[Foundation-l] Rethinking brands

[Anthony]

On 5/8/07, Dmcdevit <dmcdevit at cox.net> wrote:
> Kelly Martin wrote:
> > Indeed, the proper response to the lower profile of the other projects
> > is to advertise them more heavily, not to submerge them further.
> >
> >
> This may or may not be off topic, but one thing we are terrible at is
> cross-project community support. The submerged projects are largely our
> own doing. Mostly this is because most editors are (and I mean this
> factually, not disparagingly) wrapped up in their own work and project,
> and not necessarily connected to the wider Wikimedia mission or free
> content, and not well-acquainted with the other projects.

It seems to me that not very many people at all are connected to the
wider Wikimedia mission.  And those that are, in most if not all
instances, are *more* connected to an individual project than they are
to the mission of Wikimedia in general.

I'm not at all sure how to solve this, and even less sure about a
solution which has any chance of being accepted.

This really is an example of the group being its own enemy.  The core
group of Wikimedians is getting overruled by an overabundance of
respect for the individual rights of people who don't care about
Wikimedia at all.  From
http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html:

"In the early Nineties, a proposal went out to create a Usenet news
group for discussing Tibetan culture, called soc.culture.tibet. And it
was voted down, in large part because a number of Chinese students who
had Internet access voted it down, on the logic that Tibet wasn't a
country; it was a region of China. And in their view, since Tibet
wasn't a country, there oughtn't be any place to discuss its culture,
because that was oxymoronic.

Now, everyone could see that this was the wrong answer. The people who
wanted a place to discuss Tibetan culture should have it. That was the
core group. But because the one person/one vote model on Usenet said
"Anyone who's on Usenet gets to vote on any group," sufficiently
contentious groups could simply be voted away. "

When I read that, I couldn't help but think about Wikimedia.  Your
example regarding transwiking is an example of much the same thing.

Anthony