Wikimedia: Difference between revisions

Wikimedia (edit)

Revision as of 16:11, 29 April 2004

2,364 bytes added , 29 April 2004

npov

Virtual community

56

edits

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-'''Wikimedia Foundation''' is a private tax-exempt corporation (IRS 501) in the US founded by Jimmy Wales aka Jimbo. It has an independent board that makes the decisions as required by law.
+'''Wikimedia Foundation''' is a private tax-exempt corporation (IRS 501) in the US founded by Jimmy Wales aka Jimbo. It has an independent board that makes the decisions as required by law. (add legal charity status information)
 Wikimedia is funded by donors, and spends virtually all of it's money it receives as donations on providing hardware for [[MediaWiki]] sites such as [[Wikipedia]]s and [[Wiktionary|Wiktionaries]].
 There are no salaried employees at the present time, and no immediate plans to have any.
-Most longstanding participants in the [[Wikipedia]] project have greeted the formation of the nonprofit with great enthusiasm, and plans are in the work to set up nonprofit organizations in European countries to complement the global foundation.  Jimbo has given all rights and ownership in the
+Some claims have been made that part of the funds it raises is used to support development of the [[mediawiki]] software (which [[Consumerium]] [[R&D wiki]] is running on). According to [[Mediawiki]] developers these claims are not true and they are receiving no money from Wikimedia.
-Wikipedia name(s) and websites, as well as some hardware, freely and permanently.
-One of the greatest difficulties that Wikipedia has faced is in maintaining an open and
+Supporters of the Wikimedia foundation claim that most longstanding participants in the [[Wikipedia]] project have greeted the formation of the nonprofit with great enthusiasm, and plans are in the work to set up nonprofit organizations in European countries to complement the global foundation.  Jimbo has given all rights and ownership in the Wikipedia name(s) and websites, as well as some hardware, freely and permanently.
-welcoming culture in the face of repeated attacks from vicious trolls, such as the ones now beginning to plague Consumerium.  Wiki management issues are complex and difficult, and there are many lessons yet to be learned.
-The incredible success of Wikipedia shows that it is an excellent model for any community organization.  Wikipedia faces far greater challenges than any single-purpose community such as consumerium, because by design, it draws from a very broad range of ideological backgrounds, and must be welcoming to them all.  Consumerium, or other narrow-purpose projects, will likely find a more homogeneous user base, thus making governance decisions much easier.  By applying the lessons learned at Wikipedia, great success is likely.
+They cite as one of the greatest difficulties that Wikipedia has faced maintaining an open and welcoming culture in the face of repeated attacks from vicious trolls, such as the ones that they view as beginning to plague Consumerium.  Wiki management issues are complex and difficult, and there are many lessons yet to be learned.
+They point to the "incredible success of Wikipedia" as an excellent model for any community organization.  Wikipedia faces far greater challenges than any single-purpose community such as consumerium, because by design, it draws from a very broad range of ideological backgrounds, and must be welcoming to them all.  Consumerium, or other narrow-purpose projects, will likely find a more homogeneous user base, thus making governance decisions much easier.  By applying the lessons learned at Wikipedia, great success is likely.
+However, some participants in the [[Wikipedia]] and other [[GFDL corpus]] projects have raised concerns with the people and processes employed by the foundation. They claim that, as a volunteer organization, it probably has growing pains, and it's unclear if it will outgrow these. Most of the criticisms have to do with [[wiki management]] problems on which there is little well-understood practice.
+*Treating use of ISO language codes in mediawiki's [[interwiki link conventions]] as if they are invocations of Wikipedia in that language, not simply references to "that page in that language".
+:But the interwiki links point to the page in another language
+:This complaint is completely incoherent. If the original complainant could explain himself, I'm sure that any such problem would be eagerly addressed.
+::This claim doesn't look incoherent to me. For example [[Wikipedia:fr:Commerce �quitable]] or [[w:fr:Commerce �quitable]] map incorrectly to what [[interwiki link conventions|should be]] at [[fr:Wikipedia:Commerce �quitable]]. It is not up to the service to decide what languages to serve in, nor is it up to the service to decide how to carve up space within that language. Not only that, but the name of the service is itself expressed in a language.
+*Promoting its own [[community point of view]] as if it were actually a [[neutral point of view]], ignoring [[systemic bias]] questions, and letting [[sysop vigilantiism]] and [[sysop vandalism]] occur freely against outsiders, to the bizarre extremes of assuming that the Wikipedia mailing list consensus on legal issues overrules the best legal advice of actual qualified legal experts. (possibly wikipedia-specific?)
+Generally, critics point to Wikimedia as a classic [[insider culture]], and not a good model for [[Consumerium Governance Organization]] or any other nonprofit entity that is actually trying to serve users and disadvantaged people and other living things.