[Foundation-l] Re: Positive discrimination related to smaller communities and projects

[Anthere]

I'd like to say that indeed, I find GerardM proactive approach very 
positive.
Ie "Do not give up, get your community to grow and
 > find out what you really need. And work at it."

Ant

GerardM a écrit:
> Hoi,
> I think the worst we can do is fork. It will mean that we will not
> benefit from the economies of scale that the Wikimedia Foundation
> offers. These benefits are huge, with a project that is part of the
> larger community, you will be known and otherwise you have to struggle
> to get the same "facetime". You will be just another project
> struggling to get recognition. You will have to find programmers, you
> will have to find hardware, you will have to do all the hard work that
> is already done really well.
> 
> Take me as an example, I did not give up on Wiktionary, I worked hard
> to get an idea of what we should have (by putting in a lot of work) I
> got some community going and learned that we need one database to rule
> them all .. :) I discussed this and learned about Wikidata. This is
> the necessary building block for the "ultimate wiktionary". I found
> someone to program it, I found someone to pay the programmer and, the
> development has started. Wikispecies will benefit from this if we get
> enough traction (read also but not only money) to make this happen. I
> have uploaded some 3000 soundfiles and now the upload screen is
> uploaded to such an extend that I can upload a Dutch pronunciation in
> a fraction of the time.
> 
> My point to you is: Do not give up, get your community to grow and
> find out what you really need. And work at it. My point to the list in
> general is, there are many things that need doing We need resources to
> make the things happen to grow the projects and communities other than
> Wikipedia. When we agree to have all these projects and communities,
> we have to invest in their well being. It is a defeat of who we are
> when we get a fork because of unresponsiveness. It is certainly a pity
> when we CAN hire programmers to create the desperately needed
> functionality.
> 
> An example: It is easier to upload Dutch, English, German soundfiles
> than Farsi soundfiles I can do easily 10 times more words in the same
> time. It upsets me that a soundfile obscures text in Hebrew, Arabic or
> Farsi because of this stupid symbol that is seen because Commons is
> seen as an external resource.
> 
> I want to have dia shows when we have too many pictures for a subject.
> I have ideas about "language immersion training" it needs some
> software to allow for different target languages. Those are only my
> ideas.... there are so many even better idea's....
> 
> We can get money for functionality, we can get money for servers. We
> just have to ask. That is why the Foundation can be such a powerfull
> organisation. It can be an enabler. That is in my opinion what we have
> done brilliantly, given the outrageous success that Wikipedia is. We
> just have to work hard on making the other projects a success too.
> 
> Define projects, define functionality, get a community interested in
> change find money, find programmers. And let's make things even
> better..
> 
> One thing you cannot do is expect others to do the work for you. If
> you cannot do the programming, find someone who can and who will. If
> you do not have the money find someone who does.  If you cannot define
> your needs, find someone who can because without a well defined need
> you are snookered and, on your own it will be only worse,
> 
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
> 
> 
> On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 06:35:24 -0800, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
> 
>>In wikinews there has been an ongoing discussion regarding the
>>unresponsiveness of the mediawiki team to issues considered critical to
>>the project. This has now become a discussion regarding a fork of both
>>hardware and software, and contributors are actively working toward
>>doing so. I don't think this is the best choice, but it is beginning to
>>look like the only choice.
>>
>>Amgine
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>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
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>>
>