On Jan 20, 2008 7:10 PM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/21/08, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
Games in userspace are a perversion of the purpose of WP. If its still there much longer, I expect to find it at MfD. There's self expression within our context, which is good, and there's general use as a personal website,
What I think is important about the "nothing not project related" rule is that it affects everyone equally. It's not like we ban board games but allow collaborative novel writing or something. We're here for a purpose, so we stick to that purpose.
A shared purpose is fundamental to a healthy community. This is one of the reasons that I argue that common's community tends to be more healthy and less fragmented than enwp: The purpose(s) are more clearly and uniformly understood and shared by the regular participants.
Interestingly, there is not, to my knowledge, a single off-WMF site where "the wikipedia community" hangs around and does non-Wikipedia things. Does that tell us someting?
Because in the context of distance-less online interaction purpose *defines* community. Without the purpose, there isn't a community. So the only place I'd expect to more than a smattering of Wikipedians is on another competing Wikipedia like project, and that pretty much seems to hold true.
On the original subject, I thought the clear rule is that userspace material had to be arguably directly related to the users project involvement. A reasonable amount of background and socializing materials are okay since they help forge friendships and tighten the community, but ultimately Wikimedia != Free webhosting. Including too much outside the purpose risks diluting the community and creates more fragmentation.
If someone wanted to have userspace 'improve wikipedia' games, on the other hand...