[Foundation-l] #wikipedia

[Guillaume Paumier]

Hello,

On 6/20/07, Dejan Čabrilo <dcabrilo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2007-06-20 at 08:59 +0100, Sean Whitton wrote:
> > Firstly, the guidelines were drafted and left in the topic of
> > #wikipedia for several days. No real feedback or edits were received
> > and so we thought it would be okay to go ahead. Perhaps if the
> > community had got involved in discussion there, we probably would have
> > allowed more time, but it didn't seem to be happening. So, there was
> > no community input despite the opportunity for it.
>
> Did this not lead you to believe that the guideline was not advertised
> properly? After we heard about it, many people got very upset. So, I
> suggest you give us another chance to give you input on the topic. The
> guideline page is protected, and when I asked an op (rather harshly, I
> must admit) in #wikipedia to change the /topic, to reflect that most of
> us don't agree with it, he didn't do anything about it.
>
> My question still stands: why do you get to make decisions for all of
> us?


Because Sean is one of our two IRC group contacts for Wikimedia (with
James_F), member of Freenode staff (you know, this network you are using and
whose rules you have accepted a long time ago).

> Secondly, I agree that the off-topic guidelines were originally worded
> > far too strictly. I've since toned down the guidelines (I didn't write
> > them originally) to try and give the impression that was intended,
> > that extensive off-topic talk is discouraged, not that we are saying
> > "talk about anything but Wikipedia and you get banned". Please take a
> > look at them now and see what you think.
>
> Like I said before: I hang out in that channel because I like the wit of
> the people in it. If we are not allowed to dwell into out conversations
> to a point in which we discuss the political philosophy behind the
> religious dynamics among the royalty of Swaziland or the latest episode
> of Dr House, the channel will lose its charm of an encyclopedia channel
> - and it will be void of people who otherwise helped newcomers. It will
> also be void of admins, and in many cases, my only way to quickly
> contact an admin was through that channel.


Admin on which project ? #wikipedia is supposed to be about the global
Wikipedia project, if you wish to find admins of a dedicated project, you
had better join the dedicated channel (I guess your sentence was
English-language-Wikipedia-centric, so in that case the dedicated channel is
#wikipedia-en, just like there is #wikipedia-fr or #wikipedia-de).

Finally, let me repeat this: While I applaud your effort to take
> initiative, why do you think you have legitimacy to deop people, make a
> guideline without community input (whether the lack of community input
> was your fault or not doesn't matter, there still wasn't any), and then
> give ops to people who will follow it?


Because someone had to do it. Sean was only bold enough to dare doing it.

Sean, I think you should make it publicly clear what the problems were, so
that people really understand why your action was needed.

-- 
Guillaume Paumier
[[m:User:guillom]]
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have
imagined." Henry David Thoreau