[Foundation-l] Re: Google Donating Bandwidth and Servers to Wikipedia

[Anthere]

Mark,

I understand extremely well what you are saying. And I fully understand 
your concerns with regards to the freedom any editor should benefit on 
meta. I fully support this view as well.

Allow me to explain to you a little bit more the current situation.

First, Wikimedia Foundation is discussing the possibility of a deal with 
Google. However, the exact terms of the "current" proposal have not been 
publicly disclosed. There has been no official statement with regards 
exact terms either by WMF, nor by Google.

Second, since we, editors of Wikimedia projects as well as Jimbo 
himself, tend to discuss things a lot together, as we work very hard to 
reach consensus and keep the community informed, basic information was 
provided to editors and developers. Hence, there was a trend to inform 
editors of the existence of the discussion and of the plan to meet 
Google representatives.

Third, while it is obvious to us, wikipedians, that any individual wiki 
edit does involve only the responsability and opinion of its author, 
unless otherwise mentionned, it is clearly not obvious at all for people 
outside our little circle.
As is, the board report posted here by Angela is clearly an official 
report from the board 
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-February/002187.html).
However, the article posted on meta 
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Google_hosting) is not an official 
statement by the board in any way. Angela very likely posted it to 
clarify questions asked by editors on the irc channels. There is 
absolutely nothing wrong in this. I personally discovered the page only 
the next day, following the link from the /. article. So I read this 
page after most bloggers.

Does it matter ?
Well, we actually face something entirely new for Wikipedia. The fact 
that a board member can post something casually on meta to inform 
editors, and this post is considered a board official announcement, and 
relayed by many bloggers or newspapers as an official statement.

The issue is basically not whether the content is accurate or not, or 
complete or not.

The issues are rather :
- Did the board wish to make a public announcement ?
- If it had done so, would it have been done on meta ?
- Is there a difference between family talk on irc only available on 
editors logs, and statement on a wiki page which can be linked by 
everyone in the world ?
- Does an official non official public statement hurt the likelyhood of 
the deal or not ?
- Now that most editors consider it official, what if the other board 
members do not fully agree with it ?

And mostly :

- Now that bloggers and newspapers consider it official, does the 
Foundation have a right to "control" what appears to be official 
statement by itself ?

To the last question, I definitly answer yes. And I support Mav 
protecting the page in question.

And last point

- How are such events where casual discussions are reported as official 
by public worldwide media gonna impact the future transparency of 
decision making which "could be" a little bit sensible ?


So... please Mark, before complaining of censorship (you may absolutely 
open a parallel page and comment on the talk page), I will ask you to 
carefully consider whether you think it proper that a page called by a 
dozen of major newspapers or blogs and presented as an official page, 
may be edited by anyone.

Someone suggested that I redirect the page to wikimediafoundation.org, 
but if I had done so, the talk page would not have been available any 
more. So, I discarded that proposition.



I'll also remind that Jimbo, Angela and I are also individuals, and that 
in most cases, what we say reflect our own opinion, rather than the 
collective opinion of the board.

All what is above is only my opinion, not an official statement by the 
Foundation :-)


Anthere


Delirium a écrit:
> Anthere wrote:
> 
>> Jimbo removed the information added by Yann, and I will ask you not to 
>> add things which are rumors from the Internet, but will appear 
>> official as soon as WE report them.
> 
> 
> I'm not sure I will continue to participate in Wikimedia Foundation 
> activities until this is resolved.  In particular, multiple reverts with 
> no edit summaries from Jimbo, and locking pages after removing 
> information is no way to run a Wiki.  Meta is a place where any user may 
> place information---you guys can censor wikimediafoundation.org if you 
> want, but please don't fuck up meta.
> 
> -Mark