This was a while ago if you remember, we advertised a crit-self-crit form everywhere and collected submissions. and the reason we didn’t publish the criticisms we received yet is because, to be honest, they were pretty tame!

Which is pretty cool, it signals that our readers (and editors, as both were allowed to use the form) don’t have deep problems with ProleWiki.

We were also discussing the submissions with the editorship and the idea was to collect basically everyone’s opinions on each submission, and then make a unified statement out of these. This is still in progress.

In the non-editor submissions we note 2 reactionaries who just wanted to rant anonymously (real brave), and otherwise received the following:

• let non-editors edit (we’ve looked into this before and are looking at possible solutions, but yes we were already aware)
• making it easier to create an account, which can be interpreted in different ways. I assume they meant the vetting questionnaire, or at least included it in their request. Unfortunately we depend on this form only to decide whether to reject or approve an account request, so it has to be exhaustive. We’re aware that this can turn away some users, at the same time, if you’re going to be writing on an encyclopedia, writing a vetting form shouldn’t be much of a hurdle. At least that’s how we see it. But we’re always thinking about ways to tweak it.
• a couple requests to add or edit some pages. We can’t really force the editors to write on stuff they don’t want to (no mechanism for it that we want to enact). But I think we took care of one of the requests since it was a simple page edit? Idr entirely, it’s been a bit.
• someone just said “keep up the good work” thank you :)

Mostly I was disappointed that our biggest detractors, anonymous people on Twitter and Discord speaking in the safety of their own community, did not show up in this form! We specifically made it anonymous and advertised it as far as we could, but like I said, all criticism was very tame – as you can tell from the non-editor list above.

Where were the maoists decrying us as dengists? The ultras decrying us as trotskyists? And the hoxhaists decrying us as revisionists? This was your chance to tell us to our face without repercussions!!

I can only conclude that they actually don’t care all that much and just want to rant. I did add some of the criticism I came across online myself here and there to the form just so the editors could discuss it, but it’s not the same when someone has to relay the words versus the person actually explaining the issue in their own words.

The editors were actually comparatively more incisive. Relatively speaking. They made up the bulk of the submissions and mostly wanted better tools to do their job more easily or had ideas to improve our processes. Still, like I said, they were comparatively more direct with us, knowing that this was gonna be shared with the entire editorship also. Some of the submissions (only the interesting ones and removing my own):

• we don’t check account requests in other instances (not that there are many) and sometimes a request might sit there for a month before we notice it. Definitely a problem.
• Improving the discoverability of Library and Essays works, compared to “main” (wiki) pages.
• Getting more people involved in agitprop work.
• One editor criticized their performance, saying they’re not as active as they’d like to be.
• Figure out a way to make people who might not qualify for an account still be able to participate to some extent (that might have been mine, or not, I honestly don’t remember)
• Focusing more on the library (personally I feel it’s really starting to look like something! But I would like to simplify it, what I feared would happen is starting to happen and it’s starting to become difficult to navigate)
• One editor made a whole host of suggestions that all follow each other, kinda difficult to summarize but basically all strategic-level plans for the long-term.
• Someone suggested we make debate pages, there’s even a plugin for this. This would allow people to hear both sides of a struggle session and make up their own mind following the arguments.
• Moderate the discord more actively, which we’ve started doing. Some people start feeling too comfortable on that platform.
• Make more obscure (or less famous let’s say) content accessible, including writing pages on topics that are not necessarily being talked about. Like everyone has material on China for example (the problem is you have to know about these obscure topics T_T)
• Organize weekly get-togethers in voice chats to work. Like a study group if you’ve been to college, but for working on the wiki.

So like I said, comparatively more direct and deep, which is good. I would have loved for readers to open up more, but it’s also good to see that editors feel comfortable enough to raise this (some even left their name despite not being required)

We will probably open a more permanent crit-self-crit form and keep that one linked somewhere so people can more readily reach out; the one we opened for this session was closed after a month or two (I think it was 2) after submissions had stopped coming in, so we could review what we got so far.

And remember, you only have to fear self-crit if you have something to hide!