[Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

[Thomas Dalton]

On 9 October 2011 17:49, Kim Bruning <kim at bruning.xs4all.nl> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 09, 2011 at 06:32:31PM +0100, Thomas Dalton wrote:
>>
>> I don't think the community really can avoid it, since it isn't a
>> coherent body. An individual member of the community can't really
>> achieve anything. The WMF has a hierarchy and structured decision
>> making mechanisms, so it can take deliberate action. The community
>> can't.
>
> Actually, the community is quite capable of generating coherent action, thank
> you. If you don't know how, there's folks around who can teach you. If you can't
> find any, I'll show you how. :-)

I didn't say it can't take coherent action. Writing an encyclopaedia
is a coherent action, after all. I said it can't take deliberate
action. By deliberate action, I mean deciding to do something and then
doing it. The way we work is that some people say they want to do
something and then the community decides whether to let them or not.
That works for a lot of things, but not for what Lodewijk is talking
about. We can't decide to discuss this with the WMF and reach a
compromise and then do so. Everyone will do whatever they want to do.
Everyone agreeing that it would be great to reach a compromise won't
actually change what individuals do.