---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org Date: 2009/6/16 Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons: Service project or not? To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org

OK, the question has popped up so many times, that I think it would only be fair to give it a separate topic on this list :)

Now I'd like to have a discussion about this, and not just assumptions. Let's not be childish and say "yes it is, no it's not" (which some of the discussion comes down to) but lets play around a bit with arguments.

This discussion is btw not new at all, I remember to have discussed over it several times, and I've had both opinions probably in time. Mostly this discussion comes up when a project (in the past at least several times this was the Dutch Wikipedia, as some might remember) felt that the commons community was damaging the content they uploaded there without them having a say over it. The even more important question is, however, when comes the moment when the two are in conflict?

I doubt any project actually cares whether commons has out of scope images (well, a few might, but that is actually commons people then imho, not wikipedians/wikisourcians etc), not what the categorization is like. As long as it works, they can upload their stuff, it is safe, and they can use it. The problems often came when a few "bad people" (paraphrasing it as it was received by the Dutch Wikipedians at the time, no insult intended) were damaging their content (at the time, it was for example about Coat of Arms-png's being deleted) and they felt not heard or helped by others.

I think that is currently a repeating pattern in some way. A smaller group, with all best intentions, decides to "harm"  a collection of content, and people feel attacked by that, and react in a not-so-positive way.

That is where the service project and the independent project clash. Were it merely service, the commons would abide the wish of the wikipedians (wikisourcians etc), were it independent, the Wikipedians would have bad luck and live with it.

So now please share with me, in those conflict situations, which should it be, and, most importantly, why? I'll believe service project is great in ideal situations, as would be independent, as long as everything goes fine. But in these border cases?

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