[Foundation-l] Structure of Wikimedian community

[Milos Rancic]

I have to say that I am very surprised with the fact that some of
veteran Wikimedians don't understand distinctions between projects,
community and organization. (I didn't use irony, I am really
surprised.) The point is that we have to deal with three different
types organizing at once and that we need to find ways how to deal
with them. Something which is appropriate for one type of organizing
is not necessarily appropriate for another.

All of us are gathered around the projects. Our projects are
scientific and all things related to them should be solved by using
scientific methods (encyclopedic for Wikipedia, didactic for Wikibooks
and Wikiversity, journalist for Wikinews, linguistic for
Wiktionary...). It is obvious that, in relation with projects, we need
to develop and maintain our core principles like, for example, NPOV
is. Science is not democratic and all things related to science
shouldn't be driven by any other method than scientific.

At the other side, we need some servers and even money for projects
which may be generated (and are generated) around our projects and our
communities. For that reason we have the Board, the chapters, the
Office; and I am glad to hear that Sue made a great job toward
organizing our economy, as well as I am glad to know that German
chapter is going well and I hope that all other chapters will be as
well as German chapter is. This part should be organized by using
specific scientific methods -- methods of economy and organizational
science.

But, all of our projects have communities around them. All of them
have some real people who are working on projects, who are writing
articles, books, who are organizing data, who are talking with each
other and who have some human interaction between them. This part of
our community has to be organized democratically because if it is not,
it may be organized only in non-democratic way, which may lead not
only to bad relations between those real persons, us, but to the end
of all our projects.

Those three parts have their own lives. It is far from wise to try to
implement a method from one to organization of another. Driving
economy by using political methods usually leads to poverty, using
scientific methods when people should express their political usually
leads to heavy authoritarian structure, using exclusively economic
methods in building a science usually leads to scam.

And when something has its own life, the best idea is just to make
prerequirements and leave it to grow. Yes, we have to work on relation
between those entities, but we shouldn't force any of them to be
something which it is not.

The only entity with which we didn't do anything is our community.
Usually, we treat it as "us" and if it is about "us", we think that we
know what is the best for the community. A lot of people are mixing
encyclopedic values with community values.

While I am very strict in applying scientific methods while
contributing to Wikipedia (or any other our project), the last thing
which I would do is to be NPOV toward free and non-free knowledge. For
me non-free knowledge is a scam without any useful value. Yes, I know
that a number of you wouldn't agree with that, but it is *your*
political opinion, opposite (or not so opposite) to my.

In a "meritocratic" community we wouldn't talk about our different
political position, but we would try to "rationalize" our reasons.
But, the fact is that we don't agree because of our political
positions. And when we don't agree at the political level, it has to
be solved by using political mechanisms. The best political mechanism
is to find a consensus. But, when it is not possible, the other option
is to use democratic mechanism: voting.

Some of our basic political positions are described at meta pages of
our projects, some other are described inside of Foundation's goals.
But, a number of them are not described and for a number of them we
have different opinions.

Trying to "rationalize" our positions by using "scientific" methods is
not a way how to deal with community issues. Community issues should
be solved by using political methods and history of our civilization
has a good and working example: democracy.