[Wikipedia-l] Time to set up Wikimedia ProjectCommittees
Jimmy Wales
jwales at bomis.com
Mon Jan 26 21:06:01 UTC 2004
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
More information about the Wikipedia-l
mailing list