Wikipedia talk:The Free Encyclopedia

My intention
I am trying to write this to reflect reality, consensus and official policy of the Wikimedia foundation and i hope that it will be an official policy page in the "Wikipedia:" namespace. Feel free to edit it for spelling, tone, legal precision, and whatever you find necessary. In particular, i want this page to sound as positive and encouraging as possible without discouraging bold contributions to the wiki, so any improvements about this are welcome. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk)

Be bold and change it
I wrote the original version of this essay, but please be bold and improve it. This includes everything. Change the title, move it to Meta, wikify, rewrite it completely to reflect consensus better.

Be bold. Thanks. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 21:49, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Hey @Amire80 - I am somewhat intrigued that this 2008 essay got (re)published now in Signpost. I wonder if there was any specific motivation behind it?
 * I am concious of your linguistic/language use focus and I am curious if you would be interested (and/or bold) to discuss notion of Commons (which is introduced only as part of the Creative Commons licence name), but not elaborated or explained in any way...
 * Considering that this is 2021 I think Wikipedia is not discussed enough as digital commons and aspects of infrastructure, resources, labour of sharing and care is absent. Wonder what you think if this is the context and moment to update it? Would you be up for it? Maybe a section of 'the cost of free' (both as freedom as well as free resource) is due? -- Zblace (talk) 06:50, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
 * What was the reason for writing it? I don't totally remember it, it happened 13 years ago :) A combination of a bunch of things, I guess. I've been a fan of the idea of Stallman-style Free Software since 1998, and of the idea of Lessig-style Free Culture since 2004. (Comment 1: Despite publishing good ideas about copyright, Stallman is too weird in a bunch of ways, and it's well-documented that I've had this feeling for a long time. Comment 2: I'm ashamed to say I don't always practice Free Software life, but then who does, other than Stallman. See comment 1.) And maybe I had to explain the meaning of "Free" to people for too many times or to argue about it, and I wanted to have this written down somewhere. I don't remember any particular argument, however.
 * Thanks for offering me the role of an advocate for Free Culture. It means a lot. However, my mental energy is currently focused on bringing about a shared templates repository, which is also an aspect of equity in technology and knowledge. It would be irresponsible of me to delve into another topic at the moment. I agree that it needs new champions, though. Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 07:19, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
 * @Amire80 I was more curious if you think that it needs to expand as an essay and how much. Anyway I forwarding my questions to the editors and other people interested. I am also looking forward to your work results there. It is much needed and urgent in many ways. -- Zblace (talk) 09:51, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
 * If you care about my opinion, I don't think this essay needs expansion, but as I already wrote above, I don't own it :) Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 09:59, 29 March 2021 (UTC)