On Jan 9, 2008 3:16 PM, Andrew Whitworth
<wknight8111(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I would disagree. In general, many members of the
sister projects have
a strong sense of disconnect and disenfranchisement when it comes to
the WMF. This is especially true of the smaller projects and the
smaller non-english projects. The lines of communication are virtually
non-existant for these small projects. If it appears that the only
time the WMF cares about a small project is when something is wrong
and "action" needs to be taken.
While it may be worse for small and non-english projects, I think many
participants in many of the larger projects also feel disconnected with
WMF. Project participants are usually there because they enjoy creating
something, but from the point of view of project participants the WMF is
almost never directly involved in creating anything. The
WMF mostly provides a behind-the-scenes service to keep the servers running,
and many people would be perfectly happy if the WMF never, ever got
involved in the governance of individual projects. When the WMF does get
involved, many participants wonder: "Why are you messing with MY work."
It would be unwieldy for WikiCouncil to have representatives from each
and every project, given that in a one-admin project that person may
have his hands full just keeping that project going. WikiCouncil will
need a ratification policy, even for some of the most obvious policies.
If WC (with due note of Jimbo's recent English interview) wants all
projects to adopt the Five Pillars it would need to be subject to
ratification to avoid the impression that it is nothing more than an
en:wp policy being imposed on everyone else.
Ec