Lars Aronssen wrote:
I don't know why, but your words sound hard to me, and they sounded hard last year when you backed them up by being the official editor.
Lars,
Well, it's pretty obvious why my words sounded hard to you: it's because they were! If I accept your complaints about this hardness, will you allow me to complain in turn that you took the time to take me to task for writing "hard words," and otherwise writing about events that are now well over a year old, while pretty much ignoring the substance of my replies to what you wrote? Now if you actually do want an explanation as to why the words sounded "hard," you won't do better than to examine the actual claims that you were making, that I was replying to. In each case, it seemed to me there were some subtle, and in some cases not-so-subtle, implications about Jimbo, Wikipedia, and Wikipedians that were, shall we say, extremely unfair. (I thought this was clear.) You should know by now that I do not take kindly to extremely unfair criticisms of Wikipedia and my friends. If someone were to take these criticisms seriously, he or she might easily form quite a negative, inaccurate impression of the project, the people behind it, and what motivates them.
(Just by the way, I was never "the official editor" of Wikipedia; saying that accords me more authority than I ever even *presumed* to have.)
I might have misunderstood all of this, and I could blame it all on the fact that English is not my native language, but the factual consequence is that I went away and started my own project because of this.
It isn't necessary we work this out now, long after the fact, but since you bring it up, maybe we can clear the air about it. I always thought you left basically because you misunderstood the situation: I had stated an *opinion* (you were putting a zillion stubs in the database, as I recall, and I opined that this was a bad idea); you interpreted this as if it were handed down as *editorial policy* (which it wasn't); and you left abruptly. It happened rather suddenly, and without any chance for us to have a dialogue with you about what had happened, though we very much wanted to. In fact, I and many others were urging you to come back (I suppose you might not have noticed that), and we were bewildered by your abrupt departure. I'm sure a few other listmembers remember this.
As to the rest of your post, I wasn't really engaged in criticizing Susning.nu, so it really wasn't necessary to defend it. Does a defense of Wikipedia imply a criticism of Susning? Of course not; all the best to your project.
But why don't you help develop the Swedish Wikipedia? If Susning is a different sort of project, albeit closely enough related, then clearly the reason the articles are of better quality (if they are; I'll believe you) is that it's the more active project and you've been plugging it very actively on Wikipedia and through your own channels. But wouldn't it be more appropriate to be supporting the Swedish Wikipedia when writing on Wikipedia-L, if indeed Susning is so different that it will never evolve into the Swedish Wikipedia?
I promise I won't be there to complain about your stubs. :-)
Larry