On 10/10/07, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
On 10/9/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
Certainly the track record of selections is far more appealing to *me* as a jetsetter than as a Wikipedian... and as long as we're still looking at airfare well over $1000/person (which wouldn't be the case for me traveling to canada, mexico, or much of western europe), my money would be better spent contributing to other non-profits and traveling to regional Wikipedian events. (And certainly, I don't find Egypt appealing, with its poor track record of intolerance and mistreatment of female travelers who are foolish enough to violate Islamic norms)
Agreed. Is there anything stopping people from organizing an event somewhere that isn't so expensive? I'm all for having Wikimania's in exotic locations every year, and I'm sure the people that go have a great time, but I don't really see myself paying that much to go to a place that has such a bad reputation re gay people...
It would be cool to have an actually useful conference. Since so many people that work on Wikipedia, Commons etc are English speaking when the conference is in places like Taipei and Alexandria it seems like it's more for fun than anything worthwhile for me, being primarily interested in enwiki.
For the record, the biggest group of attendees to the Wikimania2007 came from Taiwan. What is the speakers' concern is a different matter. We cannot force speakers to choose their topic. Or it will hurt our diversity. And one of purposes of the conference is to exchange the experience and thought - I have nothing wrong to hear about Enwiki experiences, while I am not terribly active on that. And there were also reports from other wikis: zhwiki, eswiki, dewiki or jawiki [=my BoF] ...
And I would add, while the English Wikipedia is the largest project among us, it is not the all we need to take consideration. As noted, Wikimania is for the community at large, not for English Wikipedia only.
Also having the Wikimania doesn't hinder to hold a local confernce. See the Chinese Wikipedians, they held a conference in Hong Kong last year three weeks after Wikimania. Now they are preparing the next annual conference. Dutchs do the same thing - in this month they will have their national conference. French had or will have their first one this year, if I recall correctly. German hosted one too, in this early summer. English Wikipedians in any country can hot it, on their behalf, just other people do and will do. But it is up to the local community, and not directly related to Wikimania, which should be an international conference reflecting our major global concerns.
I know that's not the only goal of course, and I wouldn't want to stop having them in cool places, and places that people in various geographic locations can get to. What I'm saying is, why not have another conference that focuses a little more on the actual population distribution of the people that actually use the sites?
Judson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion
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