Anthere-
However, setting up a wikinews the way you did it,
without prior warning
This is untrue. After the creation of
nl.wikinews.org, I wrote:
"If everything is OK, and the board is happy with this language being
set up, I will go ahead and create the other ones which have sufficient
community support. "
There were no objections.
without taking into account the strong opposition
which existed in the
french community
You agreed to this approach. You are a member of the board of elected
*global* representatives. I respect your unhappiness, but you have got
yourself to blame as much as anyone else for this outcome. Please take
some responsibility for your own actions. I am a powerless user. I could
not have created
fr.wikinews.org without the support of you and the rest
of the board. You had the opportunity to raise objections, to define
stricter criteria than the ones I used, to talk to me. You did not.
You write bitterly about "local community wish[es] crushed by
globalization". Now, I know that you like to play the defender of the
oppressed. But I've got news for you, Florence: By that nomenclature,
you're one of the oppressors, part of the global elite that makes
decisions for small communities. You have power, I do not. You can fool
some people into thinking that you were "tricked" by the clever and
manipulative Erik, but the reality is that I have got to thank you. You
made
fr.wikinews.org possible. Thanks a lot for that. I appreciate the
support.
People are doing great things on them, but even after
2 years, these
projects are still hardly resources. They will be great things later,
but right now, they still host small communities.
That's fine with me. Someone has to lay the groundwork. It's OK for a
project to start small and to grow later. Aside from that, I am still
skeptical that Wiktionary is at all feasible with the current software,
and think that Wikisource should be merged into the Wikimedia Commons to
be successful.
I've said the same thing to Delphine: There's no point at all in being
paranoid about bad publicity. Those who want to harm us will find
reasons to do so. No amount of off-wiki preparation will prevent a
slamming anti-Wikinews editorial. But to believe that any such editorial
could do us any serious long-term harm is very naive and underestimates
the intelligence and autonomy of our readers and editors.
Regards,
Erik