[Foundation-l] lost in moderation

[Fred Bauder]

> Recently a friend of mine submitted a comment on the blogpost about "9
> reasons women don't edit.."
> While I  understand it's Sue's personal blog and therefore the
> expectations of transparency and openness are not the same as with a true
> Wikimedia blog, but her post was rejected by moderation.
> I acknowledge she raised several controversial points, and  possibly
> mistaken.  however she's quite direct and frank at expressing her ideas,
> which may cause them to come across as non politically correct..
> She has this feeling that her comment was rejected not due to form  but
> due to substance, that the statements made Sue uncomfortable and tried to
> hid it. I try to assure her that's not the case, that it was a sort of
> misunderstanding.
> In any case, I promised her to repost the comment here (in case comment
> got moderated by a third person and Sue never got the chance to see it or
> reply).
>
> ----- Begin post ----Sue, can you please explain how the Foundation will
> change the wikipedia culture without any involvement of the communities
> in this change?
> Sorry to point at the emperor's new clothes but, AFAIK this initiative is
> not a grassroots initiative coming from the communities, but something
> coming from the outside and driven by (sorry to sound unrespectful) paid
> staff, and very well paid (it reminds me a lot to the last member of the
> wikipedia paid staff, Larry Sanger, trying to tell communities how they
> should behave...), and not by leader wikipedians (sorry Sue, but you're a
> mediocre wikipedian, with less than two hundred editions).
> The problem you point out is real. The alleged reasons behind that
> problem are a clear sample of amateurism. Coming here, cherry picking
> among the mails you've received and trying to come out with a conclusion
> is low-quality original research. I understand that the WMF has to
> justify somehow why most of the money donated to wikipedia goes actually
> to pay salaries of people that is unable to do anything for the
> communities and not to the maintenance of the project. And last but not
> least, try to say English Wikipedia whenever you now say Wikipedia. The
> Wikipedia projects are far more than the English Wikipedia. Best regards
> --- end post ---

You make some good points, but err in several respect: We don't, and
can't limit hiring to seasoned Wikipedians, and there are quite a few
seasoned Wikipedians who are behind Sue with respect to this issue. As to
the 9 reasons, they express peoples' feelings about editing; they are not
close examinations of editing history. The feelings are real too, even if
close examination of a specific controversy may show only a failure to
impose one's will and being upset about it.

Fred