[Wikipedia-l] Re: Rethinking Meta (was- Wikiquote now has subdomains)

Mon Jul 19 05:17:19 UTC 2004

Erik Moeller wrote:

> In any case, I think there should be no separate Meta-Wiki and Wikimedia  
> Foundation wiki - they should be the same thing.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Erik

I think they should be separated.

The reason of wikimediafoundation site is to present a unified front to 
outside. It should be clean, with no dispute, and it should be 
consistent with the Foundation frame of mind. It should also contain a 
whole bunch of data, which should not be modified too easily by anyone 
(like financial issues).

On the other hand, meta is about brainstorming. It not only can, but 
should contain many povs. It should be a boiling soup, with many 
languages; something rather anarchic. A place where we can make 
mistakes, where we organise ourselves. Where everyone can edit freely.

This makes them necessarily separated. They do not have the same editors 
(foundation should be a subset of meta), they do not have the same goal 
at all.

If we put them together in the same pot
* this will be confusing for outsiders, as they will launch on possibly 
highly disorganised pages
* there will be no certainty that what is written is what the foundation 
supports

Now, I remember very well your CPOV proposition, which aimed at strongly 
limiting access to meta, by requesting that people identify themselves 
by real names to have the right for their edits to be claimed 
trustworthy, when the edits of non real people were labelled "untrusted 
or non representative of a so-called community point of view" by default.

There is no such thing as a community point of view, especially at the 
international level. There are a certain number of points on which we 
all agree. Aside from that, there are a collection of pov, some totally 
incompatible, and many compatible.

This CPOV proposition will have to happen over my dead body :-) I trust 
people for what they are and what they do, not for their real name. And 
a place where ideas are thrown in the pot is good. We sometimes need the 
stupid ideas to find the best ones. Labelling ideas not CPOV when they 
do not suit your own opinion is bad. Voting all the time to decide which 
are CPOV and which are not is equally bad. This may clarify some points, 
but also mark them in stone. I am sorry Erik, but this is really not an 
issue on which I think we will ever meet agreement.