I'm not against anyone participating in any site that criticizes or mocks Wikipedia or the WMF. But I do get the sense that Wil is jumping into his wife's new territory with both feet, and not necessarily taking the ginger approach to the most controversial issues that have confronted the projects.
Hi Nathan, like I said, I am not Lila, and I am in no way associated with the WMF. Also, Lila is not technically my wife. :) I honestly don't see what my personal relationships have to do with these issues.
I understand your point, but these happen to be the issues that I'm interested in. For example, I'm a father. I want my son to be able to use Wikipedia and all the other projects. I'm not going to paste any links to salacious content on Commons in to this thread, but suffice it to say that many parents might be concerned about some of the content that's up there now. And that's A-OK with me- I'm not down with censorship- it just means that Commons is not a site for my children. But there are solutions that don't involve censoring Commons that would make it OK for my children to participate in such a service. I'd like to discuss this stuff, and I can on WO. Is it OK to discuss it here?
Wil - the aversion to Wikipediocracy doesn't come from the mocking or trash talking. You haven't experienced the history of that site (and its predecessor) or the regular crowd there. Many of them are perfectly fine. Some of them have done some pretty seriously fucked up things, and some others have made themselves a persistent nuisance for no better reason than that they can. They have certainly exposed some major scandals, and brought insightful commentary to knotty problems. But please understand that those who choose to avoid them aren't simply too thin-skinned to take a critical comment or a bit of strong language.
Well, despite these past experiences, my own experience has been pretty good (- the trash talk). A lot of interesting things are brought up over there. I'm really wondering if everyone might just be more comfortable discussing them on the Wikimedia mailing list. It's the issues and constructive people on WO that I value, not the site itself.
Lastly, standard Internet comment on free speech: Your legal right to free speech is not a protection against criticism or a limit in any other way on what others can say to or about you.
Right. But why do you mention this?
Again, I'm looking for people to help me understand what's going on here. Would you be one of those people?
Thanks! ,Wil