Le Friday 11 February 2005 18:05, Anthere a écrit : Anthere, the information i added come from the foundation-l mailing list, not "rumors from the Internet". But agreed that's better to keep quiet about this issue for now. Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclopédie libre http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux

Yann Forget wrote: Well, foundation-l is an unmoderated mailing list on the Internet, no? :-) --Jimbo

Anthere wrote: How are they rumors? The information removed was reported on the official Wikipedia Foundation mailing list, which is public. As the blog in question points out, the fact that there was a meeting between Jimbo and Google representatives was reported by you [1], and the fact that Google has tentatively agreed to give access to servers and bandwidth was reported by mav [2]. -Mark [1] http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-February/002185.html [2] http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-February/002181.html

Anthere wrote: I'm not sure I will continue to participate in Wikimedia Foundation activities until this is resolved. In particular, multiple reverts with no edit summaries from Jimbo, and locking pages after removing information is no way to run a Wiki. Meta is a place where any user may place information---you guys can censor wikimediafoundation.org if you want, but please don't fuck up meta. -Mark

Mark, I understand extremely well what you are saying. And I fully understand your concerns with regards to the freedom any editor should benefit on meta. I fully support this view as well. Allow me to explain to you a little bit more the current situation. First, Wikimedia Foundation is discussing the possibility of a deal with Google. However, the exact terms of the "current" proposal have not been publicly disclosed. There has been no official statement with regards exact terms either by WMF, nor by Google. Second, since we, editors of Wikimedia projects as well as Jimbo himself, tend to discuss things a lot together, as we work very hard to reach consensus and keep the community informed, basic information was provided to editors and developers. Hence, there was a trend to inform editors of the existence of the discussion and of the plan to meet Google representatives. Third, while it is obvious to us, wikipedians, that any individual wiki edit does involve only the responsability and opinion of its author, unless otherwise mentionned, it is clearly not obvious at all for people outside our little circle. As is, the board report posted here by Angela is clearly an official report from the board (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-February/002187.html). However, the article posted on meta (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Google_hosting) is not an official statement by the board in any way. Angela very likely posted it to clarify questions asked by editors on the irc channels. There is absolutely nothing wrong in this. I personally discovered the page only the next day, following the link from the /. article. So I read this page after most bloggers. Does it matter ? Well, we actually face something entirely new for Wikipedia. The fact that a board member can post something casually on meta to inform editors, and this post is considered a board official announcement, and relayed by many bloggers or newspapers as an official statement. The issue is basically not whether the content is accurate or not, or complete or not. The issues are rather : - Did the board wish to make a public announcement ? - If it had done so, would it have been done on meta ? - Is there a difference between family talk on irc only available on editors logs, and statement on a wiki page which can be linked by everyone in the world ? - Does an official non official public statement hurt the likelyhood of the deal or not ? - Now that most editors consider it official, what if the other board members do not fully agree with it ? And mostly : - Now that bloggers and newspapers consider it official, does the Foundation have a right to "control" what appears to be official statement by itself ? To the last question, I definitly answer yes. And I support Mav protecting the page in question. And last point - How are such events where casual discussions are reported as official by public worldwide media gonna impact the future transparency of decision making which "could be" a little bit sensible ? So... please Mark, before complaining of censorship (you may absolutely open a parallel page and comment on the talk page), I will ask you to carefully consider whether you think it proper that a page called by a dozen of major newspapers or blogs and presented as an official page, may be edited by anyone. Someone suggested that I redirect the page to wikimediafoundation.org, but if I had done so, the talk page would not have been available any more. So, I discarded that proposition. I'll also remind that Jimbo, Angela and I are also individuals, and that in most cases, what we say reflect our own opinion, rather than the collective opinion of the board. All what is above is only my opinion, not an official statement by the Foundation :-) Anthere Delirium a écrit:

Angela a écrit: Still, I discovered /. before I read all the mails on the ml :-) I read the mailing lists through gname, so only from home and not all the time. Plus there is a time discrepancy between the moment a mail is posted and it appears on gname. So, no sorry, I discovered it through /. :-) Either way, it does not matter, I just meant to clarify that this was not an official statement. Yes. This is exactly what I explained to Mark. However, this is not what the outside world understand, because they just do not work as we do. Look at a few announcements : http://www.technewsworld.com/story/news/40554.html "The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates the Wikipedia project among others, said Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Latest News about Google has offered to host part of the free encyclopedia's content. " or "The foundation posted a short announcement on its Web site, which said that the terms (as yet undisclosed) were being considered by the Wikimedia board and that the group would meet with Google sometime in March." with a link the page you created. According to this journalist, what you posted (and that could have been posted by any of us, or even an anonymous person) was interpretated by "The foundation posted". But the Foundation did not posted, you did. Several bloggers just interpret the page the same way as this journal does. The page casually created on meta is said an official announcement. It is not. I do not say it is critical in any way. But that mean what any of us say may be interpretated as "official", and if this is seen official, then it is logical at least that it is protected. Otherwise, it should just be deleted. I was asked to keep details confidential. This is too late I fear :-) But why not ? But Angela, in any cases, I think we have to think about this for the future. I must insist I do not criticize you in any way for setting up that page. The only points which concerns me in the long term are 1) that meta is used as a source of official news which are not and 2) that non official news transformed in official news should be protected without being called censorship.

--- Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote: Only if it is free software. -- mav __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250

On Saturday 12 February 2005 16:25, Magnus Manske wrote: Perhaps you should ask them to donate you a Google Mini: http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/ -- NSK http://portal.wikinerds.org