Welcome to my Wikipedia Wikimedia blog!
Even though I became involved with the Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in 2003 I have only now decided to start blogging about it four years later. This may seem like a delayed reaction, but I have thought long and hard about my involvement with Wikipedia and I have now decided to start this blog to talk about my experience and my criticisms of Wikipedia as it has been about a year since I have last been involved with any Wikimedia project, having resigned as Chair of the Fundraising Committee last December 2006. This was at the same time that I discovered that the Board of Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. had decided that Wikimedia would not be a membership organization. When it was founded on June 20, 2003 Jimbo Wales had told me that he wanted Wikimedia to have a membership. He was very apprehensive about allowing anonymous users to crash his "baby" and this is why I initially suggested to him that he and his two business associates be the initial directors and that two other directors could be added that would be elected from the membership. Well, there were elections and two members, Angela Beesley and Florence Devouard were elected as members representatives. However even though these members were elected (without any notices sent to the many thousands of volunteer editing members of Wikipedia projects) supposedly there never were any members? This is what the "first" General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (who also was strangely able to be the first Executive Director of the organization despite the obvious conflict of interest issues) declared as he rewrote the bylaws of the organization without any consultation with any of the many lawyers who had been volunteering in the early years of the projects or myself who had written these first set of preliminary bylaws.
Alex T. Roshuk (a/k/a alex756)
Alex T. Roshuk (a/k/a alex756)
I am starting to discover that Jimmy Wales, historically, has been more prone to change his position on important matters than to stick by his position. So, it is not surprising that Wales would have led a shift away from the WMF being a "membership organization". Other examples of shifting positions:
Larry Sanger was the co-founder of Wikipedia, then Wales decided that Wales was the "sole founder".
Wales launched Openserving.com in December 2006, promising free server space for communities to use; but realizing how this merely created competition for his for-profit Wikia.com, Openserving has languished for a year now.
Wales hired Ryan Jordan (User:Essjay) to work at Wikia, Inc., then installed him to the WMF's English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, all while knowing that Jordan had falsified his credentials to the community. Wales "didn't have a problem" with this, until the New York Times made it clear that it WAS a problem. Then, Jimbo flip-flopped.
In August 2006, Wales drafted an agreement with MyWikiBiz.com, allowing that company to create GFDL-licensed content on its own site, which if deemed by independent Wikipedia editors in good standing as suitable for Wikipedia, could be copied into the Wikipedia article space. After this practice was smoothly in place, Wales changed his mind and retracted the framework. Additionally, Wales threatened MyWikiBiz with legal action if it did not remove references to "Wikipedia" from its website; although the legal notice came in the form of an e-mail from a "Wikia.com" address.
I will be interested over the next few weeks to watch Wales change his position on the secret (or, as they say, "private") Wikipedia administrative mailing lists that Wikia.com has been hosting, which led to the complete embarrassment and decline of User:Durova. Wales currently stands in support of these secretive lists, and he sees no conflict of interest in Wikia.com hosting them. I am absolutely certain that Wales' position on the usefulness of these secret lists will change soon. One need only look at how User:Mercury (who supported Durova and the lists) performed in the current ArbCom elections -- 3 support votes, scores of oppose votes, candidacy withdrawn, account cancelled -- to understand that the community is obviously not in agreement with Jimbo at the present. So, Jimbo will massage and manipulate his message until it conforms with what is more popular.
Those who called Senator John Kerry a "flip-flopper" obviously never met Jimmy Wales.
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lots of new initiatives are currently coming. Google with KNOL, and lots of Mediawiki installations. Wikipedia will not be the only one in the future I guess..
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