[Foundation-l] Strategy wiki

[Virgilio A. P. Machado]

About liquid threads. It all depends on which Wikimedia project 
you're editing and publishing. If you have been using liquid threads 
since August 2010, using them now is like a walk in the park. 
Aversion to change is, however, a serious question and there's always 
a price to pay when it is mishandled or not handled at all.

Only now did I realized that Strategy consubstantiates most of what I 
thought was a distant hypothesis. I wonder no more. It's right there 
before my own eyes and for everybody to see. Strategy is such a great 
project that I don't even know if it has any administrators, 
bureaucrats and so on. Never noticed any of them. Never felt the need 
to look them up for any reason whatsoever. If what was sated is 
correct, that Strategy is a "completely new wiki where all banned 
users could come and troll," I'm very sorry to be the bearer of these 
disappointing news: editing and discussing in Strategy is a breeze. 
Please bear in mind that I do not have a 100 per cent knowledge of 
everything that has been written in Strategy. I'm given testimony 
based on my own experience and observation. I can even provide some 
quantitative data about that experience, whose analysis is beyond the 
scope of this post.

A very dear friend of mine, who is a sysop, ex-bureaucrat and 
checkuser of the pt.wiki, who has been careful enough to publicize in 
12 of 19 edits that I was either banned or blocked in the pt.wiki, 
while never mentioning a single accomplishment of mine on pt.wiki or 
any other Wikimedia project, follows me everywhere I go like a good 
pet. As soon as I started to participate in the ongoing Strategy 
discussion, at 2:19, on March 13, 2011, a little over 24 hours later, 
at 4:10, March 14, he started editing on the same project, allegedly 
"to help on vandalism combat," presumably from this vandal (add that 
to scourge and troll). Why does your pet dog follow you everywhere 
you go? Because they love you and want your company. Anyway, he has 
been completely out of luck.

Moving to Meta as an alternative to Strategy, would be a giant step 
back for Wikimedia. Meta is the worst of the worst Wikimedia projects 
I know. Of course, Meta Queens and Kings (no pun intended, please 
read Rullers) are free to run any "new ideas" page they see fit, but 
I wouldn't put any of my money on it. As a matter of fact I would 
like to see them do it, so that we could all have the benefit of the results.

Before I finish, as the runner up to Meta's undisputed leadership, 
let me mention the Brazilian Wikipedia, where to this day both me and 
my students are still the object of vandalism and abuse. It is so bad 
that nobody dares to do anything about it, despite my continued 
pleas, and I have the evidence to back every word that I'm writing 
here. The Bronze goes to the English Wiktionary.

On the other end of the rainbow (again, no pun intended) is a pot of 
gold called Portuguese Wikibooks. It has been a privilege for me and 
my students to work there. On every virtue, every human quality that 
you may think of, the guys that run that project are absolutely 
outstanding. I should know. I am the same person, and they handle all 
the grief I cause them as true civilized human beings. It' has been 
an honor to be in such company.

Sincerely,

Virgilio A. P. Machado (Vapmachado)

At 07:34 10-04-2011, you wrote:
>I'm not convinced that the need to retype your password  was the only
>or even the main reason why Strategy had relatively few participants
>from the community.
>
>Using Strategy as a testbed for liquid threads was also a contributory
>factor, I'm sure I wasn't the only person who had problems with that.
>I think it would have been better to ask for one of the smaller wikis
>to volunteer - perhaps with a promise of extra developer resource in
>compensation. But using Strategy as a pilot for Liquid threads meant
>that for most editors the Strategy wiki was less familiar than it
>needed to be, and when there were glitches with Liquid threads it was
>all too easy to stop editing on Strategy and go back to your home
>wiki, that's certainly what I did.
>
>I suspect that launching a completely new wiki where all banned users
>could come and troll was slightly too brave and open a move for some
>editors, and that it would have been better to have run Strategy as a
>project within meta.  In fact if we are serious about the
>simplification agenda then migrating the contents of Strategy to meta
>would be a logical step to take, perhaps also with a rename to "new
>ideas" as that was what it effectively became.
>
>WereSpielChequers