[Foundation-l] new site notice now ready

[Robert Scott Horning]

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>14. To the editors and other contributors--Wikipedia and all the other  
>projects do NOT exist so that a bunch of bored people have some place to play in  
>their leisure time. They exist to spread free knowledge and free culture. Our  
>target audience is not the editor per se, but the user-without-a-user-name who 
> comes to rely on our projects for information, whether its a student, a  
>traveller, or someone with an obscure interest and a passion for learning. As  
>editors and contributors we are serving them, and not being served. That is why  
>we keep all the sites going, no matter how costly it is. And let's be 
>grateful  to the groups and organizations that help us meet these costs.
> 
>Danny
>
I hope this isn't a prevalent attitude among all board members to slam 
editor/contributors this hard.

I do agree with the general sentiment that we need to be mindful that 
there are individuals beyond the active editor/commentator community 
that typically participates with the creation of Wikimedia content, but 
at the same time an acknowledgement needs to be made that without the 
active and contientious maintainance of Wikimedia content the WMF would 
have nothing to host.  Or it would age and "bit rot" away.

Forgetting or trivializing the work of the people who have developed the 
content will only drive away current and future contributors.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning