Okay - just had a long chat with some staffers in #Freenode. Here's what I've
come away with..
Essentially folks are right that this policy is very much in flux. Which leads me to
believe that some nudging from Wikimedia would be well timed.
They have agreed to reconsider WikiQueer's app - but that whole process has been shut
down while they review this policy - so that could be a few months. Personally I take
that as a good sign.
I think they're just not really clear how wiki communities work - so are not sure
which are within their scope and which are not. There is also a lot of internal debate
over what their founding documents mean. Some say they include open-content projects and
other say that was meant to mean open-source software only.
They were generally uninformed and unaware of how wikis operate - and were surprised that
there were "Wikipedia like" wikis beyond the Wikimedia umbrella. Which implies
to me a basic "cultural" misunderstanding that could be addressed.
I'd suggest we pursue the initial idea from Petr as a good first step. We should be
good stewards and outreach to their staff about our bot and tech related concerns - offer
some thoughts on if or how wikis fit into Freenode's mission - and find out what
resources they're in need of. I'm not sure if that should come from a WMF
staffer, one of the existing FN contacts for WM, a coalition of the willing, an owl with a
note, or..
-greg
On 21 Jun, 2012, at 5:04 PM, Sébastien Santoro <dereckson(a)espace-win.org> wrote:
On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 9:47 PM, Mr. Gregory Varnum
<gregory.varnum(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is anyone from Freenode on this list or
able to respond? I feel like they'd be open to the conversation and hearing general
thoughts from a designated group even before we know what carrot we'll offer.
>>
>> If any requests are a non-starter then it may not matter if we can offer
resources or not.
>>
>> I think investigating networks more receptive both to our bot needs and accepting
our partner wikis.
I don't understand why the wikiqueer community couldn't have its
channel while there are already communities channels like #gaygeeks
and #gaygeeks-fr.
Were it a channel problem (ie you can't have your channel on our
network) or a group registration issue (ie you can't have a group,
with cloaks)?
--
Sébastien Santoro aka Dereckson
http://www.dereckson.be/
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