User:Valereee/Elephant

My opinion on the recent mess
I’ve followed events closely and with growing dismay. For me the issue wasn’t whether what WMF did needed to be done – I can’t know that, because I don’t know the details -- but how they handled it. I’m willing to accept that there are legal and confidentiality issues that can’t be shared outside of very small circles. I’m willing to accept that there are instances in which a decision can’t be left in the hands of the community. But the level of opacity was breathtaking. We are volunteers here. Our mortgages and retirement accounts don’t depend on this. None of us need to leave with a positive reference. And yet without us, the project dies. Corporations can get away with treating employees like mushrooms, but with volunteers that just doesn’t work. It’s staggering that it apparently occurred to no one that this at a minimum called for carefully thought-out communication and advance buy-in from someone with a high level of community trust.

Why I didn’t hold off
The RfA had been planned for this time because of my schedule. After the WMF action I had concerns that an RfA now would seem tone deaf, as if I didn’t care about this issue or worse didn’t think it even was a big deal. I do care, and I think it’s a very big deal. I respect very much those who decided to make their level of protest clear by resigning and am grateful to them for it; I believe these resignations of highly-respected and experienced admins helped/continue to help WMF see they need to act in a way that addresses the community’s concerns, and I hope all of them will be back soon to request their tools.

I believe in Wikipedia, and I am cautiously optimistic this will get worked out. But I also know that this process could take months to fully resolve, and even then there’ll be some who won’t consider it fully or satisfactorily resolved; we’ll never get to a point where everyone is 100% happy. In the end I decided to go ahead. I’m aware that some have interpreted it as crossing a picket line or even strikebreaking. I’m distressed by that -- as the daughter of a union steward, horrified, actually -- but unlike most oppose feedback in RfAs, it’s not something I can work on. It’s something I’ll just have to live with. The idea that I was somehow exploiting the situation frankly never occurred to me and makes me want to vomit; I’ll just have to live with knowing at least one person thought that about me, too.

I have no beef with anyone who disagreed with my timing and !voted to make a statement. I support you absolutely in your decision.

Why I didn’t make a statement
I wondered whether I should make a statement with my opening questions. I even went through the most recent RfA, which had been withdrawn just a few days before, to see if anyone had mentioned the timing. None of the 80+ opposes mentioned WMF. The situation was referenced in a couple of the opposes as a concern over whether the candidate had the experience to handle volatile issues, but that was about it. It was an RfA that was destined for NOTYET, so there was plenty for opposers to discuss as a way to provide feedback to that candidate, but still, not even a single mention of this elephant I assumed would have been in the room. When I saw that, I wondered if maybe I was just borrowing trouble, and whether maybe an RfA wasn’t a good place to bring up politics, even to address an issue everyone was thinking about. After the first few opposes and neutrals did directly reference it, I wondered again if I should make a statement, but I didn’t like the idea of making an unasked-for point to opposers from what amounts to a bully pulpit, so I decided my only choice was to see if someone would ask about it. Clearly no one did want to ask me about it.

In retrospect I have no idea whether a statement would have been useful for !voters. I think the oppose who suggested there was no right answer is probably correct, but at least people would have been clear that, from my viewpoint, my RfA was intended neither as a political statement nor a statement of apoliticism/apathy. It was just a straightforward offer to help maintain what we’ve built. I apologize to anyone who believes any of my decisions caused harm.

--valereee (talk) 16:51, 7 July 2019 (UTC)