[Foundation-l] Re : Where we are headed

[James Hare]

To respond to Jimmy's e-mail,

Another problem with communication is all the pages it spans. I maintained
several user and user talk pages, but I only need two of them. Although the
normal MediaWiki software can maintain the status quo, Wikimedia's should be
designed a bit differently: the projects can have the mainspace, the portal
space, and the project space, but a central wiki (Meta, anyone?) would have
the help pages and the user/user talk pages. Surely this has been discussed
before?

On 6/25/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Kelly Martin wrote:
>
> >On 6/4/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Could communications be improved?  Yes, of course, but this is something
> >>we have all known for a long time.  I believe that the core problem is
> >>not a lack of information flow, but excessive flow of raw information
> >>which makes it hard for anyone to keep up with it all.
> >>
> >>
> >Yes, this is exactly the problem.  For someone like me, for whom
> >Wikimedia is an avocation and not a vocation, there simply isn't
> >enough time to read all of the huge morass of information that is out
> >there -- spread out over a dozen mailing lists and a dozen wikis, not
> >to mention other sources -- required to form a fully informed opinion.
> > This definitely hampers my overall participation.
> >
> It's easy to agree on that problem, and at the same time it's only a
> very small segment of the community that is generating it all.  Getting
> literally everybody's opinion would be totally unmanageable.
>
> We each do best within a limited set of parameters, editing articles
> about the topics which most interest us.  A person who sticks to that is
> probably happy and has little use for long policy debates or reviewing
> technical "improvements".  If he does not participate in such
> discussions he is presumed to have consented.  If he complains when the
> policy or template is imposed he is told that he had an opportunity to
> discuss the matter at an earlier time.
>
> Whatever happened to writing in plain English?  (or French, or German,
> or whatever language?)  The number of policies and templates could
> easily be cut in half, and very few of us would be missing anything.
> It's easy to concede that fewer of these would diminish the
> "professional" appearance of the site, but how many of us are paid
> professionals?  What's more important, the content or the window dressing?
>
> Maybe the policies mean something.  I don't know.  I haven't got time to
> read them all, let alone absorb their meaning.  If someone comes to the
> mailing list complaining about being blocked, I've gotten to the point
> where I delete the whole thread.  His claim of admin abuse may be valid,
> but I don't give a damn.
>
> At one time Mav imposed upon himself the rule that each of his mailing
> list contributions needed to be offset by a real contribution to a real
> article.  That wasn't such a bad idea.
>
> Ec
>
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