I think the key problem here is a breakdow of trust on both sides. I think we are all in agreement that Wikipedia branded encyclopedias should all be open and NPOV. If we want them to trust us not to abuse the wikipedia for advertizing purposes, we should trust them to keep the encyclopedia open and NPOV.

Probably we should ask them to prommise to maintain certain standards of openness and NPOV, just as we prommise not to make the various wikipedia's into a giant avertizing site. Hopefully everybody will keep their word, but if not the loss can be minimized by the fact that both projects use the GNU-FDL, and so a breach on either part would just mean that --at the time when violation occurs-- either party can fork the project.

As long as it's just fear that somebody will violate the principles we stand for, we should try to get over those fears and work together.

-----Original Message----- From: Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales@bomis.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 11:52 AM To: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Spanish Wikipedia; Negotiation

Axel Boldt wrote:

In other words: we want them back on our US server, so that we, and not they, are in control. We know who should be banned, but we don't trust them with such decisions. Maybe we should say that clearly at the beginning; it will shorten the discussion considerably.

This is a distortion of my position, but definitely we need to make perfectly clear that local control does _not_ extend to such issues as allowing various wikipedias to become non-NPOV, or allowing various wikipedias to abandon the spirit of openness. If they don't like that restriction, then that's fine -- they can do their own non-NPOV and non-open thing. We're better off without them.

--Jimbo [Wikipedia-l] To manage your subscription to this list, please go here: http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l