[Foundation-l] Moderation and this list

[simonpedia]

Dear Brianna,
 
Just re-reading this one about the need to “introduce new forms of
communication”.
It seems perfectly obvious doesn’t it? 
 
The one thing which has struck me as very strange around the WMF traps is
how so much time is spent in using wikis to produce (virtual) libraries,
while there is so little interest in improving the comms side of things – in
using technologies which might pass for (what in academia) are called
virtual classrooms. IRC and mail lists were terrific once upon a time. Now
they’re just anachronisms.
 
Splitting into ever more narrow elists won’t help us here. It’ll just lead
to more horizontally challenged discussions, many of which can be seen to be
repeated at different times, in a different place, if one could be bothered
searching forever.
 
Forums, on the other hand would at least give us an opportunity to have
discussion, which if someone misses, might at least retain the pertinent
parts for all time on one thread. It might even give us the opportunity to
bring together proposals common to all projects. But even forums are an
asynchronous thing. Could we, while working through this reformation, give
some thought to the real time comms stuff. E.g. The wikipedia weekly
conversations are a good beginning in getting people actually talking.
 
Sewers have a way of driving people out of their comfortable routines. It’s
a year ago since Eric pointed out the need. HYPERLINK
"http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/026707.html"
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/026707.html
This time, hopefully, we might not jump to grasp the obvious and simply look
to having ONE portal as the locale of a comms hub. Eric makes a very
important point = “There are literally thousands of GROUPS we want to work
with in our global strategy to spread (I’d say Share) free knowledge”. It’s
this concept which every globalizing .org is contending with right now. How
to help globalizing groups (like this one) get together, and give them a
place in cyberspace, which doesn’t go away or get buried in a vast domain,
and isn’t overwhelmed by the initiated. 
 
If you stay across the conversations at aarnet (the Aussie Academic Research
Network) and others, this kind of talk revolves around a (global)
peer-to-peer Multicast architecture = strands of nodes which are stung
together on demand, and work equally on both directions. WMF networks are
halfway there. But the only way I can see progress here is to for WMF
project people to have relationships with aarnet’s peers in a few countries
so the client/server replacement can be made obvious. For the interested,
this is one fat end of the (real time) technology. HYPERLINK
"http://www.accessgrid.org/"http://www.accessgrid.org/
 
We need to start somewhere, so I’ve put a links down the bottom right of
this page. HYPERLINK
"http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communication_Projects_Group"http://meta.wik
imedia.org/wiki/Communication_Projects_Group
One to a skypecast room (the input). One to wikipedia weekly’s page (the
output). Not happy with skype as it’s really just another network island
but, as it comes out of beta, it should help global groups to get the hang
of a simple way to talk, stream, record and podcast. Any other suggestions,
please just note here. One size will not fit all.
 
Enough. It should be an interesting year if we can figure out how to filter
out the crap and recycle our waters. Happy New Year. simonfj
 
    
 
On 22/12/2007, Jimmy Wales <HYPERLINK
"http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l"jwales at
wikia.com> wrote:
> I am unsure what we should do about foundation-l.  It has become a
> sewer.  It is difficult to balance our very strong desire for an
> unmoderated forum where people can feel comfortable making strong
> criticisms (nothing wrong with that!) with a forum where trolls are
> exhausting a lot of good people and spreading misinformation due to the
> inability of others to keep up with the sheer volume of malice.
 
I strongly agree that something needs to change, but I am not sure what.
 
There are a few things that could happen.
1) Split foundation-l into several mailing lists for different
purposes. copyright-l would be a good start. board2community-l may be
another. :)
2) Introduce other mediums of communication, to complement or replace
mailing lists, such as message boards (forums) or blogs. Forums have
the ability to "pin" important topics at the top which could be
useful, and also offer an ability to offer feedback on a posts'
relevance *without actually replying to the post*. Mailing lists lack
this...
3) Introduce more guidelines about what's appropriate in terms of what
community members can "demand" from WMF Board and staff, where the
"openness" limits lie. I don't think staff should be subject to
arbitrary interrogation from mailing lists, maybe with some exception
for the ED. Or if the ED is required to write monthly-or-so reports to
the mailing list, that could be a good alternative to any
interrogation.
 
cheers
Brianna

 


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