[Wikipedia-l] Re: Enciclopedia Libre

Wed Oct 16 18:14:53 UTC 2002

Juan Antonio Ruiz Rivas wrote:
> Hello everybody, greetings from "Enciclopedia
> Libre".
> 
> First of all I want to clarify that general sense
> from people in EL is about friendship and goodwill 
> towards Wikipedia project, though some of
> us disagree about some questions concerned to
> Wikipedia we are talking about in the past.  
>
> We were talking and voting about the reunification
> as we made at
>http://enciclopedia.us.es/wiki.phtml?title=Enciclopedia:Retorno_a_Wikipedia

> and finally we have decided to stay in the same
> server here at Sevilla and under the name of 
> "Enciclopedia Libre", nevertheless we do
> not discard the possibility on returning 
> Wikipedia in the future 

I'm only speaking for myself and how I see things;

It's great that your project is keeping open the
possibility of reunification but with each passing day
the two separate projects grow apart as articles
become distinct from each other. This will make
reunification in the future increasingly more
difficult. Since the Spanish Wikipedia software is so
badly broken right now there are very few contributors
and there really isn't that much difference between
the Spanish Wikipedia today compared with the database
you took to Seville many months ago. But now the
Spanish Wikipedia is going to get Phase III software
and I foresee much more activity there as first bi-
and multi-lingual people from the other Wikipedia
languages start contributing and then as more native
speakers join es.wiki. 

We would be much stronger together rather than apart.
I am saddened that your community decided to vote on
this before we were even done discussing the matter. I
feel we were moving in a very positive direction,
reaching consensus, and trying to change Wikipedia so
that it will be agreeable to you (and more agreeable
to the current non-English Wikipedias) but the
pre-emptive vote has halted our reunification efforts
before we even had a chance to formally ask you to
rejoin (or even start any negotiations for that
matter). 

> (whenever people in Wikipedia agree)

We were reaching consensus on this before the vote
ended the process. The emerging consensus I feel was,
"Yes we want you back" and "Yes we are willing to
change in order to make this possible". I for one have
been doing some serious soul-searching to see why
there was a fork in the first place and exploring ways
that we could address those issues in a reasonable
way. But your project has made its decision and I have
to respect and accept that. I also wish your project
well and hope the Spanish Wikipedia and EL can be
friends and exchange content without hard feelings (we
need to discuss how to best do this).

> and our wish is about
> collaboration, talking and good relationships.

I also hope that we can collaborate and have a good
working relationship but competition for
Spanish-speaking users may overshadow this if we are
not careful. Very soon there will be two different
very active wiki communities both trying to write a
free content, neutral focus, encyclopedia in Spanish.
Right now there really is only one active community,
yours. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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