I apologize for that formatting mess. Emails that look beautiful in my Hotmail editing
window get mangled when I send them to lists, and this seems to happen on a regular basis.
I'll try sending this again.
--
Hi Kevin,
My comment here expresses my personal opinion only.
I understand how bringing this issue to Wikimedia-l could seem appropriate because Commons
is a project that has an unusual degree of cross-wiki influence and activity. While
it's ok to notify Wikimedia-l that this issue is being discussed, the main body of the
discussion should stay on-wiki on Commons [1]. Per the essay about wikidrama on English
Wikipedia [2] and the "Principle of Least Drama", it is best not to make
"the same point in multiple places", as split discussions are often more
difficult to follow and spread the drama to more places. Also, when placing notices of
discussions from other wikis to this list, I think it is best to follow the detailed
guidelines for Requests for Comment from English Wikipedia [3] which ask users to write
"a brief, neutral statement of the issue". In general, cross-wiki and cross-list
*advocacy* (not mere notification) from anywhere else to this mailing list could be
considered canvassing [4]. I think you were well-intentioned in posting a notice to this
list but I would ask you to do it a bit differently in the future.
Thank you for raising the issue for discussion. I think you have good points, and you
should make them on Commons, where it appears that other Commons contributors agree with
you that this situation could have been handled differently [1].
Pine
[1]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Dead_bodies.3F
[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Drama
[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment
[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Canvassing