[Foundation-l] It Has Begun Re: Appropriate surprise (Commons stuff)

On Sun, May 09, 2010 at 04:17:29AM -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote: == It has begun.== En.wp has moved -and the motion seems likely to carry- that all images deleted by Jimmy Wales on commons be reuploaded to en.wikipedia. This weakens Commons politically. In addition, they have forwarded a request to commons to hold ALL editing for the time being. (This request seems unlikely to carry, unless we get a stampede that the inter-wiki diplomacy can't keep up with) Where en.wp leads, others are sure to follow. == Potential Consequences == What was not understood by the people involved in the commons-action is that they have inadvertantly hit thousands of pages, on perhaps as many as ~100 wikis, in as many countries. This is not a storm in a teacup. Let's be explicit about potential consequences -if no action were to be taken-: * Commons might be shut down or much reduced, due to demands and actions from it's customer-wikisa. * The foundation might fragment, as local chapters take it upon themselves to host content safely away from foundation control. == Why it probably won't be SO bad == That sounds pretty alarming, when put in plain text like that. However, there are several mitigating factors :-) : * Obviously, commons is currenly doing a lot of diplomacy and damage control. [*] * The affected wikipedias themselves are also doing damage control and diplomacy. * Some chapters themselves are starting to wise up to the situation. (I'm not up-to-date on exactly what is happening there. Can someone provide more info?) * <Some> of the board members, and several of the "old school" wikimedians have jumped into the fray and are cooling things down. == The role of the board == The board is clearly not competent to intervene directly in the management of local wikis. (least of all wikimedia commons). We shouldn't expect them to be. Their task is to deal with foundation matters, that is their remit. Direct intervention in Wiki-communities must be considered outside their remit. To prevent some of the unpleasant edge cases from occurring, I think that -in the best case scenario- what we need is something along the lines of an immediate blanket apology from the board, to the effect of "sorry, we're only human, we panicked, we didn't mean to cause harm, it won't happen again". But let's be constructive too: In the same message, the board might want to explain the fox news situation, and encourage people to work on it carefully and properly. I would like to point out that the board's position and power is somewhat precarious at this point in time. They need to move quickly but *carefully*, should they wish to retain it. The cannot afford to get back on this in a few weeks. I forsee a few emergency midnight sessions... ;-) sincerely, Kim Bruning [*] This is where I've been helping a little too, via IRC. -- [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment] gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key FEF9DD72 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A 01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72