geni wrote:
On 26/02/2008, GDonato
<gdonato(a)blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
I think Wikimedia having its own IRC setup would
probably be quite a
good idea. I agree with your point that it could remove bueraucracy and
irc.wikimedia.org already exists (albeit only for recent changes etc.).
It seems it would put the ball back in our own hands as it were. I doubt
there are any issues regarding expense or staffing (but I may be wrong)
so go for it, I would say.
G Donato
The procedural and legal issues are such that we would be insane to
run one. Procedurally that means that the IRC would then be regarded
on site which would make the politics even worse. Or do you really
want IRC policy and process?
The basics of IRC "policy" are pretty much already written at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_guidelines, anything else is common
sense and it should not be too difficult to sort out things procedurally.
Legally it would mean the foundation would have
certain
responsibilities towards the channel which given it's role as a
general clearing house for wikipedia gossip may be less than ideal.
This is the foundation which hosts a Top 10 website which allows anyone
to post whatever they feel like ;) The legal issues of that are surely
infintiely bigger
Using Freenode gives us denial both plausible and
legal.
Then there is the advantage that it is fairly easy to contact other
free content/software groups through freenode.
I'm not sure how often your average IRC user needs to do that.
G Donato