Hey everyone, i'd really like to reaffirm what Àlex wrote in his mail: let's start with people, not technology.
When i read this in Lila's message: > Many companies copy our knowledge into their own databases and > present it inside their interfaces. While this supports wider > dissemination, it also separates our readers from our community. It seems like it's a bad thing that people reuse our work. But isn't that the whole point of our mission? Wikipedia might be the last big site on the internet where the main focus is not on getting everyone to share their content in the same walled garden (like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.) but on altruistically creating something that benefits the whole world. I completely agree that Wikimedia should be a high-tech organization. I'm very glad that the focus of development (and user experience in particular) has shifted to the WMF the last couple of years, bringing us great improvements like the Visual Editor. But we should not never forget the purpose of all those improvements: it's to better serve the community and our mission. We shouldn't be building tech for tech's sake! Everyone who has spent more than a few years in this community knows how incredibly difficult it is to balance the needs of the editors, the readers, and developers. I'm incredibly grateful to those who managed to make improvements while not disturbing that balance too much. Unfortunately, many of these people have left the WMF the last few years, and that's a very sad thing. It's hard to get good people, it's even harder to replace them when they're gone. However important those technical improvements are, the greatest asset of our movement is not the software we built. It's not even the hard working people in chapters and the WMF. It's the more than 26 million people who have had the courage in the last fifteen years to press the 'edit' button and voluntarily gave their time and knowledge for the common good. When major decisions are made, we should be very sure that they benefit those people. Best, -- Hay / Husky On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 5:29 PM, Austin Hair <adh...@gmail.com> wrote: > I think everyone should remember that sarcasm, and tone in general, > frequently do not come through across the wires, as it were. > > For that matter, please, stay civil. I'm happy to report that I > haven't had to moderate anyone, yet, but I think we can all appreciate > the current circumstances. > > Austin > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
