Florence Devouard wrote:
The values represent the principles we share together
What is the difference with the Wikipedia pillars ?
The values I am talking about are the *organization* (WMF) values, not
the projects values. Obviously, many values will be shared, but not
necessarily all of them. For example, Wikipedia has NPOV as a pillar,
the Wikimedia Foundation does not have NPOV as a pillar.
The difficulty when you establish a distinction between WMF and
projects' values is that it tends to focus on the difference. If
community is to be a key value then effort should be directed at
bringing these distinct values into harmony.
While NPOV is indeed a Wikipedia value, other projects cannot ignore it
It's direct role in the life of other projects may be more limited, but
it still underlies a lot of activity. We can't have Wikinews reporters
injecting their bias into stories. Wikisource must accept that texts
are as they are without attempting to designate one as containing better
ideas. Wiktionary cannot start inventing definitions. Even Wikispecies
must find a neutral approach to issues of traditional taxonomy versus
modern cladistics.
Wikipedia in particular, currently enjoys very much
support because it
is clearly identified as a brand. Other Wikimedia projects are not as
well clearly identified yet (there are still people wondering what
Wikiversity exactly is about for example).
Is there a hurry for them to be so identified? The fundamental notions
underlying Wikiversity are more complex than for any other project.
Treating Meta as more of an internal project, all the other projects are
about the information we provide to the public. Wikiversity is distinct
because it is about people's relationships with the information.
Wikiversity should not be thrust into a popularity contest when it is
still trying to find itself. I see it's long term value as a broadly
useful and usable educational tool. That's a much more difficult task
that sticking discrete bundles of information onto the internet.
There are also beliefs that, as a web 2.0 company,
every one can do
whatever they want on the websites, and no one is responsible.
This leads to a significant philosophical question between collective
and individual responsibility. If we end up saying that no one is
responsible, there is a serious ethical flaw in that philosophy. The
internet has unleashed tools for the evil-doers just as much as for the
rest of us. The pressure is on legislators to put serious restrictions
against online abuses, and the kind of solutions that they are likely to
effect will have closer ties to expediency than to enlightenment.
There are obvious areas of collective responsibility, such as keeping
the servers going and otherwise maintaining infrastructure. Beyond that
I think it's important to stress the importance of individual
responsibility. We cannot put ourselves in the position of being the
ones to decide whether someone else's actions are illegal without
sacrificing the neutrality of an ISP. We can notice strong
possibilities that an act may be illegal, but we cannot judge. We can
also tell those people who insist on posting questionable material that
they cannot do so behind the cloak of anonymity. If they want to
persist they must make sufficient personal information available to
allow those whose rights have been violated to take action.
It seems that past and recent discussions show how
important it was for
the community that our entire projects be build upon free software,
using free format and free standards. It goes beyond the simple notion
of creating freely-licenced content, as described in the mission
statement. Whilst supporting, defending, developing, the free mouvement
is NOT our goal, nor even within our mission, it seems to be an
important value to most of us. Hence, the very notion of listing our
support to freedom is a VALUE, which has been clarified in a recent
resolution.
It's important to note that values are not rules. Values still leave
room for pragmatic considerations, and strict rules against the use of
proprietary software should never be an excuse for putting ourselves at
serious disadvantage.
Last summer, the board + advisory board brainstormed
together over our
values. We further discussed the issue on this list, as well as here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values
I would also see Wikicouncil addressing this to give the perspective of
seriously involved people.
I have been thinking over it in the past few weeks,
and here is the
result of my list.
* Community
* Diversity
* Quality of service
* Transparency
* Freedom
* Independance
Text is rough draft for now
Good. But I would take to task those who would create a priority for
one over another. Put them into alphabetical order and stress that they
are all equal. Saying that one is more important than another will give
some interpreters a trump card that they will not hesitate to play. Some
of the most difficult problems arise from conflicts of values when both
sides have clearly valid positions. Those situations require a balanced
and negotiated solution with neither side having a tool for triumph.
Such tools breed rigidity.
Our community is our biggest asset
We are a community-based organization. We must operate with a mix of
staff members, and of volunteers, working together to achieve our mission.
We support community-led collaborative projects, and must respect the
work and the ideas of our community. We must listen and take into
account our communities in any decisions taken to achieve our mission.
Commitment to openness and diversity
Though US-based, the organization is international in its nature. Our
board of trustees, staff members, and volunteers are involved without
discrimination based on their religion, political beliefs, sexual
preferences, nationalities etc... Not only do we accept diversity, but
we actually look forward to it.
Good. We also need diversity of opinion and ideas. Concepts like "Be
bold." and "Ignore all rules" are also important. We need to protect
ourseves from those who depend on rigid literal interpretations of rules.
Quality of service is a priority
We will try our best to give access to high quality Wikimedia project
content 24 hours a day and 7 days, as well as provide access to
regularly updated, user-friendly, and free dumps of Wikimedia project
content.
To insure world-wide, unrestricted, dissemination of knowledge, we do
not enter into exclusive partnerships, with regards to access to our
content or use of our trademarks.
Freedom
We make extra efforts to use only free software on our own servers, and
to support open and patent-free media formats that are viewable and
editable with free software.
The description does not match the title. I agree with the description,
but find the title misleading. A public that sees only a six-word list
would never guess that description. It is easy to imagine that they
would take the word "freedom" into areas that we would do well to
avoid. We do not want claims that we must support irresponsible speech,
or that we are somehow a force in political movements such as working
for the "freedom" for the Tibetan people. Individuals can still support
that idea, but it is well beyond our collective scope. A term like
"open sourcing" might be more to the point.
Transparency
We must communicate Wikimedia Foundation information in a transparent,
thorough and timely manner, to our communities and more generally, to
the public.
Independance
As a non-profit, we mostly depend on gifts to operate (donations,
grants, sponsorship etc...). It is very important to us to ensure our
organization stays free of influence in the way it operates. For this
reason, we strictly follow a donation policy, reserve the right to
refuse donations from a limited number of sources, and try to multiply
the number of sources.
I'm generally supportive of these ideas, but they need work.
Ec