I'd like to say that indeed, I find GerardM proactive approach very positive. Ie "Do not give up, get your community to grow and
find out what you really need. And work at it."
Ant
GerardM a écrit:
Hoi, I think the worst we can do is fork. It will mean that we will not benefit from the economies of scale that the Wikimedia Foundation offers. These benefits are huge, with a project that is part of the larger community, you will be known and otherwise you have to struggle to get the same "facetime". You will be just another project struggling to get recognition. You will have to find programmers, you will have to find hardware, you will have to do all the hard work that is already done really well.
Take me as an example, I did not give up on Wiktionary, I worked hard to get an idea of what we should have (by putting in a lot of work) I got some community going and learned that we need one database to rule them all .. :) I discussed this and learned about Wikidata. This is the necessary building block for the "ultimate wiktionary". I found someone to program it, I found someone to pay the programmer and, the development has started. Wikispecies will benefit from this if we get enough traction (read also but not only money) to make this happen. I have uploaded some 3000 soundfiles and now the upload screen is uploaded to such an extend that I can upload a Dutch pronunciation in a fraction of the time.
My point to you is: Do not give up, get your community to grow and find out what you really need. And work at it. My point to the list in general is, there are many things that need doing We need resources to make the things happen to grow the projects and communities other than Wikipedia. When we agree to have all these projects and communities, we have to invest in their well being. It is a defeat of who we are when we get a fork because of unresponsiveness. It is certainly a pity when we CAN hire programmers to create the desperately needed functionality.
An example: It is easier to upload Dutch, English, German soundfiles than Farsi soundfiles I can do easily 10 times more words in the same time. It upsets me that a soundfile obscures text in Hebrew, Arabic or Farsi because of this stupid symbol that is seen because Commons is seen as an external resource.
I want to have dia shows when we have too many pictures for a subject. I have ideas about "language immersion training" it needs some software to allow for different target languages. Those are only my ideas.... there are so many even better idea's....
We can get money for functionality, we can get money for servers. We just have to ask. That is why the Foundation can be such a powerfull organisation. It can be an enabler. That is in my opinion what we have done brilliantly, given the outrageous success that Wikipedia is. We just have to work hard on making the other projects a success too.
Define projects, define functionality, get a community interested in change find money, find programmers. And let's make things even better..
One thing you cannot do is expect others to do the work for you. If you cannot do the programming, find someone who can and who will. If you do not have the money find someone who does. If you cannot define your needs, find someone who can because without a well defined need you are snookered and, on your own it will be only worse,
Thanks, GerardM
On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 06:35:24 -0800, Amgine amgine@saewyc.net wrote:
In wikinews there has been an ongoing discussion regarding the unresponsiveness of the mediawiki team to issues considered critical to the project. This has now become a discussion regarding a fork of both hardware and software, and contributors are actively working toward doing so. I don't think this is the best choice, but it is beginning to look like the only choice.
Amgine _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l