I'm sensitive to concerns about the Library's location. It is partly a legacy issue: The Wikipedia Library partnerships started on English Wikipedia, and that's where the Credo, HighBeam, Questia, JSTOR, and Cochrane account donations were coordinated. This made some sense at the time because these were English language source being donated (although the donations were promoted to and open to all global editors and projects). That will remain--global notifications about account donations and organizing will be sent using Global Message Delivery, Wikimedia Foundation blog posts and Signpost mentions will make other announcements.
This is always a tricky issue for our movement but the intent is very much to benefit all projects and conduct outreach to all regions. For neutrality, META is obviously best, but for overall convenience, English Wikipedia remains the largest and most active project, with the highest concentration of English language speakers. So in that sense it's a question of maximizing convenience versus equalizing inconvenience. If hosted on Meta, everyone has to switch wikis to get there. If hosted on ENWP, all non-ENWP still editors have to switch wikis to get there, but the huge chunk of ENWP editors do not. This will hopefully become much less of an issue with interface changes like Flow and Global Watchlists. Meta did just get notifications, so that's helpful, but I still feel collaboration is somewhat limited by our current infrastrcutre.
There are other concerns such as turning Meta into a true hub for all of our editors, and representing our global nature by hosting global projects there. These are important, and I want to give it more thought.
So, in the meantime going to look into hosting this on Meta, and I will definitely at least mirror a portal there. It may take some time while we continue to organize and get set up
I'd like to continue talking more about this. Cheers,
Jake Orlowitz (Ocaasi) jorlowitz@gmail.com
2013/8/26, Jake Orlowitz jorlowitz@gmail.com:
I'm sensitive to concerns about the Library's location. It is partly a legacy issue: The Wikipedia Library partnerships started on English Wikipedia, and that's where the Credo, HighBeam, Questia, JSTOR, and Cochrane account donations were coordinated. This made some sense at the time because these were English language source being donated (although the donations were promoted to and open to all global editors and projects). That will remain--global notifications about account donations and organizing will be sent using Global Message Delivery, Wikimedia Foundation blog posts and Signpost mentions will make other announcements.
This is always a tricky issue for our movement but the intent is very much to benefit all projects and conduct outreach to all regions. For neutrality, META is obviously best, but for overall convenience, English Wikipedia remains the largest and most active project, with the highest concentration of English language speakers. So in that sense it's a question of maximizing convenience versus equalizing inconvenience. If hosted on Meta, everyone has to switch wikis to get there. If hosted on ENWP, all non-ENWP still editors have to switch wikis to get there, but the huge chunk of ENWP editors do not. This will hopefully become much less of an issue with interface changes like Flow and Global Watchlists. Meta did just get notifications, so that's helpful, but I still feel collaboration is somewhat limited by our current infrastrcutre.
There are other concerns such as turning Meta into a true hub for all of our editors, and representing our global nature by hosting global projects there. These are important, and I want to give it more thought.
So, in the meantime going to look into hosting this on Meta, and I will definitely at least mirror a portal there. It may take some time while we continue to organize and get set up
I'd like to continue talking more about this. Cheers,
Jake Orlowitz (Ocaasi) jorlowitz@gmail.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Good day, Thanks for your reply and input. I never intended to imply that this project was closed to the global community, because I'm certain that this is not the case.
This is more than just a question of "having to switch wikis to get to the Library", there is also an important perception factor. True that all non-enWikipedians have to switch wikis anyway, but there is something different from switching from your wiki to a global one, i.e. Meta, and switching from your wiki to another one that you may not contribute to. Even if it's not the case, there is a perception that if a project is hosted on a local wiki it is intended for the local community.
Thanks, JP Béland aka Amqui
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org