The call for submissions currently says, "Position papers will be published for other Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018 participants to view in advance of the event." Will the general public also be able to read position papers in advance of the event? Will there be a mechanism for comments and rebuttals?
Topic on Talk:Wikimedia Developer Summit/2018
I am sure there will be on wiki discussions - and they will be explicitly encouraged.
As a follow-up: it would be nice if the community at large got a chance to read and respond to the various proposals before the committee made their decision, even if the window for review was necessarily very short. Perhaps some position paper the committee thought wasn't very strong would get a surprising amount of community response, or something which looked strong got a quick and devastating rebuttal from members of the community who would be affected. Or perhaps nothing significant would be said at all -- regardless, community participation would make the position paper selection process process closer to an selection of representatives by the community (mediated by the program committee). As Boss Tweed said, "I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating." It would be great if the community were involved in the "nominating" process of position paper review.
We are held to pretty intense non-flexible deadlines for coming up with a final participant list this year and it is unlikely that all position statements will be published for everyone in Wikimedia to read, review and comment on. We do have a good mix of people on the Program Committee and accepted position papers for all participants will be published on the event page under the participants section.
This year is a first test of this new model - you better believe that we:
a) will learn a lot of lessons this time around
b) will change for next time based on feedback and what works and what does not work.
c) are doing our best to be as fair as possible, ensure diversity, but also at the same time not attempt a really complicated process of review for the first year of this event.
Why won't rejected position papers be published?
Edit: To clarify, I think in many ways what we reject is more intresting than what we accept. I already have a fairly good idea about the types of ideas that WMF usually goes for; I want to see the crazy ideas that everyone rejects but are potentially unrecognized great ideas.
I think this is an interesting point, that we could definitely consider... I'll put it on the agenda.I
I don't think we can change the rules at this point. People submitted statements on the assumption that if they were rejected, they would remain private.
Reaching out to everyone individually to get permission could be a lot of work. Of course, anyone could choose to publish their own rejected submission.
I'm kind of confused where in the rules it said they would remain private if rejected. I was assuming that rejected papers would be public up until Rachel's comment, and the rules if anything seem to suggest that (All they say is "Position statements will be published for other Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018 participants to view in advance of the event."). Furthermore, its pretty common in the Wikimedia community for rejected things to be public (rejected wikimainia submissions, rejected grant applications).
Oh, I seem to be confused or mistaken. I'm pretty sure a draft of that paragraph said something like "Accepted position statements will be published", so my reply was based on that memory (or false memory). I agree that the current wording does not seem to imply privacy of rejected statements. At this point, I'll withdraw and let @Rfarrand (WMF) answer.
Subsequent to posting my previous comment, i submitted my paper, and the wording on the google form does kind of imply what you are saying.
Well, nothing's stopping us from creating a wiki page for folks to *voluntarily* post their rejected position statements. If the rejection notices aren't sent yet, they could include some brief text explaining the ambiguity in the initial prompt, and encouraging folks to post their position statements to Wikimedia Developer Summit/2018/Other proposals or something like that.
So the current plan is to publish both the list of participants and their position papers in advance of the event?
Yes