[Foundation-l] Wikipedia-Freenode relations

Sun Aug 1 15:54:10 UTC 2004

Fennec Foxen wrote:

> However, Freenode also allows groups to set up an official contact
> with Wikipedia. A few months ago, I took some initiative, filled out a
> little form and answered a phone call and got designated as
> Wikipedia's Group Contact with Freenode. (I wanted a .wikipedia
> username cloak, and you needed a group contact to manage that, so...)
> I've used this position mostly to give out similar IRC cloaks.

While I agree that we need a group contact, I'm against the use of 
cloaks. It creates an IMO unnecessary distinction between "official" and 
normal users and can lead for newbies to the false impression that they 
get an somehow more "official" answer from someone with a cloak when 
it's in fact only a personal opinion like that of many other users. It 
destroys the fundamental equality of the people involved in Wikimedia.

If we use cloaks, it should be reserved to people on the board or people 
with an existing official function (like developer liaision, press 
contact...) not distributed arbitrarily by an "I trust you policy".

But even for those I think it's not necessary: Jimmy, Angela and Anthere 
are anyhow known as members of the board, so a cloak would have no 
effect whatsoever.  Or differently put: a cloak is for speaking "ex 
cathedra" and I doubt that this will happen very often.

FYI: the german channel elected JeLuf as main channel administrator - 
this was done when the need of a channel registration (and ops) arose. 
The german wikimedia channels are handled AFAIK by DaB.

greetings,
elian