On 02/27/2011 08:05 PM, Neil Kandalgaonkar wrote:
Maybe a German wrote this originally, but the rest of us have had ample opportunity to amend this. It's not German software; it's not American software, it's OUR software. Rather than blame those who tried to fix a problem, let's put our minds to work on coming up with an even better solution.
Magnus Manske wrote MediaWiki, Commons was suggested by Erik Möller, and the Toolserver is German. The Germans have contributed more than most to the Wikimedia projects, especially in software and technology. Not to mention the huge archive photo donations and Wikipedia Academy, pioneered by the German chapter. However, the German Wikipedia has a different set of standards, more strict rules for inclusion and notability, and more speedy deletions. This adds to the "focus on content, rather than people", and when this is described as a problem on Commons, what I can see is that users from Germany are the root of the problem.
Spanish or Norwegian admins on Commons are not the problem, as far as I can see, despite using the same software. So I don't think the software is the problem.
We do have admins who patrol uploaded images for copyright violations and lack of categories. Fine. But perhaps we also need to patrol against unfriendly greeting messages, and correct those admins who write them. It seems I was the first to point out on User_talk:Ies that the unfriendly tone was inappropriate.