Recently a friend of mine submitted a comment on the
blogpost about "9
reasons women don't edit.."
While I understand it's Sue's personal blog and therefore the
expectations of transparency and openness are not the same as with a true
Wikimedia blog, but her post was rejected by moderation.
I acknowledge she raised several controversial points, and possibly
mistaken. however she's quite direct and frank at expressing her ideas,
which may cause them to come across as non politically correct..
She has this feeling that her comment was rejected not due to form but
due to substance, that the statements made Sue uncomfortable and tried to
hid it. I try to assure her that's not the case, that it was a sort of
misunderstanding.
In any case, I promised her to repost the comment here (in case comment
got moderated by a third person and Sue never got the chance to see it or
reply).
----- Begin post ----Sue, can you please explain how the Foundation will
change the wikipedia culture without any involvement of the communities
in this change?
Sorry to point at the emperor's new clothes but, AFAIK this initiative is
not a grassroots initiative coming from the communities, but something
coming from the outside and driven by (sorry to sound unrespectful) paid
staff, and very well paid (it reminds me a lot to the last member of the
wikipedia paid staff, Larry Sanger, trying to tell communities how they
should behave...), and not by leader wikipedians (sorry Sue, but you're a
mediocre wikipedian, with less than two hundred editions).
The problem you point out is real. The alleged reasons behind that
problem are a clear sample of amateurism. Coming here, cherry picking
among the mails you've received and trying to come out with a conclusion
is low-quality original research. I understand that the WMF has to
justify somehow why most of the money donated to wikipedia goes actually
to pay salaries of people that is unable to do anything for the
communities and not to the maintenance of the project. And last but not
least, try to say English Wikipedia whenever you now say Wikipedia. The
Wikipedia projects are far more than the English Wikipedia. Best regards
--- end post ---
You make some good points, but err in several respect: We don't, and
can't limit hiring to seasoned Wikipedians, and there are quite a few
seasoned Wikipedians who are behind Sue with respect to this issue. As to
the 9 reasons, they express peoples' feelings about editing; they are not
close examinations of editing history. The feelings are real too, even if
close examination of a specific controversy may show only a failure to
impose one's will and being upset about it.
Fred