Erik Moeller wrote:
On 6/29/06, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
When you use tools in stead of communication I agree, the point is that the Commons community has in the past deliberately, pointedly and repeatedly indicated that they are not interested in informing and discussing proposed change to the Commons policies prior to aking that change
The right place to discuss Commons policy in a multilingual community with over 600 wikis are the Commons forums and mailing list. Everyone is free to participate there. If policy is not discussed in the right places _on_ Commons, then this is a failing of the Commons community. But cooperation also means participation.
Imagine that we didn't have separate wikis, and only a single big one. Surely the right place to discuss image policy would be the pages about image policy? The separation of Commons and other projects is essentially one that only exists in our heads, with the exception of separate accounts and some minor user interface issues. Commons is simply the section of the Wikimedia community that deals with multimedia. And of course these people develop policies and practices around multimedia. If you disagree with these policies and practices, _get involved_.
Virtually all the active members of the Commons community also have a "home wiki" where they are active. It is not some separate entity. It is a subset of the Wikimedia community.
Erik
Hoi, With over 13.000 edits to my name on Commons and with a user ID of 25, you cannot say that I am not involved. I am also (for practical reasons) an admin at Commons.
I disagree strongly that the Commons forums and mailing list are the _only_ and the _only_right_ place to discuss policies about digital media policies. The reason is that Commons is not a project like all the others. Commons is a project that provides a _service_ to all the other projects. People have been ambushed in the past by really stupid policy changes and this has lost the Commons community a massive amount of support. It is also incorrect to suggest that the commons community is "the WMF community that deals with Multimedia". There are many more people that deals with multimedia.
In previous e-mails about Commons it was made abundantly clear that many in its community consider the people outside their coterie should not be involved in the Commons policies. It is for this lack of social grace that I lost my faith in the Commons community. It does its own thing and I do not trust it to do right any more. This is also because I have seen enough examples that can serve as proof to support me in this position.
I wish it was true that Commons were not some separate entity. It is because of their behaving like a separate entity that many people turned away from Commons.
Thanks, GerardM