[Foundation-l] Interwiki Cooperation; NSK

[Tim Starling]

NSK wrote:

>Slashdot has published stories written by me (KDE/FSF's 
>WIWO...) and my karma there is Good. 
>
And I'm a Level 3 Wizard in Knights of Kulthor, bow before my holy name.

>My university dissertation is on wikis. 
>  
>
Please publish it online.

>I notice some people refer to me as "he/she" and I wonder whether they have 
>noticed who am I.
>
>  
>
It doesn't matter who you are, you have a responsibility not to annoy 
everyone regardless of your position.

>I was lurking here for some time before I decided to start posting, so I had 
>accumulated many possible suggestions and ideas about Wikipedia. Since I 
>decided to start posting, I started remembering whatever I had thought about 
>all that time, so perhaps some people disliked me because of the initial 
>quantity of my postings. Although I have already asked whether anybody wants 
>me to stop posting, nobody said something like that, so I understand that I 
>should be welcome here - but I still notice that some participants seem to 
>dislike me and I cannot understand why.
>
>  
>
That's understandable. You're not picking up the hints people are giving 
you, so when you get attacked for ignoring them it seems as if the 
attack comes from nowhere. People don't like to spell out social rules, 
they're learned in other ways. But unfortunately some people are 
incapable of learning them in other ways, so let me spell out a couple 
of things

1. Post less
2. Earn respect, don't expect your reputation to carry over from other 
communities
3. Be tactful when offerring suggestions. Have respect for the other 
people on the list who have spent a great deal of time thinking about 
the same issues. Don't tell them they are wrong, ask if they think your 
idea is better. Ask in a way that suggests you expect them to say no.
4. Before you post, search for similar suggestions made by other people 
in the past, and read the replies.

>I don't really have enough time to edit much on Wikipedia. I have my own 
>projects and soon/hopefully will have my own nonprofit organisation. So, 
>although my community website now is still very new (just opened this August, 
>but already serving more than 65 thousand hits per month), it will certainly 
>become very known and important in the near future. My interests in the 
>Wikipedia community are mostly establishing public relations, helping each 
>other to improve our community policies and sharing software development tips 
>and practices. I mostly want communication with Wikipedia decision makers, 
>the Board and the development team, so that we can find ways to cooperate as 
>independent separate projects. So, I think it should be obvious that I 
>participate in your mailing lists as a representative of a friendly website 
>which seeks to have relations, cooperation and knowledge sharing with 
>Wikimedia. But if WMF does not wish to cooperate or thinks I am a 
>"competitor", then you can just say so and I will leave.
>
>  
>
Wikimedia has thousands of users, you are just one person. You're not 
representing anyone. You have nothing special to offer. Wikimedia needs 
help from Yahoo, Google and BBC, not some guy who wants to start his own 
wiki and thinks he knows everything. If you just asked if you could add 
an interwiki link from Wikipedia to your site without offerring anything 
in return, you would have received a rapid response in the affirmative. 
But by calling it cooperation or link exchange, you appear conceited, 
which puts people off.

>I suspect that some people may dislike me because I have my own wikis. Please 
>try to understand that I am not a "competitor" of Wikipedia. 
>

Many contributors to this list have their own wikis, and they're not 
disliked. For example, Fred Bauder founded a fork of Wikipedia called 
Wikinfo, which aims to be a direct competitor, and he's highly 
respected. The real problem is simply the tone of your posts, see above.

-- Tim Starling