Amgine:

When has it been okay to experiment on the main page of a live site without so much as an explanation to the regular contributors to that site?

To quote Jimbo Wales, when he joined the site in November 2004: "I'm drastically changing a lot of pages to illustrate to people that this is a wiki." He then proceeded to alter key policy pages without prior discussion. The nature of wikis is to be bold, experiment, and see whether people agree with you. This is especially true for a site that is still in beta. My change to the developing stories box was, compared to the DPL changes that preceded it, minor, and hailed as an improvement. Even you now acknowledge the usefulness of the extension:

I'm not opposed to the inputbox extension in and of itself; it's a slick piece of code which answers a need often expressed. I do not think it is appropriate to use a complex nested template as it is currently implemented, but that could be resolved by the community.

Nobody reverted the change, and had anyone done so, I would not have reverted back. In fact, you initially debated the change calmly (including comments like "<shrug>"), and only got angry over time, to the point that you left the project in a huff. I'm sorry if I made you angry in the discussion, but I have found that this tends to happen with you whenever I do *anything* on the site at all. But I won't go there.

You have removed the accusations against "bureaucrat Eloquence" from your proposal. I welcome that you are trying to depersonalize the debate. It is my belief, reflected also by various pages on Wikipedia et al., that bold changes are OK if - you make a judgment call as to whether the change is controversial, - you are prepared to accept a revert and face discussion.

This is part of my understanding of how wikis should work, but I am and have always been willing to discuss that. The problem seems to be that any bold change, especially by me, is controversial to you, not because of the nature of the change, but because of the boldness itself.

There are currently 5 people supporting the creation of an Open English edition of Wikinews, which is obviously not entirely due to the recent differences regarding the DPL. Like any community at en.wikinews there are different opinions as to what the goals of the project may be, and some members of the community feel it is not going someplace they wish to continue to support.

People leave the English Wikipedia all the time. We don't set up an "Open English Wikipedia" because of that. I will not enumerate the many, many reasons why doing so in the case of Wikinews would be a bad idea. My suggestion is this: If you do not want to work with the existing Wikinews community, then please do set up your Open Newswiki as a separate site. I provide wiki hosting at reasonable rates, if you are interested ;-). So does Gabriel Wicke.

I would regret such a fork, of course. My alternative suggestion is to join the Wikinews Future Talk, and to help us find ways to improve the recent changes made to the site, as well as agree on general principles of collaboration: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Future_Talk

Of course, you are also free to continue to pursue an English language fork within Wikimedia. I for one will not participate in these discussions unless there is any indication from the Board level that such a thing would be supported.

Best,

Erik

Like the media sources which preceded it, en.Wikinews is developing an approach or personality on the news which restricts what it will cover and determines how it will cover those events. This is not necessarily a bad development, but it should give rise to the corrollary: the option for another media source to cover the events which are not being written about, with a different approach to news.

Amgine,

I'm still fairly new and haven't necessarily seen the big picture, but I've never seen any evidence that people have been stopped from writing articles about any area they are interested in. There are discussions about news values and POV on the talk pages but my impression from the community has been 'If it's news to you, write about it or make it better'. I've personally made the occasional effort to make local news publishable even if it's not what I tend to write about myself it is very valuable. Wikinews is still in beta with limited numbers, surely it is much too early to talk of a defined personality?

I haven't seen any evidence of a rise in policy blocking certain types of coverage, more I've seen constructive efforts to widen participation so that more people can contribute the sort of news they want to read. I think that the most fascinating part of Wikinews is that the agenda is set by its users dependant on what they think is important to tell others about. That can only become more interesting the more users join. At the moment there are clear limitations on the agenda because of a relatively small amount of contributors but it is a very new project.

The English version has the luck of being very accessible to huge amounts of people around the world who have English as a second language. It would be tragic if an 'alternative' English wikinews turned the two into defined products with different audiences trying to please different interests: I saw the whole point of Wikinews as being a synthesis of different types of news, piling different views together to form a NPOV and creating a tapestry view of the world without prejudice.

I hope you'll come back - surely your presence is vital if you do want to make Wikinews into what you hoped it would become.

Best wishes ClareWhite

Jimmy Wales:

5. This one is perhaps the hardest to write in an NPOV manner: Erik is

not the dictator of Wikinews, and furthermore, everyone can acknowledge that he has said so himself, repeatedly. We can all further acknowledge, even Erik, that he acts boldly and with conviction at times and that this has at times irritated people who felt (fairly or unfairly) that he was trying to be a dictator.

You are speaking in the plural. I see no evidence that anyone besides Amgine has a problem with my general behavior on the site. If anyone does, please do post, publicly or privately. I have hardly edited at all in recent months. The heated conflicts of the last few days involved several people. I was *not* involved. I have never been in an edit war on Wikinews - except for one with Amgine over an NPOV tag. I am generally very careful to avoid the impression that I am somehow trying to push anything through. Please, do review my edit history: http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=El...

Erik

I will not get involved in a public discussion about this with you, unless someone else explicitly asks me to. I thought you were trying to depersonalize the discussion, to get from an atmosphere of accusations to one of dialogue. It looks like I was mistaken. That is very sad.

Erik

Hi all,

I know I keep saying that I'm on wikivacation until August, but let me just jump in and add that I hope that we can find a solution in which both Amgine and Xirzon stick around. Our central goals are very similar, and it would kill me to lose either of you.

Can't we get Jimmy Wales to send a box of wikilove or something?

Pingswept

On 7/7/05, Amgine amgine@saewyc.net wrote:

Erik Moeller wrote:

...

I will not get involved in a public discussion about this with you, unless someone else explicitly asks me to. I thought you were trying to depersonalize the discussion, to get from an atmosphere of accusations to one of dialogue. It looks like I was mistaken. That is very sad.

Actually, I wasn't addressing you, but rather explaining for those who were unaware of what you were referring to. I was also expressing my personal reasons for attempting to avoid conflict by voluntarily removing myself from en.Wikinews. A dialogue usually requires an airing of differences before conflict can be resolved. I'm sorry if I misunderstood the state of the discussion.

Amgine

---

Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l

Hello David,

based on your suggestion, I have rewritten my user page a bit: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/User:Eloquence

I hope that addresses your concerns. I invite people to ask me for help and mediation, but this can only work if all involved participants agree to it. "Do this because Erik said so" should NEVER be an option.

Best,

Erik

Jimmy Wales wrote:

"Open English" is not a language, and so this is not the appropriate forum to propose or promote such a concept. Even so, the concerns raised should of course be considered and dealt with if possible.

...

1. Wikinews should be open and welcoming to any contributor

2. Wikinews should not have special complications which are

offputting to newcomers

3. We should work hard to balance two goals which are both

important, but which have significant tensions between them: a. Empowering people to do local news b. Keeping the site relevant and interesting for all people

4. If a newcomer comes to Wikinews and makes a mistake (i.e. no

proper {{develop}} or {{publish}} tag), then their work should not be lost or hidden, but should instead be highlighted somewhere useful so that other users can help the newcomer learn.

5. This one is perhaps the hardest to write in an NPOV manner: Erik

is not the dictator of Wikinews, and furthermore, everyone can acknowledge that he has said so himself, repeatedly. We can all further acknowledge, even Erik, that he acts boldly and with conviction at times and that this has at times irritated people who felt (fairly or unfairly) that he was trying to be a dictator.

...

If everyone agrees, at least roughly, with all the above principles, then what's the point of Open English?

1. Wikinews currently has personal attacks by an admin posted on the Watercooler: no one has said anything about this. When a previous user engaged in such behaviour (User:Paulrevere2005) with the same target (myself) there was considerable pressure put on that user to remove their comments - which the user did.

2. The current new article inputbox uses a nested template to "initialize" new articles. This is a very useful concept, but it will certainly appear confusing to newcomers to Wikinews, or anyone who has never worked with Mediawiki syntax. Articles which do not include the "required" elements are not visible anywhere on the site, but only via the Special:Newpages. Further, the new system is suffering from "instruction creep", despite efforts to keep it simple.

See: http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Template:New_page&action=histor... http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Template:New_article_intro&acti...

3. Wikinews can balance 3a and 3b, and has done an admirable job of doing so. However, it is important for editors to avoid focusing attention on doing "hard news"; Wikinews cannot (and should not try to) compete with main stream news media, and should play to its strengths of many people rather than big stories.

4. It is now possible to list all articles in the main namespace which are not published articles. There are more than 2600 of them, and a clean up will be required.

See: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/User:IlyaHaykinson/SpecialDPLTest http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Water_cooler#A_technical_solution_for_t...

5. It is my personal opinion not that Erik is acting like a dictator, but that he regularly acts without consulting the community and in opposition to the community norms, and in the process is a catalyst for conflict. When he is called on this behaviour he is abusive, defensive, and does not engage in constructive discussions. For someone who admits he rarely is involved in the project it seems a rather less-than appropriate pattern of behaviour, and one I am personally not willing to accept.

In short, the justification for the Open English edition is primarily that en.Wikinews is not open and supporting of people who are new to wiki and to Wikinews, and has put significant hurdles to publishing their articles in place. Because Wikinews has potential as an entry-point to both Wikimedia Foundation projects and Wikinews in specific, especially in collaboration with school systems as an element of curricula, a more open edition - perhaps analogous to "community newspapers" - should be available.

Amgine