[Foundation-l] Future fate of Siberian Wikipedia

[Milos Rancic]

In general, I understand both: Language SubCom and Board for lack of
will/time to work on such issues: LangSubCom shouldn't deal with
closure of some project and Board has much more important issues to
work on. However, in the present situation only Board is able to make
such decision and only LangSubCom is body which may give expertize.
So, my first suggestion was based on the simple relation: what do we
have and what do we need.

If both bodies are not willing to deal with such issues, the idea
about making Meta ArbCom is better then nothing. So, I support this
idea in the sense "what do we have and what do we need".

However, positions of ArbComs shouldn't be strong, because ~10 persons
shouldn't be able make Wikimedia-wide decisions. Also, it is quite
reasonable to suppose that such body will be under strong pressure: I
may suppose that a lot of people will try to find a way how to make
influence on those people, as well as I am sure that they will have
much more job then they would be able to do.

Also, even we have such body, it is always possible that it will say
the same as Board and LangSubCom said for this case: we are not
competent for this issue (or: sorry, we have a lot of job to do and we
are not able to work on your issue because we think that it is less
important then other issues).

Because of all of such cases I think that the best solution is to make
a body which will just work on preparing of Wikimedia-wide votings.

And it is not so hard to make a good enough model for voting (which,
btw, may be different from for different cases). For example, rules
may be:

We need people who are enough in Wikimedia and her projects, so:
- Board members, chapter board members, (sub)committee members,
stewards, Meta community and developers (may some groups more?) are
enough trusting, so we don't need to check them.
- Other method for persons to whom Wikimedian projects are important
is at least non-bot 1000 edits on all Wikimedian projects. Also, one
year of presence may be another condition.
- A method for checking reliability may be one year without any block
more then 24 hours.
- etc. etc.

We need this because we need a general method for making decisions
which are global, but not WMF related. Today we have problem related
to Siberian Wikipedia, but tomorrow we will have a problem which even
wouldn't be related to any (sub)committee's expertise.

On 8/1/07, Johannes Rohr <jorohr at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Milos Rancic" <millosh at gmail.com>
> writes:
>
> > According to the experience from past cases, the only decisions in
> > relation to such cases had been made by Jimmy/Board or Language
> > SubCom. According to that, there are some options to solve the
> > problem:
> >
> > - Jimmy shouldn't make any personal decision in such cases. However,
> > Board may do that.
> > - Language SubCom shouldn't have power to close some project,
>
> ...and langcom members are not interested in getting involved, see
> GerardM's earlier comment on this subject.[1]
>
> >so possible solution here is: Language SubCom suggests something,
> >then Board makes decision according to this suggestion as well as
> >according to all other circumstances.
>
> except that the board does not wish to get involved either, see Erik
> Möller's statement on this.[2]
>
> > - Maybe the best solution is to introduce Wikimedia-wide voting in
> > such cases: Like as voting for the Board, people from all communities
> > will be called to vote about this issue. Personally, I think that
> > introduction of such polls will push forward our community.
>
> I don't believe that voting is the right way to go. A solid decision
> on this topic requires at least some insight into the matter. Votes,
> at least when accompanied by discussion, tend to evolve into endless
> flamefests, where decisions are taken on the ground of feelings rather
> than facts. See the Siberian discussion to convince yourselves.[3] I
> strongly believe that the decision on ru-sib should not be taken in
> such a sharkpool.
>
> The best idea I've read so far is that of a Meta Arbitration Committee
> which was suggested by GerardM.[4] However,  practical
> steps in this direction have yet to been taken.
>
> > The good thing is that, thanks to creation of Language SubCom, we
> > will never have any Siberian Wikipedia more.
>
> [...]
>
> While I have my doubts wether the new policy isn't actually too
> strict, the fact that there will be no new Wikis in private conlangs
> is indeed a major achievement. But still, the one Siberian Wikipedia
> is still around and I fear that it will take quite a long time, until
> a solution (like moving the whole thing to Wikia) will finally
> materialise, if ever.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Johannes
>
>
> Footnotes:
> [1]  http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-May/029940.html
>
> [2]  http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-May/029937.html
>
> [3]  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Siberian_Wikipedia
>
> [4]  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Closure_of_WMF_projects
>
> --
> http://www.infoe.de/
>
>
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