[Foundation-l] A Wikisource Definition (was: RfC: A Free Content and Expression Definition)

Sat May 6 01:43:20 UTC 2006

On 5/4/06, amgine at saewyc.net <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:

> The Foundation should (and did) describe the projects goals and missions,
> and approve any modifications of these.

Wikisource ("Project Sourceberg") was created before the Foundation
even had a Board. This was during the time when new projects were
essentially set up when something had to be dumped from Wikipedia.
People were adding texts like national constitutions to Wikipedia
verbatim. Hence, the only mission statement I've seen for Wikisource
is on [[m:Wikisource]]:

"Mission: Allow people to handle primary sources better than
currently, so that no one gets upset. Maybe that means provide a
repository for primary sources; maybe that means figure out how to
improve the Wikipedia interface for linking to outside repositories."

People get flamed nowadays for even submitting project proposals like
this. You say I want to "dictate terms". But in actual fact, I want to
be clear about what the project should _allow_, not so much about what
it should _prohibit_. I do _not_ want a small group of a handful of
people to retroactively create a definition that has never been
written when it should have been. But that is exactly what will happen
if you leave, for example, the question of whether to allow
translations to the small, existing community of de.wikisource.org.

There are different scales of community involvement that are
appropriate for different purposes. Even for an individual page, you
may see cases where a group of editors is annoyed because someone else
suddenly opens up a discussion without ever having worked on the page
or having read past discussions.

However, nobody would argue that the people who have worked on a
single Wikipedia article have some special "right" to make up their
own policies -- because Wikipedia follows a particular philosophy,
which, to a certain extent, is even shared across languages. Nobody, I
hope, would seriously make the case that each language edition of
Wikipedia should have a different logo symbol (as opposed to the
subtitle). So these decisions are made on a project-wide level.

And in addition to the project level, there is the Wikimedia level.
This includes involvement from the entire Wikimedia community, whether
they have worked on a specific project or not. This is where we decide
whether to launch a new projects. And in the case of old projects that
did not go through this process, I think this is where the scope will
have to be, gently and through a largely consultative process that of
course involves the existing community, gradually defined or refined.

This has nothing to do with "dictating terms". Some see Wikimedia as a
group of largely disparate tribes, others see it as a single
community. It is, however, both. Some decisions are best made locally,
some globally.

The ability to make global decisions, to arrive at a single definition
for a project scope, to consistently enforce free content principles
and NPOV, and so forth, is one of the reasons to have an organization
like Wikimedia in the first place. The other key reason I can see is
to build an ever larger community that is given ever more
opportunities to do good. Both are negatively affected by excessive
tribalism.

What else do we need Wikimedia for? Fundraising? The projects would
probably be more effective in this regard if they could work
independently, and besides, none is even remotely on the same scale as
Wikipedia. Wikimedia without a Wikimedia community identity is a
pointless entity.

I hope "Wikisourcerors" see themselves also as members of the larger
Wikimedia community. I hope everyone who works on a Wikimedia project
does.

Erik