Jimmy Wales wrote:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
I have been eagerly awaiting Wikiversity for about three years now as it was an obvious synergistic project. I would be curious as to what the real holdup is with it. Are we afraid of hardware or bandwidth limitations? Are a bunch of self motivated learners to potentially radical and threatening to the status quo?
Perhaps the irony is that the board has deliberately chosen not to engage in "top down management" and to let this community "manage itself". This has a lot to recommend it, because the wikiversity proposal is a lot stronger for it.
But if you are really upset that this community-driven process takes so long, then instead of clamoring for the board to not micromanage, you should perhaps ask us to do so. I am quite sure that we could get Wikiversity approved and up and running in 2-3 weeks time, if we chose to run roughshod over the community to do it.
This is actually a very typical scenario, of course.
Although the community should ideally decide about things it is my feeling that that is more often than not an utopian thought. The problem is everybody tries to throw their opinions in a debate and tries to get attention to these opinions. This usually results in an endless debate. Many debates within our community therefor are already going on for 2,3 or more years. This because some people leave. Some people join and new views are expressed and the same debate is extended again. Because of this we never reach any conclusions to a debate. Which is one of the things that make people very tired of wikimedia (me for instance)
I feel that there are 3 solutions:
1) A top down approach. The community gets x time to debate an issue (say 1 - 3 months) after that the boards takes this debate into account and makes a decision and that is final
2) A variant of 1) The community appoints 1 or 2 discussionleaders. They will guide the debate in phases. Thesis->Antithesis etc. And will write a conclusion to the debate at the end. And present this conclusion as the community consensus and the board has to accept this.
3) The least feasible though I think an interesting option. People start to group themselves in parties and every party has 1 person as its spokesperson in the debate. This means that it will not become a cacophonia of voices and the debate might proceed faster. After 1-3 months the spokespersons should reach a consensus which is acceptable to most.
Hope someone reads this
Waerth/Walter van Kalken