[Foundation-l] en.WP dysfunction (was: A letter to Wikipedia collides with the non-free content policies)

[Thomas Dalton]

On 27/01/2008, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jan 27, 2008 2:47 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > And then, please reconsider whether it is so clear that and why
> > > en.wikipedia should have any "predominance" on foundation-l. The
> > > German Wikipedia is the second largest project and, in relation to its
> > > 'rank', it is hardly ever present on foundation-l. Same goes for
> > > French Wikipedia etc. etc.  Astounding, is it not?
> >
> > Not really. While non-English posts are welcome, they are
> > understandably rare and responses to them even rarer. The large
> > non-English projects are large enough to get by on their own, and it's
> > easier to do so than to discuss the matters here in English. The
> > English projects could get by on their own if they had to, but it's
> > easy to come here for clarification on certain issues, so why not do
> > so?
>
> Non sequitur...
> [Let me take the German WP as an example for a large non-English Wikipedia]
>
> "The German Wikipedia is large enough to get by on its own. It doesn't
> need to appeal to (the)  foundation(-l) for every micro-dispute and
> doesn't need to get Mike's advice on every picture. The English
> Wikipedia is even larger and would be able to act in the same way.
> However, it is too lazy or too incapable or whatever, and thus it
> considers it in order to clutter foundation-l with petty grievances
> every other day, demanding an ultimate foundation-level verdict on
> cases which are of no interest for anyone but English Wikipedians".
>
> Granted, it is a bit polemic, but in my opinion it quite accurately
> reflects your reasoning...

No, it doesn't. It's nothing to do with laziness or incompetence. Both
enwiki and dewiki want to make the best encyclopaedia they can. For
dewiki, the best way to do that is by working on their own. For
enwiki, the best way is to get advice from elsewhere when it could be
useful. They are both valid methods, just one works better for some
projects and the other works better for other projects.