[Foundation-l] The role of the board

Mon Apr 18 16:07:37 UTC 2005

On 4/18/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I agree with that, but I don't think those scenarios are likely to come
> up, and certainly not very often.  In the more common case, there are
> issues on which reasonable people can disagree within the scope of
> Wikipedia's mission, and on those I think deferring to the community in
> large part makes some sense.
> 
> I don't necessarily mean holding votes on everything, but at least
> recognizing that in principle this isn't a top-down organization, but
> rather a community that largely works on its own to write a high-quality
> encyclopedia. 

A rather theological thought ... but "a community" sounds me a bit
strange when we contemplate the current situation; even we limit the
topic on Wikipedia, I doubt strongly the idea there is one sole
(unified) community; it is ideal rather than real; in fact most of the
community exist as islands not a part of continent. the issues on
German Wikipedia give no or little effects to English Wikipedia,
supportingly and vice versa. In this situation what designate "a
community" without lacking communication and interest, I strongly
doubt unification here assumed.

I have noticed signs of tendency of isolation; hereby I introduce two
episodes.(sorry, a rant begins ... you can skip it ). a Japanese
editor made a typo in a stats table and a German editor found this
tweak; I let the former his mistake and asked him to check other his
similar table which would be to other projects, because we don't know
where he had put this table exactly. He denied saying "it is not my
major concern; I have more interest on on other tasks [his newly
created other tables on JAWP]. Finally German editor checked out other
projects. Or recently an Japanese editor made me requests for comments
on my wording and blanking the content not acceptable from academic
view; besides this 'request' it was just before the Wikimania site
opening, and it was my responsible to care for translators in 8
languages and therefore pages on the site. I admit my engagement is
only a small part of it, but it required some sort of concentration
and devotion. And moreover I have been inactive on Japanese Wikipedia
since this February,. before this RfC. So when this editor complained
me he coulnd't get my answer, I replied him I was very inactive,
specially then, because of Wikimania site preparation, already
overdue,  and WQ (then the submission deadline was set on 8 April,
very soon from then), and some update of WMF site. I  think this
editor could understand the dispute if he as the third party [very
strangely, he didn't edit the page I blanked, and no other editors of
that page complained] was pleased to my edit and the preparation of
overdue opening official site of WMF events, which was important in
those days situation, but he accused me "It is not the time for you to
engage '''such things''', you should realize importance of your
"basement of activities'"(honestly confessed I can't understand even
now what he meant).

I added hereby this editor didn't withdraw this underestimation,
though he admitted not everyone shared his view, nor he made
apologies. For this editor, I should have talk with him, besides the
translation coordination to announce hosting news in language as many
as possible to the entire Wikimedia community. Perhaps, even now.

It was just the day Yahoo! announcement, and even now I regret to
spend time to be nice to such an editor, instead of caring sites and
my fellow translators... specially sorry to translators who I couldn't
give a notice in advance.

.. So I am afraid if there is really "a community", Delirium ---
unless you consider English Wikipedia community and the entire
Wikimedia project community identical .
-- 
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com