but also true to the organization. Being comfortable and aware of who we are and what we do.
79	I like openness more than transparency. Transparency is something you bring up with it is not there. When something is missing. Openness is something that I can. I chose openness because it was broader and has that two way component to everyone. Making things freely available.
80	We would have to clarify the word open, disambiguation problem.
81
82	Inclusion - call out the more we can include. The more diverse minds, we make a much stronger group together and the stronger our work will be. There have been so many studies. Diversity is some of it, but you have to include.
83	Caring - brings collaboration, each other, what we’re doing, we see it as so fundamental as who we bring in on the team.
84	Excellence - doing the best we can but not seeking perfection. Not analysis paralysis. The importance of growth. Something that is embedded in staying current, so you are learning. Staying curious: always growing. Not stagnant. Is this as much about passion as it is about perfection? It’s included, but I’m talking about quality of work. But if they are not doing it well, the passion is misdirected. Quality.
85	Does this tie in with service and stewardship? Yes, when we have hired without that mindset it doesn’t work out so well.
86	Comedy - it helps people to connect and to balance when things are tough. If you have that sense of humor with each other. It gets us through so much.
87	On the comedy front I’m reading about dog behavior, we both continue play into adulthood. I like the term curiosity. It’s playful. You never want to grow old. It’s getting lost down the rabbit hole. How many places you can go with just curiosity. Youthfulness of mind.
88
89	Preservation - stewardship was close to this. Preservation I think about actively rescuing things from extinction. How knowledge in one form can become dominant and displace another. Preservation being capturing things before they are victims of that dynamic. Languages that go extinct. It captures a very specific form of that knowledge that even when translated is lost. Gather it. Stewardship is the natural second step. You have the duty to keep it safe.
90	Wikimania Mexico impacted me. So many good talks about globalization. And normative knowledge and the active dissemination of knowledge. That’s what brought that up.
91	Empowerment it’s like a follow up once we have identified that dynamic. When we see English displacing, what is the natural next step? Empower them to preserve their forms of knowledge.
92	Humility - i think about this in a few ways. Lack of ego or containing it. Or when engaging with community. Being ok with someone challenging your conceptions. It was important to me in the last year, the tech world is over aggrandizing, that it is valuable in its own right and the constant need to check ourselves. A way to operate day to day that we are serving our mission.
93	Humility made me think how we at the foundation cant go everywhere and fix everything. It’s not us coming in and fixing everything. It implies listening. You are receptive. It was connected to knowledge for me.
94	Preservation, we over emphasize the dissemination over the quality. I don’t think we have a stance. Was it relating to power for you? It’s an open question for me. We are in a position of power. Is that … can we relinquish control? Can we avoid paternalism?
95	Federation and decentralization of power. An aspect of our project has preservation built into it. A valuable historical reference. Revisions. You can see the record in time. There is a future value of our project that we don’t realize it. To see the perceptions in that time.
96	Hard pressed to trade for the values we made in 2009.
97	Great to hear everyone else’s view.
98
99	== why are those good things? do they enable other good things? are they intrinsically good? ==