[Foundation-l] Re: Business cards

[notafish]

OK, sorry for digging out old conversations, I've been dead for the
past 5 days, and just resurrected for a few hours. So here goes.

> > This said, I stand up to my opinion that mentions of stewards or
> > arbitrators of the english AC has basically nothing to do here. These
> > positions do not exist in the real world. They mean nothing to those
> > outside wikipedia. They are unrelated to the Foundation itself. And
> > they are only part of the status existing on the projects.
> 
> Well, there are apparently plans to form Arbitration Committees on other
> language versions of Wikipedia, so it's not en:-centric (or not intended to
> be). Thus Arbitrator status, and certainly, of course, Stewards, are
> Wikimedia-project-wide, and the people who will receive these cards will
> understand that they confer extra 'status' of some kind, as you say. Neither
> job are particularly easy to do, and a small amount of thanks like this is
> perhaps not a bad thing.

Having a card, imho, has nothing to do with getting any thanks for a
job well done within wikipedia or any other project, but more about
having (or not having) a right to speak about certain matters with a
more or less official position. Arbitrators, Stewards are all, as
Anthere pointed out, positions within the projects, but not positions
that mean that you have a right to talk about the Moogle Deal of the
Fahoo proposition or a right to sell Wikipedia and all other projects
to the next Moohoo buyer who comes along. Of course, I am going a bit
far, here, but this is what a "card" could entitle to do.

So no, they should not be given out as thanks, but as an exact
description of who does what in the Wikimedia Foundation and projects,
and who can say "we" when talking about the Foundation, or Wikimedia
Deutschland, or Wikimedia France. People in general, journalists in
particular, are very wary of who their source is, but will be fooled
by a little square of paper. A "business card" gives a credibility
that some of us certainly do not have, and some of us certainly do not
deserve. So let us be careful when handing out those "cards".

My two cents.

Delphine