LSS/foundation-l-archives/2006 10 22-28

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This issue covers (roughly) 2006 October 22-28

Threads

• [1]Conversation continued on using IRC to help users on different language Wikipedia projects. Tangotango, speaking as someone involved with #wikipedia-bootcamp, took suggestions for improvement, passing them on to users involved in that IRC channel.
• [2]Jeff Merkey noted that Daniel Brandt's website has lists allegations of plagarism on Wikipedia (Comment: Daniel Brandt is an individual who is known for putting up websites criticising a number of popular internet sites. He is not taken seriously by many people due to frequent inaccuracies and overly emotive phrasing in his criticisms). Further discussion suggested that his list of alleged plagarism is (probably accidentally) helpful to the projects because avoiding plagarism on Wikipedia is something important to the project.
• [3]Anthere gave a brief note that the Board Retreat had concluded (Comment: The Wikimedia Board of Trustees, along with other Wikimedia Foundation people, went to Frankfurt to have an organisational meeting. [4]Later, Oscar gave a list of discussed topics and priorities from the meeting.
• [5][6][7][8][9][10]Ilario asked whether the Wikimedia Hong Kong chapter should exist, given that Hong Kong is due to be completely integrated into the People's Republic of China in 2047. In the discussion, it was noted that what will happen in the (especially distant) future is speculative, and multiple chapters per country may, depending on circumstances, make sense. Discussion on the latter point continued, with some support for the idea of one chapter per "jurisdiction", some for basing chapters around transportation ease, and other ideas. No agreement was reached on the proper scope of chapters.
• [11]Walter van Kalken posted a resignation from the Wikimedia projects, with criticisms over growth of bureaucracy on projects, English-language bias, and the Wikimedia Board. Some discussion happened over the criticisms.
• [12]Luke Brandt asked for interest in coordinating Wikipedia policy across all the different language editions of the Wikipedia projects. It was suggested that attempts to force unified policies would be a very traumatic experience that would likely lead to different language communities breaking off from the main project (Note: The Spanish Wikipedia had a large number of its members leave to form Encyclopedia Libre in 2002 over the anticipation of inclusion of advertising on Wikipedia), although the possibility of documenting and comparing different policies from the various projects for comparison was considered to be very helpful.
• [13]Alessandro Argentini let everyone know about his proposal to create a new project called WikiWorlds to model 3D objects in a wiki way
• [14]Brad Patrick noted that the Wikimedia projects, by a visitor metric he found, was one of the most popular sets of websites on the internet.
• [15]SJ forwarded mail from another mailing list he's on asking (American?) Wikipedians to contact their senators in order to prevent the dismantling of the (United States) Environmental Protection Agency's library
• [16]Erik Möller, in his new role as Executive Secretary of the Wikipedia Foundation, announced that during the Board Retreat, a resolution, introduced by Jimbo Wales, was passed whereby Jimbo stepped down from the Chair of the Board of Trustees, Anthere was made chair, Tim Shell was made vice-chair, Michael Davis was made treasurer, and Erik Möller was made executive secretary. These roles are defined in the Foundation bylaws. [17]Anthere gave her perspective on the retreat, proposal, and future issues for the foundation. This generated a [18][19][20]lot of further discussion. Anthere further noted some [21]strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats discussed (presumably in a formal way) at the retreat.