[Foundation-l] VC - alternative resolution

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

On 4/5/08, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:

> And, by the way, I was talking not only about the problems from
> outsider's perspective. There are a lot of simple or complex problems
> of the local communities which are not solved only because there is no
> a body which job is to listen those problems. I listed some of them:
> You need an interwiki bot? -- Make it! -- even it is a routine task
> for a number of bot owners. You want to take care about actuality of
> the data inside of articles about countries? -- Do it alone! -- even
> it is much more efficient to have one bot for all projects who is
> doing that. You want to compile a course from de.wv and en.wv sources?
> -- No, you can't do that, they are using different licenses. You want
> to connect Spanish, Russian and Dutch biologists who are working on
> Wikimedian projects? -- No, you can't do that because there is no a
> method for doing so. Or -- do it, no one is stopping you! -- Any help?
> -- Help? We don't have such institution.
>
> I am not saying that we should take base our work around cases like
> Russian Wikibooks or Moldovan Wikipedia are. However, as the Board is
> the final instance for all real-life and real-time issues, we need the
> final instance for community and content related issues. Yes, there
> are a lot of ordinary jobs to do and VC's tasks will be full of those
> types of jobs. But, if we are not making a general purpose body, then
> it is better to think about a number of working groups which would
> address particular issues. Making a body which would address
> all-but-some community/content problems seems to me as making new
> problems.

Can you clarify a point for me please. When you speak of a need for a
"final instance" for "community and content" related issues, do you
mean "final instance" in the sense that it would be "final" in the sense
that people would in time learn to respect what it was doing, and then
for the most part not argue too hard, unless they felt it was really going
seriously in the wrong direction?

Authority that comes from respect gained from being on the right side
of thorny issues more times than most, is a valuable if not easily
obtainable resource. If that is the kind of "final" authority you mean,
I have no problem. In fact I would whoop for joy the day I saw that
kind of thing get off the ground.

If you mean "final instance" in some harder sense, then of course
we come to the same problems as have been what the Board has
been rightly leery about. Whatever/whoever would be put on point
as a hard and fast authority, with no give at all, could very soundly
be argued to be an editorial control on the content. And really, we
all know we want to avoid that like the plague.

Yours Truely;

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]