[Foundation-l] Greg Kohs and Peter Damian

Wed Oct 20 17:29:06 UTC 2010

Mike,

Very good. I subscribe to everything you wrote and I'll second any 
proposal you or anyone else makes in that direction.

Sincerely,

Virgilio A. P. Machado

At 07:30 20-10-2010, you wrote:
>Hello,
>
> From what I have seen about Greg Kohs is that he does have some
>interesting points to make, but I do see that he is jumping to
>conclusions and does seem to have a biased viewpoint.
>
>People want to make their own decisions and have enough information to
>do that. We don't want to have important information deleted away
>because it is uncomfortable.
>
>Banning him makes it less likely for him to be heard, and these
>interesting points which are worth considering are not heard my many
>people : this is depriving people of critical information, that is not
>fair to the people involved.
>
>Just look at this article for example, it is quite interesting and
>well written, and why should it not be visible to everyone on the
>list.
>
>http://www.examiner.com/wiki-edits-in-national/wikimedia-foundation-director-admits-to-sweetheart-contracts
>
>Deleting and banning people who say things that are not comfortable,
>that does make you look balanced and trustworthy.
>
>The Wikimedia foundation should be able to stand up to such
>accusations without resorting to gagging people, it just gives more
>credit to the people being gagged and makes people wonder if there is
>any merit in what they say.
>
>This brings up my favorite subject of unneeded deletions versions needed ones.
>
>Of course there is material that should be deleted that is hateful,
>Spam etc, lets call that evil content.
>
>But the articles that i wrote and my friends wrote that were deleted
>did not fall into that category, they might have been just bad or not
>notable.
>
>We have had a constant struggle to keep our articles from being
>deleted in a manner that we consider unfair. Additionally, the bad
>content is lost and falls into the same category as evil content.
>
>Also there should be more transparency on deleted material on the
>Wikipedia itself, there is a lot of information that is being deleted
>and gone forever without proper process or review.
>
>In my eyes there is a connection between the two topics, the banning
>of people and the deleting of information. Both are depriving people
>from information that they want and need in an unfair manner.
>
>Instead of articles about obscure events, things, and old places in
>Kosovo you have a wikipedia full of the latest information about every
>television show, is that what you really want?
>
>I think there should be room for things in places that are not not
>notable because they are not part of mainstream pop culture, we also
>need to support the underdogs of Wikipedia even if they are not
>mainstream, Mr Kohs definitely has something to say and I would like
>like to hear it. And the Kosovars have something to say even if the
>Serbs don't want to hear it. The Albanians have something to say even
>if the Greeks don't want to hear it, etc. There are many cases of
>people from Kosovo and Albania driven out of Wikipedia and depriving
>the project of important information because they are not able to get
>started and the contributions are so far way from the dominating
>political viewpoint of the opposite side that they don't even get a
>chance to be heard.
>
>We need to make a way for these people to be heard and to moderate the
>conflicts better, that will make Wikipedia stronger and more robust.
>
>thanks,
>mike