[Foundation-l] A Wikisource Definition (was: RfC: A Free Content and Expression Definition)

[amgine at saewyc.net]

On Sat, 2006-06-05 at 03:43 +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
On 5/4/06, amgine at saewyc.net <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
>
> > The Foundation should (and did) describe the projects goals and missions,
> > and approve any modifications of these.
>
> Wikisource ("Project Sourceberg") was created before the Foundation
> even had a Board. This was during the time when new projects were
> essentially set up when something had to be dumped from Wikipedia.
> People were adding texts like national constitutions to Wikipedia
> verbatim. Hence, the only mission statement I've seen for Wikisource
> is on [[m:Wikisource]]:
>
> "Mission: Allow people to handle primary sources better than
> currently, so that no one gets upset. Maybe that means provide a
> repository for primary sources; maybe that means figure out how to
> improve the Wikipedia interface for linking to outside repositories."
>
> People get flamed nowadays for even submitting project proposals like
> this. You say I want to "dictate terms". But in actual fact, I want to
> be clear about what the project should _allow_, not so much about what
> it should _prohibit_. I do _not_ want a small group of a handful of
> people to retroactively create a definition that has never been
> written when it should have been. But that is exactly what will happen
> if you leave, for example, the question of whether to allow
> translations to the small, existing community of de.wikisource.org.
>
> There are different scales of community involvement that are
> appropriate for different purposes. Even for an individual page, you
> may see cases where a group of editors is annoyed because someone else
> suddenly opens up a discussion without ever having worked on the page
> or having read past discussions.
>
> However, nobody would argue that the people who have worked on a
> single Wikipedia article have some special "right" to make up their
> own policies -- because Wikipedia follows a particular philosophy,
> which, to a certain extent, is even shared across languages. Nobody, I
> hope, would seriously make the case that each language edition of
> Wikipedia should have a different logo symbol (as opposed to the
> subtitle). So these decisions are made on a project-wide level.
>
> And in addition to the project level, there is the Wikimedia level.
> This includes involvement from the entire Wikimedia community, whether
> they have worked on a specific project or not. This is where we decide
> whether to launch a new projects. And in the case of old projects that
> did not go through this process, I think this is where the scope will
> have to be, gently and through a largely consultative process that of
> course involves the existing community, gradually defined or refined.
>
> This has nothing to do with "dictating terms". Some see Wikimedia as a
> group of largely disparate tribes, others see it as a single
> community. It is, however, both. Some decisions are best made locally,
> some globally.
>
> The ability to make global decisions, to arrive at a single definition
> for a project scope, to consistently enforce free content principles
> and NPOV, and so forth, is one of the reasons to have an organization
> like Wikimedia in the first place. The other key reason I can see is
> to build an ever larger community that is given ever more
> opportunities to do good. Both are negatively affected by excessive
> tribalism.
>
> What else do we need Wikimedia for? Fundraising? The projects would
> probably be more effective in this regard if they could work
> independently, and besides, none is even remotely on the same scale as
> Wikipedia. Wikimedia without a Wikimedia community identity is a
> pointless entity.
>
> I hope "Wikisourcerors" see themselves also as members of the larger
> Wikimedia community. I hope everyone who works on a Wikimedia project
> does.
>
> Erik

That's an awfully long way to say we should ignore the last half of my
sentence - "and approve modifications of these" - and instead have a
top-down approach where changes come from outside and not from the inside.

Amgine