[Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

Muhammad Alsebaey shipmaster at gmail.com
Sat Jan 10 22:26:03 UTC 2009


I was against the idea of creating a Masry Wikipedia (there is a looong
thread where I brought it up here), *However* I am against deleting any
Wikipedia that has been created and picked up an active community,
regardless of how controversial it is. It is simply unfair to the people who
have invested their time in the 300 something articles it has now. I think
that is the correct thing to do despite the volume of complaints from people
we are recieving on ar.wp and OTRS.

That said, I am personally taking issue with LangCom.


   - Gerard has been the *only* person from LangCom that I have seen reply
   to any of the issues, his replies are selective, he refuses to answer
   whatever he doesnt think is relevant to his argument and is in general very
   aggressive, If the guys at LangCom chose him as the public face, I would say
   they were looking to pick fights rather than communicate decisions.
   - I Have asked several times about the delibration process and how the
   tons of arguments given on the controversial Masry topic were considered, I
   one time got an answer that was simply 'Can't disclose the arguments because
   of privacy issues of committee members' and the other was 'There was no
   arguments, I asked on the mailing list if I can create it and no one said
   no'. Both answers suggest an either disengaged committee or one that doesnt
   think transparency of the decision process is important, but rather,
   secretive decision is better.
   - After looking on the meta page for the committee, I asked if the
   committee has any mechanism for determining inactive members, if the process
   of decision is 'I sent an email and no one objected', that may mean
   approval, but it also may mean that people are not active. I got no answer
   for the question but Immediately after Masry controversy, two committee
   members resigned and one was removed for inactivity without any explanation
   given, is that an acknowledgement that the committee was malfunctioning? Why
   wasnt there some kind of public explaination.



-- 
Best Regards,
Muhammad Alsebaey


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