We (meaning Wikimedia in general) work with all sorts of projects that aren't open-governed. When we decide to work with someone, it should be because it furthers our goals (what our "goals" are is an entirely other question though) . Refusing to work with someone because it might help some other organization whose goals/values/mission/whatever are different then ours seems short sighted.
With that said, this is sort of another issue. My main point from my previous email (or at least what I was trying to say) is that you can have open governance that is not a democracy, and you can have a democratic system that is not "open".
Are we going to start giving other closed systems privileged access as well? I'm sure other systems would like such an opportunity.
Well according to http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:School_and_university_projects (I'll admit, I'm not very familiar with Wikiversity as a project, so I'm basing this off what I read), teachers from "real" brick-and-motor schools are encouraged to participate. Considering many such institutions are business which are in no way "democratic", I'd say we already do do that (or want to anyways).
-bawolff
On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 7:13 PM, Wjhonson wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
Because Bawolff, the entire thread or sub-thread was predicated on the notion that *we* should work with *them*. Are we going to start giving other closed systems privileged access as well? I'm sure other systems would like such an opportunity.
To me, the mere fact that their *content* is open (whatever that means in actuality) isn't enough, for me to want to work with them. The system they have in place is too disjoint from our system, for me to advocate working with them. The solution I proposed would change that.