Cormac Lawler wrote:
On 8/17/05, Walter Vermeir .
<walter(a)wikipedia.be> wrote:
Crosspost to: foundation-l, wikitech-l
At the end of 2002 on my request the mailing list Announce-l was created.
Hi,
For what it's worth, a few months ago, partly at my instigation, we
set up the foundation-news-l list, which was originally to announce
the publication of the Quarto - possibly with a pared down version of
its content in a html email, but this idea was booed quite loudly off
the wikipedia-l list. However, we haven't yet got around to doing
anything about it or defining it specifically, other than labelling it
"news from the wikimedia foundation". See:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-news-l
Would it be an idea to use this mailing list for the purpose you
propose, or just in a more general way? I'm cross-posting this to the
quarto-l list to see what people there think.
Cormac
I am not certain Cormac, though open to any suggestion.
The reason is simply that it will make appear that any communication
issue is in the hands of the Foundation, rather than in the hands of the
community itself. I think this is wrong for the following reasons
1) some wikipedians do not want to be recognised at wikimedians, being
somehow default members of the structure
2) some wikipedians will feel this as an overbearing control of the
Foundation over communication. This is wrong. In all "democracies"
(using the word on purpose to reflect Erik Zachte mail), it is important
that several medias report information. As such, as Michael best put it,
it is important independant newspapers such as the one on the english
wikipedia exist. Similarly, an independant announcement mailing list
could exist, possibly to announce informations that the Foundation feel
not concerned with, but that the community would
3) as soon as the Foundation is concerned, I feel that there is
something blocking people. Look at Quarto. To get it done, we have to
contact people each time. I would love that people feel empowered to
publish in it about something that matters to them. But they won't do
it, for whatever reasons. I regret this. Similarly, for the announcement
of last Quarto, why was it not done ? I still wonder if it was not done
because nobody was interested in doing so (or had no time to do it), or
if it was somehow that someone waited silently for me to say "let's go".
I do not know. But in no way announcements should have to be always
pushed by a couple of people. So, if an announcement list have to be set
up, I do not want people from the board to be involved in it, to avoid
people saying again that there is no democracy at all. It is so far away
from what my perception is what we are doing that I wish it to be fully
independant.
ant