--- Aphaia aphaia@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/12/06, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
osar's ideas as outlined below are far too general
to
It would be far too large to be effective. I
can't
see how a group of more than 20 people max could
be
useful in an advisory role. And I have no idea
what
"supervision of the projects" actually entails.
Any
duties I can think of that could be considered supervision need a group no larger than 13.
It can be representatives of the largest part(s), like the English Wikipedia is the largest and perhaps most active, and most of active members of this mailinglist are its regular, and I agree it will be efficient, but at the same time it can happen such body of representatives fail to representative the broader population of Wikimedia project editors (like Enlgish Wikipedia editors are less than the sum of editors of all other projects). If it aims to reflect voices of users in a systematical scheme, not as well current sporadic and relying on personal relationships, it would make a sense. But I'm afraid it isn't at all the representatives of the entire Wikimedia project community, neglecting the majority of editors who are not involved into foundation activities.
-- Aphaia aka Kizu Naoko email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com
I certainly don't want to see an advisory group of 50% en.WP editors! However such token represntation as proposed in the Wikicouncil plan would be of little practical benifit. It would be better to appoint (or nominate a short list for election) an advisory board with an purposeful effort to include editors from both all types of sister projects and communities of different sizes while keeping the number of people within reason. Another option is to encourage different projects to each form their own sort of council and each can endorse ideas or write proposals with the unique goals of each project in mind. Those are just two rough ideas, there are certainly many other alternatives.
I believe it is most important that the input of small languages and non-pedia projects is taken into conderation in any such advisory council. Not that every editor is given proportional representation. The latter would either be too much dominated by en.WP or else too large to offer useful and timely advice. Honestly the concerns of en.WP are being heard every day and would still be heard if they had not a single seat on such a council (I am not suggesting that!). The real need for such a council is to find out the needs/opinions of the smaller projects/lang. communities which are not currently being heard.
Birgitte SB
P.S. If anyone believes the needs/concerns of en.WP are not being currently responded to by the WMF, please correct me now.
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