[Foundation-l] Please delete mo. wikipedia

Wed Oct 13 01:02:58 UTC 2010

 Mark,

I hope I didn't touch the actual mo.wp issue in any way -- I was
obviously referring to the decision process. On which your opinion seems
to be "don't involve the community, keep it transparent, protect the
absent". Milos came up with a proposal. I came up with a proposal. What
is your proposal?

Thank you,
Gutza

On 13-Oct-10 03:53, M. Williamson wrote:
> On the matter of the disposition of mo.wp - I have stated it several
> times clearly in the other thread, that there should be some sort of
> accommodation available for users of the Cyrillic alphabet that
> enables both reading from and contributing to a Wikipedia, be it ro.wp
> or a separate Wikipedia.
>
> On the matter of how a decision should be reached in this matter, my
> opinion is that we should learn lessons from the past and that endless
> votes and debates which involve the whole community in a single page
> do not seem an ideal solution; I also believe in transparency. I also
> believe in protecting the rights of those who are not present or who
> are underrepresented, that is my main reason for continued involvement
> in this discussion.
>
> -m.
>
>
> 2010/10/12 Gutza <gutza at moongate.ro>:
>>  Mark,
>>
>> There seems to be some communication problem here. Do you actually have
>> an opinion on this matter or not? If you do have an opinion, what is it?
>>
>> Thank you,
>> Gutza
>>
>> On 13-Oct-10 03:36, M. Williamson wrote:
>>> 2010/10/12 Gutza <gutza at moongate.ro>:
>>>>  Mark,
>>>>
>>>> You are a veteran in Wikipedia matters -- you have been involved in this
>>>> project for several years under nickname "Node ue". You have fought in
>>>> the Moldovan language article on en.wp for years, and you have
>>>> single-handedly created and defended the entire mo.wiki project, from
>>>> interface to content. As such, I am amazed by the number of
>>>> inconsistencies in your reply:
>>> This is a mischaracterization. I am a "veteran in Wikipedia matters",
>>> I suppose, having been around since about 2001, but I have not edited
>>> that article in 4 years or so, and I have barely touched
>>> Moldova-related topics on-wiki (perhaps a total of 5 edits over the
>>> course of the last few years). After having read your message, I can't
>>> help but feel maligned for things I may have said a long time ago and
>>> which I have mostly since forgotten. As a human being, my views have
>>> changed and developed since then. I hope we can continue to respect
>>> each other as thinking individuals.
>>>
>>>>   1. Your wording is inflammatory ("rule-by-mob"), and your point
>>>>      gratuitously infers an ulterior motive on my part; as far as I can
>>>>      tell, there is no reason for such implications.
>>> "Rule-by-mob" has been used by many people, including great thinkers
>>> far wiser than I could ever hope to be, to refer to one of the great
>>> flaws in the democratic process. An absolute democracy is never ideal
>>> because the rights of minorities can easily be voted away by the
>>> majority. That is why, in most politically-stable democracies with any
>>> measure of ethnic diversity, there are multiple safeguards to ensure
>>> that the rights of minorities or people who for whatever reason do not
>>> have as loud of a political voice are not trampled. In this case, the
>>> population of Romania is much larger than that of Moldova, and smaller
>>> still is that of Transnistria. In addition, Moldova (excluding
>>> Transnistria) does not enjoy the same level of internet connectivity
>>> as does Romania, and Transnistria does not enjoy anywhere near the
>>> same level of internet connectivity as either.
>>>
>>>>   2. Wikipedia is governed by consensus, wherein the quality of your
>>>>      argument weighs much more than the number of people who hold the
>>>>      same point of view; as such, the rule-by-mob and any similar
>>>>      arguments are moot.
>>> This is not a local Wikipedia, this is a foundation matter. What you
>>> are proposing is to make a decision that will affect a community
>>> without ensuring their equal representation in such a discussion. If,
>>> theoretically, the Romanian Wikipedia's continued existence were up
>>> for discussion, would you feel safe going into a room of all people
>>> who are already biased against your cause and asking them to vote on
>>> it, knowing you were outnumbered? Our community is supposed to
>>> function by consensus and compromise, not simple majority-rules votes,
>>> but things are often reduced to that.
>>>
>>>>   3. Several "interested parties" (such as myself) have been watching
>>>>      this discussion on foundation-l for some time; as long as they had
>>>>      nothing to comment, they kept to themselves -- this is in line
>>>>      with Wikipedia policies regarding tacit consensus. Moving this
>>>>      entire conversation to a private medium equals hiding the
>>>>      decision-making process from the very interested parties it was
>>>>      intended for. You might have not been aware of such silent parties
>>>>      before my message here, but you were replying to the very message
>>>>      which revealed their existence.
>>> The idea was proposed by Milos, not myself; my own comment is that it
>>> seems better than a free-for-all on Meta, not that it is the best
>>> possible idea and that we should use that. I, for one, am always in
>>> favor of greater transparency and accountability. So we are faced with
>>> two proposals: one that allows trampling of a numerical minority by a
>>> much larger group, and another that creates an environment of no
>>> transparency or accountability. Neither is a really good solution in
>>> my view, I'd like to find something better.
>>>
>>>>   4. All of this is public, so far. As such, any "private" medium this
>>>>      conversation could be moved to will be "invaded" by Romanian and
>>>>      Russian "mobs". But there's a significant difference: where silent
>>>>      parties were silent, now they would now have to voice their
>>>>      presence in the new, "private" medium.
>>>>
>>>> Having said the above, please tell me how exactly you see this private
>>>> decision-making process, from a technical point of view: which medium do
>>>> you propose? Who would centralize all messages? When would we know we
>>>> reached consensus, and who would decide that? How would that be proven
>>>> to the outside world?
>>> Again, this was not my proposal. You can refer these questions to
>>> Milos. I don't like the idea of a free-for-all
>>> vote/discussion/whatever on Meta that will surely be little more than
>>> a repeat of what happened 4 years ago, but I also don't like the idea
>>> of a secret cabal with unknown members making secret decisions in a
>>> secret forum, only to be divulged to the community after the fact.
>>>
>>> -m.
>>>
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