*Discussion forked from the thread that started with https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2019-May/047973.html* Hello Andre, I believe that this mailing list is run with WMF hardware and software, so I conclude that this is not a community mailing list any more than Wikipedia is a community website. They are both under the technical and legal control of WMF, and WMF can intervene at any time in a variety of ways, although the copyrights to the content usually are owned by individual contributors (or their employers) and in that sense the content but not the technical infrastructure is owned by the community. There are many social processes where WMF chooses not to intervene, and community members have developed varied and sometimes sophisticated self-governance mechanisms, but that does not mean that WMF has permanently gifted control of its infrastructure to the community or that this is a mailing list that is not run with WMF money. Maybe a way to think about the issue is that both WMF and the community share space on this mailing list, with hardware and technical services belonging to WMF, and content mostly belonging to individual contributors or to their employers. I think that WMF resources generally should not be used for advertising third party services, whether or not they are related to the subject of a mailing list. I would feel differently if this mailing list was not a WMF resource that is supported by donations that I think donors intend for the benefit of Wikipedia and the sister projects. I am more accepting of an on-wiki list of third party related services, such as the one that you linked. Also, I don't want to discourage good faith discussion of third party MediaWiki services, such as if someone asks for advice regarding which provider to select, but I think that the email announcement that started this thread is far removed from acceptable uses for WMF donor funded resources such as this mailing list. If someone wants to propose a change to the mailing list description, they can try that. My interpretation of the existing description is that advertising is not allowed on this list, and I think that is the way that it should be. On the other hand, I am not sensing much support in this thread for enforcing my interpretation of policy or my views of appropriate uses for donor-supported resources, so I won't press this issue further at this time unless I hear more support for my views. Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) On Thu, May 9, 2019, 05:49 Andre Klapper <aklapper(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: On Wed, 2019-05-08 at 22:57 -0700, Pine W wrote: Pine, I hope WMF Legal won't care and won't comment. They likely have better things to spend time on than telling a community how they may or may not define the scope of one of the community mailing lists. As a general reminder, https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Professional_development_and_consulting exists, is linked from the mediawiki.org frontpage, and welcomes edits (which has already happened in this case). andre