The one rule about WMF is you don't talk (bad) about WMF

[Ming]

So Ming's watchlist popped up this on AN/I: Incivility towards WMF employees at Wikipedia talk:Village pump (WMF) and when you look at Wikipedia talk:Village pump (WMF) (T-H-L), well, it did rather devolve.

[Poetlister]

Obviously, Wikipedia rules require everyone to show "civility" (as defined on Wikipedia) to everyone else. Why should it be necessary to treat WMF employees any differently from anyone else?

[AndyTheGrump]

Just another skirmish in an ongoing war for control. Bigger battles are brewing, I suspect, as the WMF attempts to impose its fluffy-bunny everyone-gets-hugs worldview on a 'movement' that in as much as it exists at all (which is questionable, if 'movement' is to mean more than a collection of people using the same website) generally doesn't share the same optimistic understanding of how the world works, and considers that telling people to go fuck themselves may occasionally be necessary if one is trying to build an actual encyclopaedia, or an approximation to it.

To my mind, 'civility' is like 'respect'. One should show both to strangers. Whether such civility and respect continues however, depends on how much they show to you, and to others. And people who (like the WMF with its latest aspirations for the 'movement', and its complete refusal to acknowledge that the 'movement' actually wants something else, or at least doesn't want what is being offered) fail to show respect, cannot expect civility. The English-language Wikipedia regulars do many things wrong, but being rude to the WMF isn't (in my opinion) one of them.

[No Ledge]

Results are in from the survey to decide a new name for the Foundation. The community has decided on W?F which is just too clever. Another Foundation initiative has blown up on them. Practice safe space and social distancing, and steer wide from that one.

Whose brilliant idea was it to announce, in the name of the Wikipedia movement, that the community had declared a certain article with social-justice relevance to be the "article of the week". Much to the surprise of the community, which felt disrespected and marginalized when they learned of this.

[Poetlister]

One does sometimes get the impression that the WMF staff are not always there to build an encyclopaedia. They have their own priorities, which may or or may not be admirable, but do not necessarily appeal to the people actually contributing to encyclopaedia building. And alienating those contributors is surely the worst thing to do. If they weren't WMF staff, they'd be wrapped over the knuckles for it.