[Foundation-l] VC - alternative resolution

Fri Apr 4 20:04:46 UTC 2008

On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 8:38 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>  I support Council's role in the development of broad NPOV standards, but
>  it would still be up to the projects to interpret those standards in
>  relation to their own circumstances.  For Wikisource the NPOV issue is
>  never the overheated problem found on Wikipedia.

This is another issue in relation to NPOV. Commons may not be NPOV,
too (a POV image is an example). Wikiversity may not be NPOV (a course
in making someone able to do an impressionist critics of art is not
possible to be NPOV) and, consequently, if Wikibooks are willing to
follow that Wikiversity course, NPOV may not be strictly implemented
into Wikibooks, too (as well as some educational material [almost all
school books, which assumes only a certain level of reader's
knowledge] may not be NPOV because of educational reasons). Interviews
are not NPOV (at least because of the interviewed person), so Wikinews
are not strictly NPOV. As you said, Wikisource is not able to be NPOV.
So, we should address all of the NPOV problems, instead of using it as
dogma.

BTW, I was talking about NPOV and encyclopedic principles in relation
to Wikipedia and its language editions, not in relation to other
projects.

>  An argument can certainly be made to have the language committee fall
>  within Council hierarchy,  but that should not become a mandate for
>  Council to micromanage the activities of the language committee.Perhaps
>  it will be enough to reserve a Council seat for the language committee.

Yes, it is a good question. Language Subcommittee is dealing with
opening new websites. As websites are a legal matter of WMF, Lang
SubCom may not be solely within Council hierarchy. The same is for all
other committees which are not strictly a Foundation's matter (like
the Chapter Committee).

> > The answer is simple: no one is responsible. There is no any person or
>  > body which took responsibility over such issues. Board is taking care
>  > only if something threats to go out of control at the wider scale. All
>  > other things are up to the strength of the local communities.
>  >
>  Why should that change under a Council.  Perhaps the Council should be
>  the one develop policies for dealing with dysfunctional projects, but
>  that too will require a clear understanding of what we mean by
>  "dysfunctional", and an ability to show restraint when a community's
>  problems do not meet that definition.

VC shouldn't be responsible only for developing policies, but for
their implementation, too. If VC is not able to find a way how to
implement one policy, then that policy is useless. And the main job of
VC is to address communities/content problems. So, (one of) the first
thing(s) which it should address is to handle no-ones-jobs; which
means to find a way how to implement the solution for that problem.

>  It's hard to visualize what kind of miracles you are expecting here.
>  Maybe this comes into the purview of the communications committee; I
>  can't be sure of that.  My approach to the communications committee is
>  likely to be similar to the way I would approach the language committee.

I don't remember the last time when I saw some ComCom member at some
of the local projects about I am taking care. However, VC may address
communication problems between different projects better: it will be
handled not by a random ComCom member, but by a local (or near to
local) person inside of VC. Also, in cooperation with VC, ComCom may
get a lot of benefits. Instead of not so motivating copy-paste from
wiki to wiki, it will be able to talk at one place with people who
will transfer that information to the local projects.

So, in brief, I expect that future members of VC will do their job :)

> > If all of those issues are not enough big for making a communication
>  > and decision-making channel for all projects, I am really not sure do
>  > Wikimedian projects have anything else common except hosting their
>  > content at WMF servers.
>  What the projects have in common may be just one more thing that the
>  Council needs to figure out.  Still it's not up to Council to tell them
>  what they have in common.

Hm. Communities' members should tell to their representatives into the
VC what do they have in common. VC should be their body.