[Wikipedia-l] Not sure what the subject is, but it's no longer re: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

[Larry Sanger]

Lars Aronssen wrote:
> I don't know why, but your words sound hard to me, and they sounded
> hard last year when you backed them up by being the official editor.

Lars,

Well, it's pretty obvious why my words sounded hard to you: it's because
they were!  If I accept your complaints about this hardness, will you
allow me to complain in turn that you took the time to take me to task for
writing "hard words," and otherwise writing about events that are now well
over a year old, while pretty much ignoring the substance of my replies to
what you wrote?  Now if you actually do want an explanation as to why the
words sounded "hard," you won't do better than to examine the actual
claims that you were making, that I was replying to.  In each case, it
seemed to me there were some subtle, and in some cases not-so-subtle,
implications about Jimbo, Wikipedia, and Wikipedians that were, shall we
say, extremely unfair.  (I thought this was clear.)  You should know by
now that I do not take kindly to extremely unfair criticisms of Wikipedia
and my friends.  If someone were to take these criticisms seriously, he or
she might easily form quite a negative, inaccurate impression of the
project, the people behind it, and what motivates them.

(Just by the way, I was never "the official editor" of Wikipedia; saying
that accords me more authority than I ever even *presumed* to have.)

> I might have misunderstood all of this, and I could blame it all on
> the fact that English is not my native language, but the factual
> consequence is that I went away and started my own project because of
> this.

It isn't necessary we work this out now, long after the fact, but since
you bring it up, maybe we can clear the air about it.  I always thought
you left basically because you misunderstood the situation: I had stated
an *opinion* (you were putting a zillion stubs in the database, as I
recall, and I opined that this was a bad idea); you interpreted this as if
it were handed down as *editorial policy* (which it wasn't); and you left
abruptly.  It happened rather suddenly, and without any chance for us to
have a dialogue with you about what had happened, though we very much
wanted to.  In fact, I and many others were urging you to come back (I
suppose you might not have noticed that), and we were bewildered by your
abrupt departure.  I'm sure a few other listmembers remember this.

As to the rest of your post, I wasn't really engaged in criticizing
Susning.nu, so it really wasn't necessary to defend it.  Does a defense of
Wikipedia imply a criticism of Susning?  Of course not; all the best to
your project.

But why don't you help develop the Swedish Wikipedia?  If Susning is a
different sort of project, albeit closely enough related, then clearly the
reason the articles are of better quality (if they are; I'll believe you)
is that it's the more active project and you've been plugging it very
actively on Wikipedia and through your own channels.  But wouldn't it be
more appropriate to be supporting the Swedish Wikipedia when writing on
Wikipedia-L, if indeed Susning is so different that it will never evolve
into the Swedish Wikipedia?

I promise I won't be there to complain about your stubs.  :-)

Larry