[Foundation-l] Yahoo, Jimbo and other things

[Anthere]

I may have not explained myself well enough in my previous mail.

Sorry, I will go again on a rant (beware !)

 

First, I would like to thank Jimbo for the servers and the deal with Yahoo. It is extremely good for us. This will be extremely helpful from a technical perspectice, will improve access for all of us (directly or indirectly), and politically speaking, I think the fact of setting them in Asia is important. This deal, however, respect a couple of principles we think are important, and a couple of principles the community considers important. We stay independent (and the more partners we have, the more independent we stay), we stay out of advertisement, we foster collaboration between organisations across the world. In short, we do not stay “inside wikipedia”, but we invite the world to join the concept. We expand it. This is also why it is good that we set such collaborations.

 

Jimbo is good at negociating such deals, and honestly, we should be extremely thankful of this. Why do I mention it ? Well, simply because some leaders do not scale. Some guys started a little internet thing during the .com boom, and finally found themselves in front of celebrity, commercial deals to set, political power and so on… and were just unable to handle it. Jimbo does and does it very well. Our leader could have been great to start Wikipedia, but basically useless once the project is successful. This is not our case, and Jimbo’s ability to handle all this so successfully is one of the reason of Wikimedia projects success. Right ?

 

Now, there is a third point. And this is why I am thankful Jimbo mentionned it. I did not make a lot, but…how it happened is important I think. This is why I really want wikipedians to realise how the shortcuts thing happened.

Three years ago, when I joined wikipedia, I also met some editors who were editing MeatBallWiki. I followed links there, and loved the place. However, I could never really participate over there as I was under a pseudonyme then, and they had a policy of using RealName. Still, I met Christophe Ducamp over there and he invited me last year to do a presentation of Wikipedia in Lyon. At that time, I discovered Christophe website, CraoWiki (another wiki, entirely french). I very rarely go there (no time…). Still, last summer, when I was thinking of starting a blog, I was looking for free software in french… and thought of going to Crao to ask for suggestions. Over there, I met Stéphane Gigandet, who is the author of a french blog software, Joueb (see Joueb.com) (if my memory is not failing…). He proposed to offer it to me, which I actually refused as it is non free software (eheh). I finally decided for WordPress, which was probably not a good idea, as I do not understand how to
 customized it… Most of my attempts were disasters. This is the reason why I have no trackback on my blog… :-)

Anyway, what I absolutely did not know at that time is that Stéphane was also working for Yahoo… so he recontacted me some months later when he and others at Yahoo had an idea and wanted to check if possible. I mostly explained to them what was possible and what was not, and simply encouraged them.

 

What I want to insist on …. is simply that this happened not because of a top-down decision. It was a group of yahoo people, who contacted a wikipedian they knew due to a totally unrelated discussion. This was not a boss deciding something and contacting another boss. It could have been anyone. All what was needed were 1) people 2) idea and 3) relation between people.

And this is actually very important. Networks, bridges between communities is very helpful and people knowing they can have ideas and it can happen is very important. The fact anyone has power to do things is what I like best in Wikipedia :-)

 

Again, thank you for being yourself Jimbo :)

 

and thank you for your help in the last days (no, this is not only syrop, this is really serious guys...)

 

ant

 

 




		
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