[Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007

[Alison Wheeler]

On Sat, September 30, 2006 07:45, Gatto Nero wrote:
> I'm not saying that you were not allowed to copy or to take
> inspiration from the other bids.
> I just find it sad to make it in this way.

Could you just get a reality check here, and there's also a bit of the pot
calling the kettle back here. Your bid *also* copied ideas from other
bids, including london's, yet you haven't seen us complain. All the bids
were GFDL (because of where they were placed on meta - personally I'd have
been much much happier if the bids were developed in private by the
various teams and then submitted by email).

For instance; For London I added links to the articles about London on
every language's wp [1] timestamped 10:56, 10 September 2006. The next
evening you copied this! (21:36, 11 September 2006 [2]). Taipei waited
until [3] then at 07:54, 14 September 2006 you moved your list to the
exact same position [4] on the bid as ours!

On 20:10, 10 September 2006 we added a gallery of images of London already
in commons [5]. A gallery was added by Taipei at 00:54, 13 September 2006
[6] but then removed in favour of including the images individually.

Or maybe I should mention the use of flags? At 18:35, 14 September 2006
[7] I added them to our bid (indeed I had to create one! [8]) yet at
05:23, 16 September 2006 there was Taiwan using them too [9]!

We were surprised though that no other bid copied our welcome in multiple
languages [10] at the top of the bid (English, French, German, Italian and
Japanese) to make the point that London is very much a multi-lingual city
as we believe that Wikimania should reflect the babel of languages that
are spoken world-wide.

There are other examples too of bids taking ideas from each other (but I
don't intend to go through every diff - life is too short) but the point
is Wikimania - like all the other WMF projects - is a collaborative thing
too. I found it very flattering that many of my ideas were copied quickly
- it is the 'wiki way'.

Alison Wheeler


[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/London&diff=next&oldid=430653
[2]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/Torino&diff=next&oldid=431780
[3]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/Taipei&diff=next&oldid=433195
[4]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/Torino&diff=next&oldid=433825
[5]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/London&diff=prev&oldid=431053
[6]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/Taipei&diff=prev&oldid=432816
[7]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/London&diff=next&oldid=433903
[8] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Icons-flag-eu.png
[9]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/Taipei&diff=next&oldid=434991
[10]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/London&diff=next&oldid=432060