OK, sorry for digging out old conversations, I've
been dead for the
past 5 days, and just resurrected for a few hours. So here goes.
> This said, I stand up to my opinion that
mentions of stewards
or
> arbitrators of the english AC has basically
nothing to do here.
These
> positions do not exist in the real world.
They mean nothing to
those
> outside wikipedia. They are unrelated to the
Foundation itself.
And
they are
only part of the status existing on the projects.
Well, there are apparently plans to form Arbitration Committees
on other
language versions of Wikipedia, so it's not
en:-centric (or not
intended to
be). Thus Arbitrator status, and certainly, of
course, Stewards,
are
Wikimedia-project-wide, and the people who will
receive these
cards will
understand that they confer extra
'status' of some kind, as you
say. Neither
job are particularly easy to do, and a small
amount of thanks
like this is
perhaps not a bad thing.
Having a card, imho, has nothing to do with getting any thanks for
a
job well done within wikipedia or any other project, but more about
having (or not having) a right to speak about certain matters with
a
more or less official position. Arbitrators, Stewards are all, as
Anthere pointed out, positions within the projects, but not
positions
that mean that you have a right to talk about the Moogle Deal of
the
Fahoo proposition or a right to sell Wikipedia and all other
projects
to the next Moohoo buyer who comes along. Of course, I am going a
bit
far, here, but this is what a "card" could entitle to do.
So no, they should not be given out as thanks, but as an exact
description of who does what in the Wikimedia Foundation and
projects,
and who can say "we" when talking about the Foundation, or
Wikimedia
Deutschland, or Wikimedia France. People in general, journalists in
particular, are very wary of who their source is, but will be
fooled
by a little square of paper. A "business card" gives a credibility
that some of us certainly do not have, and some of us certainly do
not
deserve. So let us be careful when handing out those "cards".
Samples of titles:
Wikipedia Administrator
Wikimedia Software Developer
Wikimedia Senior Systems Engineer
Contributing Editor
Arbitration Committee Panelist 2005
WikiNews Freelance Photographer
and so on.
I see nothing in there that says they can speak 'for' the foundation.
There should be a link to Wikimedia Foundation's formal contacts on
each card, like this:
and an explanation on
that page of what cards there are, who has them, and so on. This will
allow the press people to understand who the cardbearer is and what
they do.
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan(a)yahoo.com
chris.mahan(a)gmail.com
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