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Streisand effect: Why were these comments censored from the blog?
  • And yes, it is definitely censorship not the spam trap.  Or "moderation" if you prefer.  But there is a big difference between preventing the kiddies from finding out Santa doesn't exist or whatever and erasing things to prevent others from seeing that sort of viewpoint being expressed.   Whether you maintain that you have the "right" to or not, the latter still reflects very poorly on whoever is doing it.

    It also raises questions about what else is being concealed from view.  Ironically, I would probably emailed whoever was responsible for moderating the blog to talk to them first, but there is not enough transparency for me to find out who that is.

    Here are the comments:

    Most recent, left on the Jul 19 post:
    "I should emphasize that all of us at Factor e Farm are full-time volunteers."
    You mean on-site, I hope.  The non-profit director is being paid 10% commission on the donations she brings in to a limit of $65K/y - more than twice the median American salary.

    And it says on the "scaling strategy" page on the wiki that the plan is to hire consultants at $15k per prototype for $45k per tool.  There is no problem with hiring people in itself and it does not IMO need to be glossed over, and doing so does you no credit.

      After being interested in this project for what, 5 months now, a post like this, while meant to be informative also highlights the widespread lack of meaningful transparency.  "We" and "us" clearly means the inner circle, or some fraction of it here, because I can pretty much guarantee that people outside it did not even know 90% of these things, even though they are not new, and it's not because they don't want to.  If you don't have time to be transparent that is fine and a legitimate way to run a project - but you are or are not transparent.   If you are not you should not be telling people you are, period, especially people who donate their time or money, who like myself will find out anyway the hard way.

    Of less fundamental importance, it is clear that unless something major is changed in the management style, hiring people and therefore large amounts of money will in fact be badly needed to succeed by 2013.  A look at the recent changes page shows 36 people modified the wiki in the past week, only  17 or so contributing directly to significant product development or organizational things (includes It, translation, etc.)   And then it is clear that the time spend was very small in most cases.  The total input from remote contributors aside from on IT which is visible on the wiki may well be less than 80 person-hours per week by all appearances, hard to tell though.  Would be nice to have real statistics, but from what I have seen, which is a lot, that is certainly roughly right.
     
    And no, it is not due to a lack of qualified people.  There are far too many projects like dancing rabbit ecovillage and Akamai village, and far too many such people that have joined or offered to help on OSE in the past only to be turned away by either apparent mismanagement or by the management (like Dawg), and the project has been blessed with far too much publicity to say it is due to a lack of such people in the world.  It's definitely a leadership problem I'm afraid.

    Lastly, your post is unrealistic to a degree that is not really fair to the readers.  Bringing in 4 mil in the next 1.5 years? What examples are there of that ever being done in a comparable situation?  Sounds pretty far fetched.  

    _______
    I don't see to have kept a copy of the post I left on the Organizational Development, May 18 post but I remember it fairly well I think so here it is from memory:

    This is both a relief and a concern to me.  A relief because with regards to transparency, there isn't any right now. Poor translucency at best.  And the  page epitomizes the attitude that has been taken so far, which is to say everything is transparent, and anyone who disagrees is by definition [not] "intelligent" enough to understand.  So hopefully the demands of getting 501c3 status will help clear that up.

    A concern because the whole nonprofit organization is also a way the government has developed to put a leash on this sort of enthusiasm.  Just look at greenpeace.  In Canada, I have heard for a long time they were not allowed to be a non-profit, and then they were allowed and IIRC the government threatened them with revocation of the status again - why? Because they were too.... political, effective, essentially.   The direct action campaigns, the strong speech and support for particular parties, none of that is allowed for a non-profit.  Greenpeace does what works, and it happens to be those things, which is why they are not allowed.  Political change necessitates upsetting the status quo and of course they will use whatever tools are at their disposal to fight back.

    It's a so-called moral hazard too.  The mere threat of loosing donations if you don't steer a wide berth around the sort of behavior the government - the status quo, basically - doesn't like, may have a major chilling effect on progress.

    (Note that was not part of the comment:
    the http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Transparency page includes this: "As money is spent, it will be reported in our budget reports. Anyone who questions our accountability will be pointed to the Transparency page. If they still question our accounting practices, they are questioning our integrity, and they cannot be convinced readily to be our friends. They are probably not worth pursuing as supporters because they lack the intelligence required to understand the scope of this work. "

    The budget reports, I would point out, were never even produced except once in Nov. (searched "budget report" and other terms).  Even your own inadequate definition of transparency was not met.

     
  • 9 Comments sorted by
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    DawgDawg
     
    August 2011
    That is laughable......There are some serious "top-down" issues that need to be resolved.  I think Marcin's young age is showing here.  His ego is taking over his life.  From what I hear, he refuses to let anyone close enough to advise him on such things.  He is intelligent, he will learn in good time.

    The Dawg

     "As money is spent, it will be reported in our budget reports. Anyone
    who questions our accountability will be pointed to the Transparency
    page. If they still question our accounting practices, they are
    questioning our integrity, and they cannot be convinced readily to be
    our friends. They are probably not worth pursuing as supporters because
    they lack the intelligence required to understand the scope of this
    work. "



     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    mjnmjn
     
    August 2011
    Sigh.

     
  • Sigh is right, though I'm sure you're not thinking what I'm thinking.  The Dictator for life model only works if the community can trust the dictator and his inner circle to do things right - practically and ethically.  This sort of thing says loud and clear that this project doesn't have that.  Now you know one reason why most people don't find it worth their time.
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    DawgDawg
     
    August 2011
    Like yourself gregor, I remember feeling a sense of deep frustration when I read that recent blog post from Marcin.  It is so full of fluff and propaganda that you just want to smack him and say "what the hell are you doing!?".....:)

    I was hoping some of this talk on the forum would have lit a fire under him.  But no such luck.  He seems to have no interest.

    Lets face it, he is doing whatever he needs to do to keep the money flowing.  It doesn't matter if any of it is true or misleading.  If it sounds plausible, and has the look of credibility, he's on it.

    I know some of you are thinking, "why don't these guys just drop it".  You know, if I didn't have some hope, I would be putting all my energy somewhere else, frankly.  The fact that I'm bothering to respond to this is because I'm hoping it will lead to change.

    The Dawg

     
  • @Dawg
    I see where you are coming from, but I really liked the post. I may not have agreed with everything he said and there were clearly some holes, but it did a good job of at least summing up his stance. He is committed to assembling all of the tools in the same place. I don't think that is so important, but it does seem to be the central goal and that was never really clear to me before that post. It was nice to just hear anything. Maybe that is kind of sad, but it was reassuring to see he is at least concerned about leadership and sincere in his efforts even if I don't agree with them.

    I say your strategy of starting a concurrent group is the way to go and I would live to see that trend repeated with lots of smaller local groups. I think that will get a lot more people involved without the paranoia associated with large organized efforts. Personally I think this site would do better as a social hub for open
    source hardware with a well organized repository. That excites me more
    than any one particular tool or even the closed-loop ecologies since I
    don't see myself living in ose-type village in the forseeable future. What is laudable is that OSE has a branding and will have plenty of testimonies, community, documentation...etc supporting it. That gives it a real advantage to widespread adoption. So already it has set a nice precedent for future groups and projects. As long as all the groups are networked so their efforts can easily be combined, this seems like the best strategy.
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    mjnmjn
     
    August 2011
    @gregor
    > Sigh is right, though I'm sure you're not thinking what I'm thinking.
    Your arguments are compelling.

    @dawg
    > I was hoping some of this talk on the forum would have lit a fire under
    him.
    I'm of the opinion that Marcin doesn't read the forums at all.  I suspect he considers it a waste of time better spent on other things.  It's certainly one way to stay out of arguments.  :)

    > I'm hoping it will lead to change.
    Unlikely, I think.  Marcin has articulated his plans and is moving forward with them.  People disagree with his approach, but enough do that it will continue to move forward, I believe.  There will continue to be turn-over.  There will continue to be bright, shiny faces appearing for a while and then fading away.  Meanwhile work on the GVCS will continue at FeF.

    @fitzsnaggle
    > I think this site would do better as a social hub for open
    source hardware with a well organized repository.
    It could go that way. There are efforts to unify and organize the wiki, especially around the GVCS-50.  While I don't agree with all of it, any organization is better than chaos.

    - Mark
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    DawgDawg
     
    August 2011


    Earlier when I spoke of damage to the Open Source community I was specifically referring to the loss of collaborators.  These special people that are willing to give freely are relatively rare.  If they have technical skills, they're even more rare.  It breaks my heart to see them go through the Marcin meat grinder one at a time.  I've been watching this for over a year now.  All of you posting here on my thread are where the action really is.  It's people like you that will make the real changes.  I am truly honored to be in your company.

    Another thing I've been pondering over the last few months is this idea of a "permanent" repository for all this work.  Maybe an independent entity?  I wonder if Wikipedia would be a good start?  Something like that should happen.  That way, if one group falls off the face of the planet (Arkfab), the work survives.

    I'll start a thread at OSRL on this.  I think it's important.

    The Dawg
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    mjnmjn
     
    August 2011
    @dawg
    I don't think wikipedia is the right place for this sort of thing.  ApropoWiki (or what ever it is called) might be a better place.  Also note that the Internet Archive does make a sweep through the whole internet every two months or so.   Things should be easier to archive once they are packaged up a bit.

    - Mark
     
  • @mjn http://www.appropedia.org/ I was thing along the same lines but was not sure which one.

     

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