I have participated, or attempted to participate, in a number of FOSS projects over my career as a programmer, and I have a few observations which you may find relevant.
Sorry, but by a "high priesthood" system I mean the typical pattern of a tech organization, the same way that DP is organized, where a newbie starts at the "grunt" level, and by playing the game and following the rules advances to the roll of "Lord High Pooh-Bah." My only objection to this organization at DP is that they are not getting the right number people in each of the various roles, and don't seem to understand (or be willing to accept) what changes they would have to make in order to get the right number of people in any particular role.
Every successful FOSS project I have ever observed has started with the vision of a single individual
I don't believe that DP is saying "if one person can
And every (continuing to be) successful organization eventually must grow past that individual. proofread a text in 10 days, then 10 people can proofread it in one day," but they are saying "100 people can proofread it in two days." On the contrary, the problem is that an individual, such as myself, can create a decent book in about 40 hours work over the course of one month which consists of about 720 hours elapsed time. The average book passing through DP nowadays takes over 30,000 hours elapsed time, with an average of 20 volunteers working on each book. I think we know from previous analysis that doing a book through DP takes at least 1.5X as much hands-on time as doing it "solo." Whether that is a problem or not depends on what you think about volunteers and their time. I look at it and say gee, we could be getting an additional 10,000 books out of DP if we got the system tweaked right. That seems like a change worth doing to me. Now the fact that doing a book through DP takes 40X more elapsed time than doing it "solo" is that a problem or not? Obviously some people think that taking that long corresponds to "quality" -- a project needs to age on the queues like an old cheese. Other people like me find waiting for our projects to "go live" again for a few days or weeks once or twice a year a bore and a nuisance. Some DP insiders agree that getting "scooped" by others posting that which DP is still sitting on can be disheartening -- but there seems to be a misunderstanding for who there is to blame when this happens.
Your problem, Mr. Adcock, is that you believe you can change the vision underlying either of these organization through rational argument.
I wouldn't think that having a wrong number of people in any particular role at a particular point in time would be a big-enough deal as to qualify as a "vision statement". But if does then I agree this would be a problem. I would certainly agree based on personal experience that NFP organizations that run into difficulties are frequently not very receptive to rational analysis! "My problem", if we have to talk about my problems of which there are many, is that I submitted two books in good faith to DP which are now stuck there indefinitely after I contributed many many hours of my own time and tears, and I have no way to get those books back out.
GO FOR IT!
I am. I create books for PG "solo." Are they are high quality as DP? No, probably not quite there. Are they created much more efficiently? Yes, much more efficiently. I have created at least one tool that makes this much more efficient for me. Others are welcome to try it if they wish.