[Foundation-l] Interwiki Cooperation; NSK

Wed Oct 27 13:18:51 UTC 2004

NSK (nsk2 at wikinerds.org) [041027 10:11]:
> On Tuesday 26 October 2004 22:26, David Gerard wrote:

> > what was your Wikipedia username again?

> The reason I have not answered that question is because it was first asked by 
> a person who offended me ("as faulty as your logic", 23 October 2004). 

Therefore it can never be asked again by anyone else ever? I used to have a
girlfriend like that. Used to.

> That said, I also don't understand why I need to answer this question. Is it 
> some kind of policy in Wikipedia to say your user names in emails? I notice 
> many people post without mentioning their usernames and I wonder why you 
> picked me specifically.

Because I'm trying to work out how much credibility to assign to your
radical and jarring ideas for the project.

> > Do you in fact edit on Wikipedia at all?

> Does it matter? I cannot understand why you ask this question. Are your 
> mailing lists restricted only to your members? I don't think so, because it 
> was very easy for me to register (if that's not the intended behaviour, you 
> need to configure your Mailman installation). 

It matters in terms of how seriously your suggestions are going to be
taken. The reason I ask is to know whether you  have *any* experience of
this wiki, the one you're advancing the ideas for. Your messages so far
seem to indicate you don't actually understand much of Wikipedia culture;
with a username, it would be possible to see what your edits are like, what
you do and so on and get more of a handle on where you're coming from.

> You can find me in many mailing lists or fora, including FSF-GNU/GNOME/CC/AMD, 

It's not a True Name thing (that being no secret), but your persona within
Wikipedia - if any.

The essential point I'm trying to get across is that you're starting from a
position of no credibility. If that's fine by you, then continue as you
are; however, if you wish to be taken seriously and (as I tried to explain
before) your ideas gain traction, I suspect it won't be adequate.

> and I am lurking on many other mailing lists and communities, while I have 
> also joined projects such as Drupal.org and OpenFormats.org and very soon I 
> will join KDE. Slashdot has published stories written by me (KDE/FSF's 
> WIWO...) and my karma there is Good. My university dissertation is on wikis. 
> I notice some people refer to me as "he/she" and I wonder whether they have 
> noticed who am I.

Then surely you see what I meant about the phenomenon that although an
outside perspective is good, you need to be able to explain it in insider
terms for traction. Per project. This being not just any wiki, but the
biggest by a long shot. Ask [[User:Kate Turner]] about the difference in
feel between a small wiki and Wikipedia.

> participate in your mailing lists as a representative of a friendly website 
> which seeks to have relations, cooperation and knowledge sharing with 
> Wikimedia. But if WMF does not wish to cooperate or thinks I am a 
> "competitor", then you can just say so and I will leave.

I wouln't say that at all (speaking only for myself).

> Finally, I would like to know how we can implement interwiki links to each 
> other and whether WMF is interested in this kind of linking.

That would be a nice thing. At present it's largely hackable through
templates in the 'External links' section of articles.

- d.