[Foundation-l] please remove my moderating bits

[SJ]

Waerth,

I am very sorry to read this.  When you make noise on the foundation
list, for instance, even if it is a bit too much noise, you are not
ignored.  Your comments about verification are a good example...
sometimes it is just hard to answer effectively.

I agree that projects should look more towards cooperation with others
-- other languages and other types of projects.  You are right that
lack of cooperation is a problem.  En:wp has a policy as of this year
not to allow usernames with non-latin character sets. I have no idea
where that came from, but it is a shame.  But this is nothing new --
if I recall correctly, wiktionary was started thanks to division and
bickering about what belongs in an encyclopedia, not solely thanks to
a desire to have separate useful projects...

I hope you will eventually come to have more faith in the long-term
process of rule development, and the long-term motivations of
wikimedians... and that you will still shout, from the sidelines or
the field.

SJ

On 10/25/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> I have been thinking it over and decided to face reality. I have lost
> all my believe in the wikimediaprojects. So much even that I am now
> adding content to places outside of the wikimediaprojects instead of
> having to deal with all the 100000000000000's of procedures and rules
> being implemented by people who do not even know how to write an article.
>
> The projects have been taken over by a group of people, mostly
> teenagers, whom apparently have lost all sight of realism and have taken
> other people's work hostage, without creating one bit of content
> themselves. Who feel that adding templates, writing rules and policing
> (the process) is more important than what we set out to do. Also there
> is a very very very strong western bias in the projects. Ideas and
> processes are launched which might work perfectly in a western world
> (like the rules for verification) but which fall flat on their face when
> applied to non-western items. When someone actually rises this point on
> the lists (me) it is ignored.
>
> Also Jimbo's statement that en: wikipedia has covered most subjects
> disappoints me. This might be true for subjects on developed countries.
> But the projects are heavily lacking in the same sort of content with
> regards to the developing world. While every lake in the US probably has
> an article. Most Asian / African / South American countries have barely
> got articles describing these kind of features. And if someone does
> write an article about it, it gets deleted as non-encyclopedic. Also
> wikipedia's become very nationalistic like the nl: wikipedia where a
> fairly large group feels non-Dutch and non-Belgian topics should not be
> covered in the Dutch language edition! And they actually wrote rules to
> enforce this.
>
> The amount of people who only care about their own backyard (the west)
> and wanna delete everything they do not understand has grown to big.
> Also other idiocism like on nl: wikipedia where procedure is 100x more
> important than the smooth running of the project, resulting in an
> everyone can insult everyone situation and no-one get's actually blocked
> is taking to much time and stress.
>
> Jimbo invented the wheel with the wikimedia projects. Unfortunately the
> wheel never evolved, nor will it in the current climate. Every form of
> progress of the projects in something meaningfull and working gets
> blocked or grinded in bureaucracy by a group of people who want to be
> the boss.
>
> Meanwhile on the boardlevel politicians rule who only give a shit about
> themselves and about political games. I have seen many of these games
> played out over the years. Also the projects diversify to much and to
> much new niches where new small groups start that take their particular
> niche hostage (commons being a prime example) are started. Instead of
> looking at how things can co-operate people start their own new kingdoms
> and fiefdoms (like wikitionaryz, which is GerardM's fiefdom) into things
> that are not our core imho. We are about creating content, not spreading
> it, let other people do that job.
>
> On some projects I still have moderating bits, I hereby ask the stewards
> to take these bits away as I do not wish to spend to much time anymore
> on the projects, I might shout a bit from the sideline. The wikimedia
> projects will always exist, and the original idea was great.
> Unfortunately Winston Churchill was right .... democracy works in theory
> only. When the masses take over like on our project, the sum gets
> lowered to the level of the masses. Which means herd thinking.
>
> Waerth
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> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
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>


-- 
++SJ