Delphine Ménard wrote:
On 2/2/06, Robert Scott Horning
<robert_horning(a)netzero.net> wrote:
Now this is an interesting situation. Bureaucrats
and admins are asked
to "speak on behalf of the Foundation" in regards to enforcing policies
on each of the seperate projects.
When? How? Where?
Delphine
--
~notafish
I just got through dealing with one group, the Hesperian Foundation,
which was in the process of using Wikibooks to help with the
collaborative effort of translating an English language medical textbook
from English to Hatian Creole. See this page for more details:
http://www.researchonline.net/haiti/nodentist/index.htm
As an administrator at Wikibooks, I informed the project manager, John
Rigdon, that he should try to do this on Wikisource instead. As it
turns out, he is actually going to be creating the Hatian Creole
language Wikisource project in order to get this translation project
moving, and there is some additional Creole content that is likly to be
contributed as well. As a relative newcomer to Wikimedia projects, he
is still a little bewildered by all of the politics that are involved
with all of the sister projects and just wants to have some space to try
a wiki, and make some meaningful contributions as well.
I'm basically just holding his hand and get him through some of the
rough spots, while politely informing him of the various project
policies. This is a win-win situation for both his group and the
Wikimedia Foundation, as we now are going to have a significant
contribution to a language that has not been covered before, and his
group is going to have a collaborative editing environment that would
otherwise cost money that his non-profit group could not realistically
afford for any substantial length of time.
It seems to me that this is something anyone could do, admin or not,
and I wouldn't consider it "speaking on behalf of the foundation".
If I explain to someone how the US tax law works and hold their hand
to get them through the rough spots, while politely informing them of
tax laws and precedents, am I speaking on behalf of the United States
Congress? Of course not.
Of course, the foundation for the most part doesn't even *make*
Wikipedia policy, so this is even more removed from such a situation.
Anthony