[Foundation-l] Re : on (re)organizing wikimedia

Mon Jun 12 11:58:35 UTC 2006

--- Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 6/12/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > osar's ideas as outlined below are far too general
> to
> >   It would be far too large to be effective.  I
> can't
> > see how a group of more than 20 people max could
> be
> > useful in an advisory role.  And I have no idea
> what
> > "supervision of the projects" actually entails. 
> Any
> > duties I can think of that could be considered
> > supervision need a group no larger than 13.
> 
> It can be representatives of the largest part(s),
> like the English
> Wikipedia is the largest and perhaps most active,
> and most of active
> members of this mailinglist are its regular, and I
> agree it will be
> efficient, but at the same time it can happen such
> body of
> representatives fail to representative the broader
> population of
> Wikimedia project editors (like Enlgish Wikipedia
> editors are less
> than the sum of editors of  all other projects). If
> it aims to reflect
> voices of users in a systematical scheme, not as
> well current sporadic
> and relying on personal relationships, it would make
> a sense. But I'm
> afraid it isn't at all the representatives of the
> entire Wikimedia
> project community, neglecting the majority of
> editors who are not
> involved into foundation activities.
> 
> -- 
> Aphaia
> aka
> Kizu Naoko
> email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com
>

I certainly don't want to see an advisory group of 50%
en.WP editors!  However such token represntation as
proposed in the Wikicouncil plan would be of little
practical benifit.  It would be better to appoint (or
nominate a short list for election) an advisory board
with an purposeful effort to include editors from both
all types of sister projects and communities of
different sizes while keeping the number of people
within reason.  Another option is to encourage
different projects to each form their own sort of
council and each can endorse ideas or write proposals
with the unique goals of each project in mind.  Those
are just two rough ideas, there are certainly many
other alternatives.  

I believe it is most important that the input of small
languages and non-pedia projects is taken into
conderation in any such advisory council.  Not that
every editor is given proportional representation. 
The latter would either be too much dominated by en.WP
or else too large to offer useful and timely advice. 
Honestly the concerns of en.WP are being heard every
day and would still be heard if they had not a single
seat on such a council (I am not suggesting that!). 
The real need for such a council is to find out the
needs/opinions of the smaller projects/lang.
communities which are not currently being heard.

Birgitte SB

P.S.  If anyone believes the needs/concerns of en.WP
are not being currently responded to by the WMF,
please correct me now.

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