Hi,
I've just added a proposal on meta.wikimedia.org: Wikitution - A Free European Constitution.
The citizens of France and The Netherlands did not accept the proposed european constitution in two national polls. Europe is facing a serious crisis. It needs a free and democratic constitution, to which everybody can contribute and which will be accepted by the great majority of all citizens in Europe.
The site is up and running: http://www.wikitution.org
I set up the wiki and registered the domain name without knowing that Merlin of Eragon proposed "Wiki constitution/political theory" with the same domain name. I am sorry for that. The problem in europe is urgent and we need a solution soon. I hope that we can cooperate.
I think that this is a temporary project. We cannot debate about a constitution for years, but need to come to an end in two or three years. If the project will run successfully I foresee much traffic and great organizational work, which I cannot do by myself. So I would be glad, if the project would be a temporary wikimedia-project and if some more experienced mediawiki-users will join the team.
Thanks! Jan Ulrich Hasecke
Excellent. I was just watching the debate in the House of Commons on the issue and there seems to be genuine puzzlement as to what the people of Europe want. Surely, if this idea has any traction among the population at large, very valuable feedback would be obtained. I assume this will be multilingual?
Fred
On Jun 6, 2005, at 8:35 AM, Jan Ulrich Hasecke wrote:
Hi,
I've just added a proposal on meta.wikimedia.org: Wikitution - A Free European Constitution.
The citizens of France and The Netherlands did not accept the proposed european constitution in two national polls. Europe is facing a serious crisis. It needs a free and democratic constitution, to which everybody can contribute and which will be accepted by the great majority of all citizens in Europe.
The site is up and running: http://www.wikitution.org
I set up the wiki and registered the domain name without knowing that Merlin of Eragon proposed "Wiki constitution/political theory" with the same domain name. I am sorry for that. The problem in europe is urgent and we need a solution soon. I hope that we can cooperate.
I think that this is a temporary project. We cannot debate about a constitution for years, but need to come to an end in two or three years. If the project will run successfully I foresee much traffic and great organizational work, which I cannot do by myself. So I would be glad, if the project would be a temporary wikimedia- project and if some more experienced mediawiki-users will join the team.
Thanks! Jan Ulrich Hasecke
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Am 06.06.2005 um 17:46 schrieb Fred Bauder:
Excellent. I was just watching the debate in the House of Commons on the issue and there seems to be genuine puzzlement as to what the people of Europe want. Surely, if this idea has any traction among the population at large, very valuable feedback would be obtained. I assume this will be multilingual?
Yes of course. We are taking the current text of the rejected constitution as basis of a new one. Everyone can make contributions in his/her own language.
I have not the slightest idea how to keep the different languages in sync. This is more experience in progress than work in progress. ;-)
juh
Sigh...
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AAnthere&diff=136...
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AWikim%C3%A9dia_France&...
Anthere
Jan Ulrich Hasecke a écrit:
Hi,
I've just added a proposal on meta.wikimedia.org: Wikitution - A Free European Constitution.
The citizens of France and The Netherlands did not accept the proposed european constitution in two national polls. Europe is facing a serious crisis. It needs a free and democratic constitution, to which everybody can contribute and which will be accepted by the great majority of all citizens in Europe.
The site is up and running: http://www.wikitution.org
I set up the wiki and registered the domain name without knowing that Merlin of Eragon proposed "Wiki constitution/political theory" with the same domain name. I am sorry for that. The problem in europe is urgent and we need a solution soon. I hope that we can cooperate.
I think that this is a temporary project. We cannot debate about a constitution for years, but need to come to an end in two or three years. If the project will run successfully I foresee much traffic and great organizational work, which I cannot do by myself. So I would be glad, if the project would be a temporary wikimedia-project and if some more experienced mediawiki-users will join the team.
Thanks! Jan Ulrich Hasecke
Jan Ulrich Hasecke:
I think that this is a temporary project. We cannot debate about a constitution for years, but need to come to an end in two or three years. If the project will run successfully I foresee much traffic and great organizational work, which I cannot do by myself. So I would be glad, if the project would be a temporary wikimedia-project and if some more experienced mediawiki-users will join the team.
This is a very interesting idea. I'd like to ask you to write a more detailed proposal about the project. You have started it independently, which is fine, but if it is meant to become a Wikimedia project (I don't think such a decision can be temporary, BTW), we need to know better what we're dealing with. Here are some questions I'd like to see answered:
- Are there risks of perception if Wikimedia gets involved in political issues and publishes a proposal for a constitution, when all our projects so far follow the Neutral Point of View policy?
- Is there a potential slippery slope here if we establish a precedent for a political project?
- NPOV alone doesn't cut it if you're trying to be prescriptive rather than descriptive. How are you ever going to achieve consensus on questions where fundamental differences of opinion exist (e.g. reference to God in the preamble, right to work, sexual rights) -- what kind of policies and decision making processes do you want to use?
- Why can't this be part of Wikibooks?
- Why can't this be generalized into a larger project for similar documents?
My personal view, right now, is that this project might be interesting from the perspective of funding for Wikimedia, similar to Wikispecies. That might be a reason to pursue it, but I believe the aforementioned issues need to be answered in a satisfactory way for the Board and the community.
Erik
Hi Erik,
Am 07.06.2005 um 01:23 schrieb Erik Moeller:
This is a very interesting idea. I'd like to ask you to write a more detailed proposal about the project. You have started it independently, which is fine, but if it is meant to become a Wikimedia project (I don't think such a decision can be temporary, BTW), we need to know better what we're dealing with. Here are some questions I'd like to see answered:
Thanks for your interest. Your questions are very profound and I will answer them as soon as possible.
The problem of achieving consensus is in my eyes the greatest problem. Perhaps we need some kind of voting.
On the other hand: my coneption is, that we will not write an ideal utopic constitution but a constitution, that can be approved by the citizens in a very short timeframe (deadline maybe 2010). So we have to be realistic. This might be a good guideline while editing.
And this is the reason, why I call it a temporary project. It should be finished in a timeframe of only some years.
juh
While I like the idea, I don't really think it should be a Wikimedia Foundation project.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org