Milos Rancic wrote: On 1 september I sent the following email to the board: [...] | In the last open board meeting there was a discussion about having a | seed wiki and a committee deciding policies for it. | So, here a proposal how to deal with new language requests (not new | projects) | * community elects a committee of seven people on meta-wiki (one-year term) | * requests for new languages will be submitted to the committee on meta-wiki | * committee will create a catalogue of criterias over time | * they examine the case (check if language or dialect, spread of | language, number of the people willing to work on it, consult | experts) | * they decide, three sorts of decisions are possible: accept, reject in general (because no real language etc.), reject in | this case (not enough support) but can be later again proposed if | conditions have changed | * have a developer create the wiki if approved | | This way, we can maybe get rid of these pending requests: | http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages [...] | If the committee does its job well, it could later also get the | competence to filter new project proposals. | Add your suggestions and criticisms and say yes or no. | | I'd be willing to help with the election but I don't have the time | for an extensive community debate and slow process on the | mailinglists and wikis with no decision at all after months. In the three answers I got, I was refered back to the community and told that the problem will eventuall sort out by creation of the seed wiki. Now I see that the situation hasn't become better but even worse. As officer of the Wikimedia Foundation I can't welcome your decision and would question your competence to speak for the whole of the not yet existing serbian Wikimedia chapter. As wikipedian who dedicated myself to the creation of a high quality free encyclopedia in as many languages as are _needed_ to make human knowledge accessible to everybody, I can very well understand your feelings. What shall I tell a journalist who asks the press officer about the zlatiborian language wikipedia? "Eh yes, it's ridiculous, but you see, a few people who don't even speak this city dialect pressured the community into it. Cantonese? Oh yes, the same thing happened. Wikiversity? Ah well, sorry, we're still looking for a concept. There's rubbish on wikibooks like the "How to get a girl manual"? See, people are working on the encyclopedia, there are not enough people to look into the other projects and control them for quality. You found a copyvio on suaheli wikiquote? Sorry, I don't speak suaheli - and the three suaheli speakers in Wikimedia are busy with the encyclopedia. Why are there so many corn field related news on german Wikinews while XY isn't treated? Oh well, now this is a funny story... Wikimedia has accomplished great things: An encyclopedia, written by common people and volunteers, slowly getting better and better, to the point of being a serious alternative to classical encyclopedias. There are its established sister projects, slowly evolving and becoming useful (btw, the category:philosophy on commons is a mess). But to maintain and improve this standard of quality requires constant work and attention. New contributors have to be welcomed and taught the "way of the wiki", policy proposals which would result in deteriorating the quality have to be turned down, conflicts between good authors have to be mediated and last but not least over 3 million articles in over 150 languages need to be checked for vandalism and are waiting to be improved and still a lot more are waiting to be written. I came here in August 2002 to help creating a free encyclopedia. Later I became involved in "meta" affairs - organizing wikipedia booths at conferences, designing promotion material, joining global policy discussions, coordinating cooperations with organisations and companies, dealing with press requests, organizing Wikimania. If someone wondered lately why there's almost no elian anymore around in Wikimedia affairs, that's why. I went back to the real thing, the encyclopedia in my language - which is nor Bavarian, neither Münchnerisch although I am from this region and city but german, a language almost everybody in Germany speaks and is able to understand (except he's maybe turkish or serbian or arabic). There's still a lot of work to do even if some newspapers rate us already as better than brockhaus. Tell me when you've stopped discussing and voting on genial new projects and obscure dialects, when you've kicked the language fanatics from the mailing lists, when you've closed the unwatched spam traps, when you've settled on a checkuser and logo policy, when someone has had the guts to introduce single login instead of just talking about it and when you are serious about this human knowledge thing. good bye, elian