[Foundation-l] A Wikisource Definition

Mon May 8 06:45:32 UTC 2006

Erik Moeller wrote:

>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."
>
There's something very Wiki about the phrase "so that no one gets 
upset."  Each of the sister projects was based on some deviation from 
the original Wikipedia.  Someone started writing something that did not 
belong in an encyclopedia, and there was enough of a positive will to 
agree to that and to seek out a better place for that material.  It all 
began with Meta as a general place for personal opinions, or material 
about our own Wiki-World.

>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.
>
What a project allows is more important than what it prohibits.  The 
old-timer brings a vision formed by history and experience.  This is not 
the same as dictating., but I can understand how it can seem that way.  
The longer people are here, the more their visions converge, even as the 
details of their views diverge. 

>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.
>
Yes it's annoying, but it's also a sign of good health.  Just when hard 
work has brought an article into NPOV stasis along comes Joe Newbie with 
the killer idea that blows that stasis all to hell.  If someone gets 
upset that way maybe he should just abondon the sense of ownership that 
he feels for the article.. 

>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.
>
Absolutely, but very few need to be made at a global level.

>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.
>
Wikimedia can be a tool to link the community to the real world.

>I hope "Wikisourcerors" see themselves also as members of the larger
>Wikimedia community. I hope everyone who works on a Wikimedia project
>does.
>
Yes, and that includes a sense of belonging to the other projects even 
when you never contribute there by virtue of language or lack of 
specific interest.

Ec