On Jan 20, 2008 7:10 PM, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 1/21/08, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Games in userspace are a perversion of the
purpose of WP. If its still there
much longer, I expect to find it at MfD. There's self expression within our
context, which is good, and there's general use as a personal website,
What I think is important about the "nothing not project related" rule
is that it affects everyone equally. It's not like we ban board games
but allow collaborative novel writing or something. We're here for a
purpose, so we stick to that purpose.
A shared purpose is fundamental to a healthy community. This is one of
the reasons that I argue that common's community tends to be more
healthy and less fragmented than enwp: The purpose(s) are more clearly
and uniformly understood and shared by the regular participants.
Interestingly, there is not, to my knowledge, a single
off-WMF site
where "the wikipedia community" hangs around and does non-Wikipedia
things. Does that tell us someting?
Because in the context of distance-less online interaction purpose
*defines* community. Without the purpose, there isn't a community. So
the only place I'd expect to more than a smattering of Wikipedians is
on another competing Wikipedia like project, and that pretty much
seems to hold true.
On the original subject, I thought the clear rule is that userspace
material had to be arguably directly related to the users project
involvement. A reasonable amount of background and socializing
materials are okay since they help forge friendships and tighten the
community, but ultimately Wikimedia != Free webhosting. Including too
much outside the purpose risks diluting the community and creates more
fragmentation.
If someone wanted to have userspace 'improve wikipedia' games, on the
other hand...