Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
it should be guaranteed that the welsh wikipedians
decide over the
policies of the welsh wikipedia, the wikibookists over wikibooks and
so on.
No, we are a single unified international project. There are policies
which are global, and the Foundation will defend those policies.
The wikimedia foundation is for keeping the servers
running, collecting
funds and defending the projects against legal threats, but not for
enforcing rules (or a however defined code of ethics) upon all projects.
No, there are certain things that I have always said, from the
beginning, are enforceable rules. That won't change.
If the Welsh wikipedia community votes to implement a policy whereby
only pre-approved contributors may contribute, or that only
contributions of a certain political type will be permitted, or
whatever, the power will always remain with the international project
as a whole to say, "No, you can't do that."
This idea of each wikipedia being entirely and completely autonomous
is just a complete nonstarter, and has been from the beginning of the
entire project.
At the same time, I have always also firmly said that there's
absolutely no reason why the exact rules and policies of the
English-language wikipedia should be enforced in other languages,
other cultures. The broad gist of things, sure, but the details may
vary to some extent based on a vast number of local factors.
And so, if the English wikipedia voted that some policy has to be
implemented in the Welsh community whereby only pre-approved
contributors may contribute, or that only contributions of a certain
political type will be permitted, or whatever, the power will always
remain with the international project as a whole to say "No, you can't
do that."
--Jimbo