[Foundation-l] #wikipedia

[Sean Whitton]

> 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).

I'd like to make it very clear this was an action as group contact not
as freenode staff. freenode staff have given advice as my peers,
nothing more. Also, Mark_Ryan was widely recognised as the 'leader' of
the channel as he was the most active manager of the ops team. He
fully supported our proposals and contributed to them, suggesting to
me that we do have authorisation, if you see what I mean.

> 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.

Guillom, thanks for highlighting this. The problems were that a lot of
on-wiki users had abandoned #wikipedia in favour of other channels or
of leaving IRC altogether. It had been called a blasted wasteland.
However, IRC was still recognised as a useful tool, just that our
original channel (as in, been around in one form or another for the
longest time) was not. I didn't see that as a good situation.

Also, I was of the opinion that our ops were a little harsh at times
and were not willing to act as catalysts. This is not to say they did
not agree with the philosophy, but just that they were in old habits.
Here I agree with the concern that it is not for me to say "you will
op as I wish you to) but there was plenty of popular support for the
spirit of the idea.

So, the idea of removing ops was primarily to create the opportunity
for ratification of the guidelines. It was realised that the last
attempt at guidelines had failed because those who were to enforce
them were confused: if we had created a peaceful channel with them and
then an inactive op came back and shattered things (in good faith and
unintentionally) it would have been all for naught. By asking ops to
reapply we can reaffirm we're all on the same wavelength.

Sean

On 20/06/07, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


-- 
—Sean Whitton (seanw)
<sean at silentflame.com>
http://seanwhitton.com/