[Foundation-l] Re: Swedish, Spanish, French Wikinews set up

Sun Jan 30 22:24:32 UTC 2005

Anthere-

> However, setting up a wikinews the way you did it, without prior warning

This is untrue. After the creation of nl.wikinews.org, I wrote:

"If everything is OK, and the board is happy with this language being 
set up, I will go ahead and create the other ones which have sufficient 
community support. "

There were no objections.

> without taking into account the strong opposition which existed in the 
> french community 

You agreed to this approach. You are a member of the board of elected 
*global* representatives. I respect your unhappiness, but you have got 
yourself to blame as much as anyone else for this outcome. Please take 
some responsibility for your own actions. I am a powerless user. I could 
not have created fr.wikinews.org without the support of you and the rest 
of the board. You had the opportunity to raise objections, to define 
stricter criteria than the ones I used, to talk to me. You did not.

You write bitterly about "local community wish[es] crushed by 
globalization". Now, I know that you like to play the defender of the 
oppressed. But I've got news for you, Florence: By that nomenclature, 
you're one of the oppressors, part of the global elite that makes 
decisions for small communities. You have power, I do not. You can fool 
some people into thinking that you were "tricked" by the clever and 
manipulative Erik, but the reality is that I have got to thank you. You 
made fr.wikinews.org possible.  Thanks a lot for that. I appreciate the 
support.

> People are doing great things on them, but even after 2 years, these 
> projects are still hardly resources. They will be great things later, 
> but right now, they still host small communities.

That's fine with me. Someone has to lay the groundwork. It's OK for a 
project to start small and to grow later. Aside from that, I am still 
skeptical that Wiktionary is at all feasible with the current software, 
and think that Wikisource should be merged into the Wikimedia Commons to 
be successful.

I've said the same thing to Delphine: There's no point at all in being 
paranoid about bad publicity. Those who want to harm us will find 
reasons to do so. No amount of off-wiki preparation will prevent a 
slamming anti-Wikinews editorial. But to believe that any such editorial 
could do us any serious long-term harm is very naive and underestimates 
the intelligence and autonomy of our readers and editors.

Regards,

Erik