[Foundation-l] Status of Wikimedia (was: Status of Serbia and Montenegro chapter)

Mon Nov 7 20:32:36 UTC 2005

Milos Rancic wrote:

> I see only two solutions: (1) To find enough 
> linguists/anthropologists/sociologists who would check all exotic 
> requests and articles or (2) not to be the formal part of the 
> organization (this means as it is written "not formal part", this 
> doesn't mean that we would stop to work on Wikimedian projects or
> that we don't want to have any relation with other local chapters and
> WMF).

On 1 september I sent the following email to the board:
[...]
| In the last open board meeting there was a discussion about having a
| seed wiki and a committee deciding policies for it.
| So, here a proposal how to deal with new language requests (not new
| projects)
| * community elects a committee of seven people on meta-wiki (one-year 
term)
| * requests for new languages will be submitted to the committee on 
meta-wiki
| * committee will create a catalogue of criterias over time
| * they examine the case (check if language or dialect, spread of
| language, number of the people willing to work on it, consult
| experts)
| * they decide, three sorts of decisions are possible: accept, reject 
in general (because no real language etc.), reject in
| this case (not enough support) but can be later again proposed if
| conditions have changed
| * have a developer create the wiki if approved
|
| This way, we can maybe get rid of these pending requests:
| http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
[...]
| If the committee does its job well, it could later also get the
| competence to filter new project proposals.
| Add your suggestions and criticisms and say yes or no.
|
| I'd be willing to help with the election but I don't have the time
| for an extensive community debate and slow process on the
| mailinglists and wikis with no decision at all after months.

In the three answers I got, I was refered back to the community and told 
that the problem will eventuall sort out by creation of the seed wiki.

Now I see that the situation hasn't become better but even worse.

> In other words: If Wikimedian community can't defend herself from 
> people such as Mark, we don't want to be the formal part of it. 

As officer of the Wikimedia Foundation I can't welcome your decision and 
would question your competence to speak for the whole of the not yet 
existing serbian Wikimedia chapter.

As wikipedian who dedicated myself to the creation of a high quality 
free encyclopedia in as many languages as are _needed_ to make human 
knowledge accessible to everybody, I can very well understand your feelings.

What shall I tell a journalist who asks the press officer about the 
zlatiborian language wikipedia? "Eh yes, it's ridiculous, but you see, a 
few people who don't even speak this city dialect pressured the 
community into it. Cantonese? Oh yes, the same thing happened. 
Wikiversity? Ah well, sorry, we're still looking for a concept. There's 
rubbish on wikibooks like the "How to get a girl manual"? See, people 
are working on the encyclopedia, there are not enough people to look 
into the other projects and control them for quality. You found a 
copyvio on suaheli wikiquote? Sorry, I don't speak suaheli - and the 
three suaheli speakers in Wikimedia are busy with the encyclopedia. Why 
are there so many corn field related news on german Wikinews while XY 
isn't treated? Oh well, now this is a funny story...

Wikimedia has accomplished great things: An encyclopedia, written by 
common people and volunteers, slowly getting better and better, to the 
point of being a serious alternative to classical encyclopedias. There 
are its established sister projects, slowly evolving and becoming useful 
(btw, the category:philosophy on commons is a mess).

But to maintain and improve this standard of quality requires constant 
work and attention. New contributors have to be welcomed and taught the 
"way of the wiki", policy proposals which would result in deteriorating 
the quality have to be turned down, conflicts between good authors have 
to be mediated and last but not least over 3 million articles in over 
150 languages need to be checked for vandalism and are waiting to be 
improved and still a lot more are waiting to be written.

I came here in August 2002 to help creating a free encyclopedia. Later I 
became involved in "meta" affairs - organizing wikipedia booths at 
conferences, designing promotion material, joining global policy 
discussions, coordinating cooperations with organisations and companies, 
dealing with press requests, organizing Wikimania.

If someone wondered lately why there's almost no elian anymore around in 
Wikimedia affairs, that's why.

I went back to the real thing, the encyclopedia in my language - which 
is nor Bavarian, neither Münchnerisch although I am from this region and 
city but german, a language almost everybody in Germany speaks and is 
able to understand (except he's maybe turkish or serbian or arabic). 
There's still a lot of work to do even if some newspapers rate us 
already as better than brockhaus.

Tell me when you've stopped discussing and voting on genial new projects 
and obscure dialects, when you've kicked the language fanatics from the 
mailing lists, when you've closed the unwatched spam traps, when you've 
settled on a checkuser and logo policy, when someone has had the guts to 
introduce single login instead of just talking about it and when you are 
serious about this human knowledge thing.

good bye,
elian