I'm very pleased that the technical solution I suggested and helped develop with Ilya has been implemented on Wikinews. The fact that it had been discussed and was in development before you changed the main page should, however, be mentioned Erik. Another is that it might not now be in existence if I had not written a crude implementation this afternoon and given it to Ilya.
I put the inputbox on the Main Page to demonstrate it.
When has it been okay to experiment on the main page of a live site without so much as an explanation to the regular contributors to that site?
I'm not opposed to the inputbox extension in and of itself; it's a slick piece of code which answers a need often expressed. I do not think it is appropriate to use a complex nested template as it is currently implemented, but that could be resolved by the community.
Wikipedia has no such dependencies. I follow a link and I start writing. If my article is not perfect, that's fine, because it's still linked from the right places. People can see it. People will eventually fix it for me. In general, there's less things to know, and less things that can go wrong.
This was the justification for the use of the manual list in addition to the automated list, until the additional functionality was coded. I used nearly the same words, in fact.
The governance issues are not the basic reason for the Open English proposal (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Start_a_new_edition)
There are currently 5 people supporting the creation of an Open English edition of Wikinews, which is obviously not entirely due to the recent differences regarding the DPL. Like any community at en.wikinews there are different opinions as to what the goals of the project may be, and some members of the community feel it is not going someplace they wish to continue to support. But we continue to support the larger goals of Wikinews, creating site where any human can contribute news, valuable in its own right, with an open decision-making process. And we would rather not leave the project, so an alternative edition which serves different goals would give us the opportunity to contribute without exacerbating strained working relationships.
Amgine
Amgine:
When has it been okay to experiment on the main page of a live site without so much as an explanation to the regular contributors to that site?
To quote Jimbo Wales, when he joined the site in November 2004: "I'm drastically changing a lot of pages to illustrate to people that this is a wiki." He then proceeded to alter key policy pages without prior discussion. The nature of wikis is to be bold, experiment, and see whether people agree with you. This is especially true for a site that is still in beta. My change to the developing stories box was, compared to the DPL changes that preceded it, minor, and hailed as an improvement. Even you now acknowledge the usefulness of the extension:
I'm not opposed to the inputbox extension in and of itself; it's a slick piece of code which answers a need often expressed. I do not think it is appropriate to use a complex nested template as it is currently implemented, but that could be resolved by the community.
Nobody reverted the change, and had anyone done so, I would not have reverted back. In fact, you initially debated the change calmly (including comments like "<shrug>"), and only got angry over time, to the point that you left the project in a huff. I'm sorry if I made you angry in the discussion, but I have found that this tends to happen with you whenever I do *anything* on the site at all. But I won't go there.
You have removed the accusations against "bureaucrat Eloquence" from your proposal. I welcome that you are trying to depersonalize the debate. It is my belief, reflected also by various pages on Wikipedia et al., that bold changes are OK if - you make a judgment call as to whether the change is controversial, - you are prepared to accept a revert and face discussion.
This is part of my understanding of how wikis should work, but I am and have always been willing to discuss that. The problem seems to be that any bold change, especially by me, is controversial to you, not because of the nature of the change, but because of the boldness itself.
There are currently 5 people supporting the creation of an Open English edition of Wikinews, which is obviously not entirely due to the recent differences regarding the DPL. Like any community at en.wikinews there are different opinions as to what the goals of the project may be, and some members of the community feel it is not going someplace they wish to continue to support.
People leave the English Wikipedia all the time. We don't set up an "Open English Wikipedia" because of that. I will not enumerate the many, many reasons why doing so in the case of Wikinews would be a bad idea. My suggestion is this: If you do not want to work with the existing Wikinews community, then please do set up your Open Newswiki as a separate site. I provide wiki hosting at reasonable rates, if you are interested ;-). So does Gabriel Wicke.
I would regret such a fork, of course. My alternative suggestion is to join the Wikinews Future Talk, and to help us find ways to improve the recent changes made to the site, as well as agree on general principles of collaboration: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Future_Talk
Of course, you are also free to continue to pursue an English language fork within Wikimedia. I for one will not participate in these discussions unless there is any indication from the Board level that such a thing would be supported.
Best,
Erik
Amgine wrote:
The governance issues are not the basic reason for the Open English proposal (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Start_a_new_edition)
"Open English" is not a language, and so this is not the appropriate forum to propose or promote such a concept. Even so, the concerns raised should of course be considered and dealt with if possible.
I just now read: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Open_English http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikinews/Open_English and the relevant portion of http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Start_a_new_edition
and I still don't quite get what this dispute is all about.
Let me see if I can state some principles which I think that everyone involved can agree with fully:
1. Wikinews should be open and welcoming to any contributor
2. Wikinews should not have special complications which are offputting to newcomers
3. We should work hard to balance two goals which are both important, but which have significant tensions between them: a. Empowering people to do local news b. Keeping the site relevant and interesting for all people
4. If a newcomer comes to Wikinews and makes a mistake (i.e. no proper {{develop}} or {{publish}} tag), then their work should not be lost or hidden, but should instead be highlighted somewhere useful so that other users can help the newcomer learn.
5. This one is perhaps the hardest to write in an NPOV manner: Erik is not the dictator of Wikinews, and furthermore, everyone can acknowledge that he has said so himself, repeatedly. We can all further acknowledge, even Erik, that he acts boldly and with conviction at times and that this has at times irritated people who felt (fairly or unfairly) that he was trying to be a dictator.
----
Now, I pulled most of those principles directly from the Open English proposal, and added the one about Erik because I hope it will be helpful to just state that issue plainly and openly.
If everyone agrees, at least roughly, with all the above principles, then what's the point of Open English?
--Jimbo
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