Jimmy Wales wrote:
Before this conversation veers off into speculation, I
would like to ask
people to be please be very specific about specific things that you
think the Foundation is doing or might be doing, that you think are
inconsistent with our traditions and community values. I know of
nothing, although of course we can discuss and quibble about details of
how various things are organized, etc.
--Jimbo
Specifically:
Stalling a firm go or nogo decision on Wikiversity after the proposal
was supported by 200/300 voting community members.
Wikipedia.com built a community and converted to
wikipedia.org on the
basis of a firm mission statement attractive to people who dropped in
and could find the URLs to the material again.
With a firm no from the board another nonprofit could quickly be
organized and the
wikiversity.org domain transferred.
With a firm yes successful critical mass should be just a few years of
hard work away.
The policies of
en.wikipedia.org evolved from active participation of
an interested community of volunteers. They were not detailed in
advance by a committee or rewritten for years (after a community vote to
proceed) as per vague feedback from the stacked Board that the proposal
just is not quite good enough to get started yet.
The Wikipedia community was also working within a dedicated stable set
of URLs and contending only with their own deletionists, not other projects.
This is a substantial drift from the original community of volunteers
and methods that created a successful
wikipedia.org.
regards,
lazyquasar