On 3/11/07, geni &lt;geniice(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Well, the point is to catch the reader by surprise and make them wonder what is meant by this apparently completely nonsensical statement. The advantage of tagging this as an essay is that I will hopefully be able to get away with taking this stylistic liberty. :-) <places finger on revert button> How about "We're in it for the long haul" or "We're building for the future"? -- Peace & Love, Erik DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees. "An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic

On 3/11/07, Michel Vuijlsteke &lt;mvuijlst(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: And conversely, "You can't delete anything that's already there." (in small print: We can. You can't. :)) Steve

On 3/11/07, Steve Bennett &lt;stevagewp(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I have made this point in exactly this way many times in person and observed the enlightenment on people's faces. Perhaps it is something that works better from face-to-face, but nevertheless, I'd be cautious not to rely only on "insider opinion" as to whether this line of argument "clicks" or not. "Byproduct of a system" sounds very tautological to me, kind of like "effect of a cause." But something about your criticism nevertheless rang true: "A deep commitment to quality", even if correct, sounds more like PR than a truly counterintuitive revelation. I've changed it now to the self-deprecating phrase "We are a bunch of quality-obsessed policy wonks", which I think conveys the same information. :-) My main point here is that people are often surprised that we actually have all those crazy policies & processes; they seem to often think that Wikipedia is basically operating by some minimal Darwinian ruleset, with anonymous editors assembling works quietly and truth occasionally rising to the top unpredictably. In presentations, I see a lot of surprise when I give people examples of AfD and FAC discussions, etc. I don't think that entirely captures the reality of the situation. It's not just about "getting it wrong", it's about our vulnerability to genuine bad faith editing which, as has been shown, sometimes _does_ remain undetected for months. It is unfortunately the truth that any article may be complete crap at the time you view it. There may be no sources to check, there may just be a 72 pt banner announcing the alleged sexual preference of a 14 year old high school student named Josh. Vandalism may, of course, be much more subtle. We must be completely upfront about this as long as we haven't addressed it (cf. stable version discussions etc.). This is not a minor problem, it is _the_ key problem for many people writing about or using Wikipedia. There are indeed many non-Wikimedia projects that could be mentioned here. The list of projects got longer than I expected, making it a bit hard to fit more mentions in. I'll have to tweak it a bit. Jimmy has a special community role in the _English_ Wikipedia, which is however not legally anchored in any way. The only legally anchored authority is that of the Board of Trustees and anyone it chooses to delegate legal powers to. Of course, it would be unwise to exercise that authority unless absolutely necessary. There is definitely some lingering confusion and some inconsistency about this, partially due to Jimmy's past double role as Chair and President of the Wikimedia Foundation (he is neither today). But that's the present situation. The admin misunderstanding is definitely common. There's probably an equal or greater number of Wikipedia readers who've never heard of admins in the first place, so I'm not sure it would make sense to explain it in the context of a list like this one. -- Peace & Love, Erik DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees. "An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic

On 3/11/07, Steve Bennett &lt;stevagewp(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Anything he does which the community permits him to get away with. ;-) IIRC, what he said is that the community is discussing it. People with _very little_ knowledge about Wikipedia. It's a lowest common denominator list. Thanks to Planet Wikimedia, I just saw a link to the revamped http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_Kit which goes more into "common misunderstandings" and includes the admin issue. -- Peace & Love, Erik DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees. "An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic

First off, kudos to Erik as most of the ten are quite well written and help to enlighten. On 3/11/07, Erik Moeller &lt;erik(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: I'd have to agree with the chorus here that #4 is likely too confusing because it's too technocratic. Read it again: "What you can do is make a copy of an article, and implicitly choose this copy to be the one shown to all readers by default. No existing copy is ever touched again, which allows us to backtrack as needed and to revert unwanted changes. It also allows you to refer to Wikipedia articles using something called a "permalink" in the bottom left corner -- a link to a copy of the article that will never change, for better or for worse." You're starting to talk about how a database works. Once you start talking database details to the layperson, you've lost 90% of your audience and, hence, the point. Also, I'm not sure what "the point" the reader should walk away with. Is it "Everything is preserved" or "Nothing is ever lost"? If so, change the point to be that. -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On 3/14/07, Simetrical &lt;Simetrical+wikilist(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I seem to recall the situation as mass confusion over whether the actions taken were "official" (err, "office"-ial) or not. But yeah, effectively, people (well, one person) were desysopped for opposing him. Even if they didn't actually mean to oppose him. And then the situation was clarified and the Ewoks danced. All of which served to reinforce the notion that Jimbo's role is clearly a very special one, and not merely the "voice of the people" idea suggested earlier. Steve

On 3/13/07, Simetrical &lt;Simetrical+wikilist(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: "Day-to-day" seems like an exaggeration. Jimmy steps into disputes relatively rarely, and they are not usually what I would call serious long term issues (with all due respect to friends of Mr. Peppers or owners of shiny userboxes). Ideally, I see Jimmy's role as that of the respected founder who heals divisions in the community by cautiously proposing compromises in difficult, heated situations. I think it's also fine for him to focus the attention of the community on an important issue for the purpose of brainstorming and consensus finding. His role, if you want to give it a name, is that of a representative "head of state" for the English Wikipedia, but without any legal basis. There are controls in place above & below him, and he has acted with remarkable restraint even before this was the case. Of course I don't agree with everything Jimmy says or does, but I don't think it's reasonable to characterize him a "dictator" of anything, certainly not now that his legal status is equal to mine, Kat's or Oscar's. -- Peace & Love, Erik DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees. "An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic

I wrote: But my edit got reverted, so I submit it here for consideration: No one can actually make a permanent change to Wikipedia. Anyone can edit Wikipedia, but what that does is to create a new copy of an article, which is then implicitly chosen to be the one shown to all readers by default.

On 11/03/07, geni &lt;geniice(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Yes. And the media *don't* understand it's all written by volunteers. I use the phrase "It's a volunteer-driven nonprofit charity. There's about ten staff who run the office and the web servers. But almost all of it's volunteers all the way down." This actually has to be said! - d.

On 11/03/07, Erik Moeller &lt;erik(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: Creative Commons isn't helping either. "Oh, we'd love this on Wikipedia, it's all Creative Commons!" YES, IT'S BY-NC-ND. ARGH. The trouble is that CC have monopolised the mindshare for "freer than all-rights-reserved" ... but pretty clearly couldn't give a hoot about actual free content. CC's aims are not only not our aims, they actively hinder our aims. This is ... somewhat annoying. - d.

On 3/11/07, geni &lt;geniice(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Yes, this is extremely common, I was glad they were listed first. This idea was very prevalent a few weeks ago with the mini "wikipedia is running out of money" meme. Judson (enwiki:cohesion)