And my support as well. These were up on the list of "proposed changes" with zero consultation to the channel users, of which quite a few are indeed against it.

The rules are FAR too draconian, and far too bureaucratic: it's bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy.

I can understand no "off topic" chat, because of wikipedia-social, even if I MASSIVELY disagree with it. But no discussion of individual projects? What then? Everything is an individual project. Really, what purpose does the channel have then?

-Swatjester/Dan Rosenthal

On Jun 16, 2007, at 4:06 PM, foundation-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:

Message: 6 Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 21:05:49 +0100 From: Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] #wikipedia changes To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: f51fqt$le4$1@sea.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252

Gurch wrote:

...

Sean has casually neglected to mention that "off-topic" discussion is no longer permitted in the channel. And by that I literally mean that entering the channel and sending one-line greetings to a couple of users will get you told, in-channel and via a bombardment of PMs, to stop talking off-topic.

Let me add my support to this: off-topic chat is important and should be allowed. A variety of forums for off-topic chat between Wikipedians should be provided. Wikipedians are humans, not machines, and just like all other humans have a deep-seated need to socialise with their colleagues, and to discuss matters of shared importance.

-- Tim Starling