On 9/16/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater(a)mac.com> wrote:
>
> On 16 Sep 2006, at 08:01, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > I invite an open discussion here of the candidates. This is your
> > community, speak openly of who you trust and why.
>
> Well, I'll start off then.
I've missed a week of mail. What was the spur for this thread? Was
there a sudden drop in candidate discussions online? A rise in
disendorsement? An announcement of election results?
I recall discussions of a more general nature -- involving input from
the candidates -- the week that voting started. Those never quite got
off the ground... I suppose we could start building ad-hoc trust
networks now to identify statistically-sound community reps for the
future, but is this the way to go? (are trust nets in use anywhere
any more on de:wp?)
I do wish that more wikimedians -- candidates and community members,
in and out of election-time -- would write more often about their
interests and concerns, in ways that support direct comparison and
editing of one anothers' writing. One of the strengths of wikis as
media for conversations is how powerfully they allow subtle
point-by-point disagreement without requiring* the rhetorical dance of
ad hominems and clashing sweeping statements.
SJ
* ad hominems and sweeping statements are still allowed, but not
required; and regularly lose out to persistent subtle discourse. Of
course more memorable cases may be those where they do not...
--
Wikipedia is no longer a project or a club. It is a society and a
component of society, a supporting beam in a new addition to the
castle of civilization. Soon -- and for a long time to come[1] -- it
will touch every structure, every window, wall and fixture, from pipes
to minarets. It will influence decisions about community-building and
knowledge production, publishing and broadcasting, by proxy if not
directly.
Brief discussions about the future surfaced at Wikimania, last year
and last month. Other discussoins have surrounded the board
elections. The latter have a very particular flavor; and are likely
to end once the elections do. Other discussions have surfaced before,
largely in meta-space, and rarely with deep collaboration. It is a
shame that introspection, statistics about our communities and
ourselves, internal research efforts, have not been a larger part of
recent years' growth. It would be a further shame if the projects did
not find guidance in lessons of the distant past, in similar
organizations and initiatives of the recent past, or in similar trends
of the present.
We are doing the impossible, at a very rapid rate -- too rapid at
times for us to stop and collect our thoughts. Today it was suggested
that spending too much time discussing or thinking about priorities
and future direction is a distraction from building the projects or
writing an encyclopedia. In counter, here are three areas in
particular which deserve ongoing attention, and which will help the
projects scale another few orders of magnitude:
1. Discussion of the dreams, goals, and milestones for the projects,
foundation, and community
2. Discussion and launching of communal research projects to find out
more about the projects, communities, users and reusers
3. Identification and investigation of parallel projects and
organizations, now and in the past, to offer perspective
Three emails follow on the above topics. I hope the aftertaste of the
elections and the upcoming foundation retreat will encourage
addressing these issues in earnest.
SJ
Wikipedians speculate about the future all the time. And yet I say we
rarely engage serious discussion of priorities, dreams, timelines,
goals, and opportunity costs. Why is this? In part, it is because we
don't have detailed comparisons with other similar organizations and
situations; only hearsay and vague rules of thumb.
Threads and policy subpages about what should or should not happen,
with hypotheses about the results of community or policy or
organizational change, often go on for months and hinge on unknowns.
But people are far more willing to speculate absently about human
nature than they are to research what has happened to similar efforts
in the past.
Reading and learning about how other projects and international
volunteer efforts work, and how similarly bold historical efforts have
grown and transformed, can help turn these discussions from circular
arguments to analytical collaborations. This can also help avoid
"reinventing the flat tire".
These comparisons *should* be made. Fundraising; volunteer
attraction, empowerment, and retention; administration; handling of
software and article bounties; multilingualism; logo and trademark
licensing; partnership and promotion; selection of advisors -- these
are all general problems. Wikipedia is different in details, but
shares a great deal with the thousands of thoughtful institutions that
have dealt with these issues in countless contexts, since before the
first Wikipedia logo was a twinkle in the Cunctator's eye.
Unfortunately, these discussions tend to peter out and get lost.
Mailing list threads are dropped and never wikified -- as happened
with the "Wikimedia in five years" thread from last August, and with
the interesting Apache Foundation thread. Wiki pages are abandoned
and forgotten.
Help keep these discussions alive, and give them shared context. Here
is a page for gathering links to these discussions, and for
encouraging investigations into groups (such as the Red Cross) that
have been suggested many times for comparison:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Parallels
Do you know someone who works at a multinational volunteer collective?
At a major political campaign, grassroots news foundation, or a
branch of the UN? At a global NGO? Find out what they think the
parallels are between their organizations or projects and ours. Ask
them for documents and essays, or even for their take on the greatest
obstacles our projects will face in the near future. As with the
NetBSD essay, you may be amazed to discover how much of existing
discussions apply to our communities.
++SJ
ps - Reading over the discussions about Wikipedia's future that have
inspired or provoked me over the past few years, I noticed that
Anthere and Erik Zachte have been involved in, if not the initiators
of, a majority of them. Rock on.
pps - this is thread 3 in a 3-thread microseries. see also
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/010247.html
--
It's all been very democratic, yes, the community has posted its ideas and
voted on them. But what if none of the ideas were ultimately any good? I'm
worried about the trend to rather boringly just rework the Wikimedia logo.
I think the "submit ideas" phase should have lasted a lot longer, at least
until a few logos came along which had massive support, rather than the
sporadic support the others have had, with only mild majorities. Indeed, I
think the foundation should be more active in this.
What we've now ended up with is refining and voting on ultimately
substandard logos. That's my opinion anyway, but can any of you really see
the voted logos dominating the three projects?
The Wikisource/Wikinews (and indeed 'pedia most of all) contests came out
with some fantastic results. We should have waited for equal gems.
In a message dated 9/21/2006 6:24:23 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
2.718281828(a)gmail.com writes:
Those with better things to do will not read. Those who are willing
and able to write, please do so. The sooner and the more attentively
to detail, the better.
I thought we were busy writing an encyclopedia.
Danny
In Wikipedia we have sometimes the transfer of content among
different projects Wikipedia <--> Wikisource, Wikipedia <-->
Wikinews, Wikipedia <--> Wiktionary for example.
I don't know very well the status of all wikipedia but I am
following my personal experience.
But this usage is in in conflict with GFDL?
I could read here http://en.wikisource.
org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License some points which are not
respected like:
1.Preserve the section Entitled "History"....
2.Preserve the network location...
and so on.
IMHO it's possible to transfer but the original version must remain
in its original place (in this case it's a simple copy) or the
transfer is possible respecting some rules for example the transfer
of all history, of list of all author and maybe with agreement of
them.
If an article is transfered without taking care of all point listed
in the GFDL could an author request the reintegration of the article
in the original place? IMHO it is in its own rights!
Also the transfer of an article from a project in another is not
valid if the original place has got a place card who redirect at new
place where there is a modified version (adding also the lost of
history due to the transfer)!
What is your suggestion?
I ask because in a Wikipedia some people vote for transfer of some
articles which are accepted by the community in a previous call for
cancellation. In other words the article which are not cancelled
after some days are proposed for transfer.
Ilario
In a message dated 9/21/2006 6:43:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com writes:
Danny,
We are not writing an encyclopaedia. We are also writing an
encyclopaedia. It is just one of the things that we do. The Foundation
is NOT about writing an encyclopaedia. The Foundation is about enabling
projects like Wiktionary in many languages, Wikibooks in many languages,
Wikiquote Wikinews and ALSO Wikipedia in many languages.
Given that the election is about governing the Foundation it is highly
relevant that people can be explicit in what they aim to do. When people
want to write a platform why they should be elected, it is for the
people that read it to comment on it and maybe even inform the rest
about potential silliness.
NB It has been said both by Anthere and Jimmy that the Foundation is
/not /about Wikipedia when commenting on some of the initial platforms
of Wikimedia Foundation board candidates.
Thanks,
GerardM
Thankl you for the reminder, Gerard. Without it I would have forgotten my
15,000 edits in Wikisource over the past two months.
Wait ... you forgot to list Wikisource ... I guess that doesnt count.
Danny
Sorry, I've not followed this thread at start but I've read something
about Citizendium some days ago and I've a question... which is the
difference with Nupedia (except the temporal sequence)?
Ilario
----Messaggio originale----
Da: fallout(a)lexx.eu.org
Data: 21.09.06 11.50
A: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"<foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>
Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] Citizendium, a new venture, will "fork"
off from online encyclopedia Wikipedia
For a fork to really *take over* it would have to be multilingual
and
I doubt we'll see any fork in the nearest future that will start
with
even all of the major Wikipedia languages.
--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org
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