Re: Our values
Florence Devouard wrote:
> I would like to ask you to have a look at the value page on meta:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Values
>
> And add more suggestions there, or different phrasings. Values can be
> expressed by keywords, or by sentences. Either are fine, as long as they
> express what is important to us.
> Or comment on some of the keywords already there.
>
This strikes me as somewhat reversed from our typical practice---we have
goals, like creating a neutral, wide-coverage, multi-lingual
encyclopedia, or a repository of free media, etc., and then we choose
means to those goals based on what we find works and doesn't work. We
use wikis, for example, because they work better than Nupedia did, not
because we love wikis; and we use consensus-based decision making
because it seems to work better than the alternatives, not because we
have some attachment to consensus-based political systems ([[en:WP:NOT]]
has said as much for many years).
The same goes with the things on that list---we encourage diversity
because diverse groups of contributors tend to reach less biased and
more wide-reaching consensus; we encourage friendliness because it makes
the whole process go smoother; and so on. But this seems to be setting
those values up as the organization's values per se, which seems
backwards. When it comes to Wikimedia projects, I don't think we should
specifically value friendliness, or diversity, or openness, or trust,
for their own sake. In particular, I can see situations where we
*wouldn't* want to put undue value on openness or trust, if they didn't
serve our mission (at the moment they mostly do).
(Continue reading)
read you soon,
Kim Bruning
(What WP:POINT violation? :-P )
RSS Feed