Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-08-07/News and notes

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  • Good riddance to the WCA. While there's a fair bit to be said for having a person/people to act as a point of coordination across the Wikimedia Chapters, the WCA made the rookie mistake of focusing on internal issues, including setting up grandiose structures and positions, which wasn't in line with how Wikimedia chapters or equivalent organisations actually operate. Nick-D (talk) 23:23, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Agreed. There's enough chapter bureaucracy already. For all the good work chapters do, they do often seem to be a magnet for drama, bureaucracy and minor-league politics. Seeing some of the chapter bureaucracy disappear is actually quite refreshing. —Tom Morris (talk) 06:55, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I tossed up whether I should reply to this or let it slide, but this WCA meeting was going to be about various programs (such as the Chapters Exchange, WCA Journal, Chapters Manual, and so on - all of which were started in the past twelve months and are at various levels of progress), until, ironically, the announcement by WMFR - with "too much bureaucracy" being the main issue - turned it into another meeting about bureaucracy. A self fulfilling prophecy.
In addition, perhaps the contributors to this piece should have listened to the stream/recording of Jimbo's keynote before writing that headline. -- Chuq (talk) 15:26, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Jimmy's headlining keynote is going to be covered next week. We ran out of time to cover it in this edition, unfortunately. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 02:29, 11 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just to clarify, I was referring to taking heed of what Jimmy said about over sensationalist journalism, not the reporting of the speech itself. -- Chuq (talk) 03:30, 13 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • If the WCA is to unband then I wish that there could remain a central unfunded project or on-wiki space and communication channels to facilitate communications between chapters. Right now, the majority of chapters have no regular communication with other chapters and I feel that if this were easier to do and encouraged as expected behavior of chapters, then this would happen more often. I do not like the Wikimedia Foundation being the de facto hub for connecting community members who want to collaborate with other community members for projects which are unconnected to the Wikimedia Foundation. I have a proposal for this at meta:Peer review in which I simply say that chapters should review each other's work. This would be in contrast to the current practice of primarily depending on the WMF for reviews of their work. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:57, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Asaf Bartov's comparison to WLM is interesting and I would like to point out that the success of WLM has to do with the fact that without a heritage list, it is impossible to participate. For some countries, their heritage list is posted in more than one Wikipedia project because its member states have more than one primary language. That means that more than one chapter may be involved with parts of the WLM process of any particular WLM national project, such as listmaking, jury duty, organizing "Wiki Takes ..." meetups, or prize donation. What goes undisputed however, is the unique code given to a monument by a list holder. No matter what the politics of the photographer, if the photo looks good, both leftwing liberals and rightwing conservatives will vote for it. When you look at the Chapters association, the demarcation lines are nowhere near so clear. Jane (talk) 06:35, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Italy doesn't have an official heritage list and thousands of entities have to be individually asked permission, FYI.[1] [2] --Nemo 08:18, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • hmmm, perhaps the inevitable consequence of the fact that the WCA never found favour with the WMF. I would be interested to read a more NPOV account of all this.Leutha (talk) 10:07, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I find too much bureaucracy in Wikimedia and hoped for chapters to bring things closer to my needs. I have supported WCA but I disliked when they intended to form a bureaucracy of their own. I'm more interested in getting knowledge from other wikimedians than on getting a budget. For me, many of the documents supplied by the central structure in Wikimedia are a quite complex mixture of English, Legalese and Technoblablabla, three languages and don't master enough. I know the Poles have organized a tour of their railway system to take pictures: I wish I could talk to them so I could learn how to replicate that in my home town. What has it to do with chapters? Well, there's a Polish chapter, to begin with, and a Spanish chapter I'm a member of. They have the knowledge we could use. Some kind of common platform (WCA for instance) would help. Does it mean we need a budget and an administrative estructure? No. A complex procedure isn't needed. What we need is some easy connection that allows the average Pablo to ask the average Pawel. B25es (talk) 13:42, 11 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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"...and possibly feature a hybrid community-paid journalist model" I'm not sure if I'm reading this correctly, but if Jimbo is doing an about face on paid editing, then that's a big deal. Many people—myself included—are opposed to paid editing on WMF projects. 64.40.54.169 (talk) 01:03, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Who says this is going to be a WMF project? Powers T 01:17, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Powers is correct. Also of note is that Wales requested that people email his Wikia account—i.e. not something affiliated with the Wikimedia projects. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 02:24, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for clarifying this. I wasn't sure if I had it correct or not. Best. 64.40.54.169 (talk) 03:06, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No worries. Also, I'm not trying to insinuate that it will be a Wikia project. My read of "from the ground up" is an entirely new site with a new domain name. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 07:29, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I believe Jimbo uses the Wikia address for all communications; at least, it's the only email address he lists on his userpage. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 07:43, 10 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Journalism[edit]

  • I thought Wikinews already existed? Granted there are some internal politics on that site to overcome. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 17:12, 13 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I was wondering if Wales's suggestion was going to be a repurposing of Wikinews in order to resolve the problems it has been having. — SMUconlaw (talk) 10:10, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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