On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 15:04:41 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote: Mark, I don't think you're thinking clearly here. Any Wikipedia, any Wikimedia project, has potential repercussions on the other projects, and certainly on those who are involved in coordinating and maintaining those projects. If native speakers want to start a wiki using the MediaWiki software, they are of course welcome to. But if it is going to be one of the WikiMedia Foundation projects, it's an absolute requirement that there be some community discretion involved. -Rich Holton -- en.wikipedia:User:Rholton

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 16:05:15 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote: There is a difference between saying that the entire Wikipedia userbase must approve any new language, and disagreeing with your suggestion that For myself, I don't much buy the argument that approving a related language/dialect Foo of an existing Wikipedia language Bar will lead a to a huge drain on the userbase of Bar: Plattsdeutsch or Luxembourgish have apparently not drawn too many people away from German, etc. Furthermore, I agree with you in opposing any idea that general speakers of Bar should vote on the inclusion of Foo. However, the question of developer and network administrator resources seems to me to be important. Wikimedia is a nonprofit organization with many goals in its mission, one of which is to promote the distribution of knowledge in many languages, including minority ones. While this is an important goal, I would not want to see the foundation constrained by explicit policy to spend its resources on minority languages if it decided that its mission could be better served another way. Steve

On Feb 21, 2005, at 8:27 PM, Mark Williamson wrote: The God-King drives a Hyundai, I don't believe you drive a Hyundai, therefore I don't believe you are the god-king. Please stop being so stingy with other people's rights. _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

Stirling's "God-king" was not a reference to himself. On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 21:54:08 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Andrew Lih, Assistant Professor Journalism and Media Studies Centre University of Hong Kong Email: alih(a)hku.hk | Web: http://jmsc.hku.hk/faculty/alih AOL IM: fuzheado | ICQ: 231894253 Yahoo Messenger: andrew_lih | MSN Messenger: andrew_lih(a)msn.com

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 23:35:59 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote: From my calculation, you've been old enough to drive for one year, maybe two. So it's likely there have not been too many cars in your driving history. So *do* you drive a Hyundai? :)

Mark Williamson wrote: He probably does, actually. Despite repeated hints that it's counterproductive, you continue to try to browbeat people into doing what you want. As someone who's lived on the net for some 23 years now, let me pass along a bit of advice. You start with a default fund of reputation from other netizens. You do good things, like copyedit a thousand articles or supply a bit of requested info, your fund goes up. You do bad things, like call someone a nasty name in public, your fund goes down. Why does this matter? If your fund of reputation is high, you can merely suggest an idea, and people will rush to make it happen. If your fund is low, others will dislike your idea, *even if it's a good idea*. Unfair, perhaps, but that's how interpersonal relationships work, on the net as elsewere. Some people even tried to let you know when your fund crossed zero and headed into negative territory, but you blew right on by without slowing down. So, if you want to have any chance at all of having any influence on things, I suggest you cool it with all the accusations and criticism - I think you do enough worthwhile things normally that your reputation will eventually get back to the positive side again.

As someone who's lived on the net for some 23 years now, let me

pass along a bit of advice. You start with a default fund of reputation from other netizens. You do good things, like copyedit a thousand articles or supply a bit of requested info, your fund goes up. You do bad things, like call someone a nasty name in public, your fund goes down.

I don't think you're thinking clearly here. Any Wikipedia, any Wikimedia project, has potential repercussions on the other projects, and certainly on those who are involved in coordinating and maintaining those projects. If native speakers want to start a wiki using the MediaWiki software, they are of course welcome to. But if it is going to be one of the WikiMedia Foundation projects, it's an absolute requirement that there be some community discretion involved.

"Repercussions on the other projects"? Why should it be up to the community to decide this? In the past when the majority has been allowed to decide the rights of the minority, it has always made bad and irresponsible decisions that have sometimes been horrific and sometimes just unjust (if a new Wikipedia is voted against because the majority is allowed to decide, that would be 'unjust') In the past there have been no votes over new projects, why should this start now? Zh-min-nan was created against the will of the zh.wikipedia community, and even people such as Tim Starling suggested after its creation shutting it down, but it is still growing constantly and I was surprised to receive from some Taiwanese people indications of support. New Wikipedias may effeect other projects but their effect is microscopic. PRC is not in the habit of blocking sites in Cantonese or Wu just for that reason, so that isn't a worry. People in the past worried about ridicule, but most of the ridicule for Zh-min-nan: has come from WITHIN the community, and there has been only a minimal amount of ridicule for tlh:. The main problem with a complete democracy is that there is no protection for the minority. The majority can vote in any policy to do anything they want to the minority and nothing is said about it. This is why direct democracies without protections for the minorities always split up along ethnolinguistic lines or have massive civil wars and civil unrest. We didn't have a vote on en: wehther or not to have de:, fr:, ja:, es - they were just created. Controversial Wikipedias such as nds: and als: were not voted on, if they were there is a good chance the de.wikipedia community would've excluded all possibility of their existance as Wikimedia projects. The creation of nn.wikipedia was controversial, and it is perhaps the best case. There was a VOTE on no: a bit prior to the creation of nn: as to whether or not there should be a separate Wikipedia for Nynorsk. By a margin of just a couple votes it was decided to keep a unified Wikipedia, however most of the voters who voted for that were Bokmål users. A bit afterwards Nynorsk users such as Ulf Lunde brought their complaint to this list and shortly thereafter nn: was created against the will of the no: community and now has over 1k articles. It's very naïve of you to assume that in cases of a problem involving a minority out of a larger community, the majority should always be allowed to make the decision and that they will always decide wisely. There is no precedent suggesting that all new Foundation-sponsored projects must have community discretion involved in their creation. This is simply a suggestion by you which doesn't seem to me like a good idea at all. Do you let men decide the future or right of women, or let Spaniards decide on whether Chechnya should be independent? Mark On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 16:42:03 -0600, Richard Holton <richholton(a)gmail.com> wrote: _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l