This post is a response to a small part on a post in another thread, and has little or no connection to the original subject of that thread.

2006/12/28, Brad Patrick bradp.wmf@gmail.com:

Hmm, I think you may be missing something pretty important. In fact, the definition of community is the single most difficult thing to agree upon. What is my community, your community, etc. does not have answers. The Board retreat could not answer it with the 25 people who were there. The Board itself cannot agree on the meaning. Certainly, though, you do not have the hubris to think that this thing called Wikimedia exists only for editors, to the exclusion of the millions of people who view it every day? I view the orthodox idea that the community consists of, and can only consist of, editors as being at least as insulting as the opposite would be to Horning. Millions of people *read* the site, and do not contribute a comma. And that's okay! Generators *and* consumers of free culture must be incorporated. If we are philosophically opposed as people who differ on whether a sound is made when a tree falls in forest, so be it.

The group of people who edit certainly make up a pretty well-defined community. If one wants, one can think of a community also including the readers. That is to me, and I believe to must of us editors, a much more abstract concept. There is nothing wrong with abstract concepts, and when one needs such one invents them. In theory one could also have a much wider concept for community in which, for instance, matching donors are members.

The fundraiser FAQ talks over and over about donations from the community and donations from companies. It seemed to me the text assumed that the only individuals who would give money in a fundraiser such as this one, were the editors. That made me puzzled, to say the least. The explanation that the Board or its members might sometimes use the word "community" it in a wider sense than I expected explained a lot. My language does not have a word exactly matching "community" in context, and so I usually translate it "wikigemenskap", which litterally would be wiki community. This is clearly the more narrow definitions of the word, while the FAQ has chosen the inbetween definition in which readers and non-editors are included but matching donators are not. I will go through the draft translation of that FAQ and replace "wikigemenskap" with the equivalent of "users and readers", and then that text will make much better sense.

If the Board can not decide what "the community" means, then the Board should stop probably avoid that term, and search for a more precise terminology. Things like "the editing community", "the editing community across all projects", "the Polish language editing community", "the German Wiktionary editing community" and "the community of editors and readers" in a certain projects or on all, should work fine. If one does not know which finder definition to choose - it means one does not know what one is referring to.

Confusion should be avoided - not only to make life easier for translators.

/habj