[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

[Anthere]

geni wrote:
> On 9/18/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>Hoi,
>>I think you have it exactly wrong.
>>
>>*  Wikimedia Foundation is not about the English Wikipedia. If it was,
>>the other projects should get out of the Wikimedia Foundation asap
>>because it would make it the wrong place to grow their project.
> 
> 
> The language barrier tends to result in the foundation being less
> involved on other projects. Can you imagine what would happen if en
> had the same issues with the verifiability policy as ru? the odds are
> we would be being asked some pretty tough question by the foundation.
> How many other projects have an equivalent to [[en:Wikipedia:Office
> Actions]]?
> 
> 
>>* It would be good to discriminate against the English Wikipedia because
>>it gets too much attention. The alternative is that it cannot look after
>>itself. If this is the case the project should organise itself and not
>>be dependant on outside control.
> 
> 
> Again the foundation is unlikely to allow this. In practice you should
> hope the en does not focus on exclusively looking after it self
> (although for a number of reasons that would be pretty much impossible
> for this to happen) and considers itself as part of a greater project.
> 
> 
>>* Even the Neapolitan wikipedia has had articles in the Italian National
>>Press. This is certainly true for all the bigger projects. If you think
>>that the domination of the English wikipedia is so self evident, think
>>again most of what happens around the other projects you do not know
>>about.
> 
> 
> OK lets look at some international figures:
> 
> en dominates the alexa results:
> 
> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=wikipedia.org&url=wikipedia.org

Already said *many* times, but worth repeating yet another time.

There is apparently a *significant* bias in the results given by Alexa. 
This bias is largely due to the fact that Alexa works thanks to results 
brought back by its tool bar. That tool bar is not used proportionally 
per language.

For example, according to Alexa, the french wikipedia represent 3% of 
the total traffic. Given that the french wikipedia is the third biggest 
project and only one third of the english one, Alexa stats appear 
unreasonable. This is pretty well colerated with the fact Alexa toolbar 
is very little used by french editors.

It would be nice to actually have others stats than those gathered by 
Alexa. Do we have other sources of information ?

> other than a brief appearance by de en dominates the search results:
> 
> http://www.google.com/trends?q=en.wikipedia.org%2C+es.wikipedia.org%2C+de.wikipedia.org%2C+fr.wikipedia.org%2C+Ja.wikipedia.org&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all


Oh, very interesting stats !!!


>>Also the growth of the other projects is faster than the English
>>project. It will not take long and the other projects will be
>>substantially bigger.
>>
> 
> 
> Combined I think they already are in terms of number of articles.
> Individually nothing is going to challenge en any time soon.
> 
> 
>>If you choose a board member only because you think he or she is
>>"nice".. you might consider if he of she will also be effective and do
>>good for ALL the projects.
> 
> 
> I tend towards the "vote for anyone I consider competent" approach.
> 

In any cases, this discussion is pretty much a troll and we already know 
there will never be any agreement on this issue of "let's pick up 
english board members 'cause en.wikipedia is the biggest and requires 
most attention" or the "bullshit, the other languages are growing and 
require attention as well". This will not get anywhere EVER.


What IS interesting though, and which Geni mentions correctly, is the 
fact that the english speaking project receives much more attention from 
the OFFICE/EXECUTIVE (which is, mind you, a bit different of attention 
from the board).

I believe the current board *IS* careful to consider most languages. 
Jimbo is frequently travelling and attending meetings from wikipedians 
in various countries. Angela is very well known to be very helpful for 
all languages. Whilst I am still focused on my original community, am 
vocal about any english language dominance issue and trying to support 
development of smaller languages.

I hope that current non-english editors do not feel the board is not 
taking them into account. We may not be helpful/available enough, but I 
do think we try to be fair.


BUT, if the board tries to see globally, I think it is a fact the 
executive is more english oriented, and frankly, it is pretty 
normal/understandable.

So, no, there is no exactly similar WP:Office in all big languages, 
because the Foundation can not afford paying people to do Danny's job in 
10 languages right now.
And there is no assistant to answer the phone in more than 2 languages; 
so volunteers do the job and answer the phone from their home.
The operations are english centred.
The strategy is not.

The board is "strategy", not "operation".