User talk:Rhwawn

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Contents 1 Welcome 2 Candidate questions 3 In reply to your question 4 Re: Board of Trustees election question 5 question answered 6 Reply on advertising 7 MyWikiBiz discussion 8 wikEd

[edit] Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, Rhwawn, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page
• Help pages
• Tutorial
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 04:55, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Ohayo. And a welcome to you too. --Rhwawn talk to Rhwawn 18:11, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Candidate questions

You're asking the board candidates some very incisive questions, trying to get to the meaning behind the platitudes :) What's your background, by the way? You've just registered here but you seem to know the place quite well. Is this an alternative account for an established user or have you been working on other Wikimedia projects? --Haukur 08:14, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid it's the former. Yes, I wish I could be this knowledgeable right off the bat, but alack... --Rhwawn (talk to Rhwawn) 13:37, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Ah, okay. In that case you might want to put up a disclaimer on your user page. Something like "This is a non-abusive alternative account of an established Wikipedian". And make sure to be extra nice, it takes little for the "OMG!! Sock0r - banz0000red!!!" machine to activate :) Haukur 13:45, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Heh. Maybe I will do that, maybe I will not. I mean, it should be obvious I intend no harm or ballot stuffing here, so why bother? --Rhwawn (talk to Rhwawn) 01:30, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] In reply to your question

We do have a platform, that is implied in my statement.

[The thing is to] Evangilize its use, create a prize for creative uses of WIkis, etc etc etc. As the RoR (yuck) do show, a platform needs a dedicated marketing effort to popularize its use.--Cerejota 17:16, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

(I've replied on your talk page.) --Rhwawn (talk to Rhwawn) 01:28, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

My reply to that:

I belive one of the things that emerges from my plaform is a need to leverage the impact of the Wikipedia Foundation has, into a Foundation that besides having as it goal the mantainance and popularization of specific projects, can also become a driving force in establishing the wiki model of collaboration, the wikipedia model of self-regulation, and the abbility to cross language barriers.

Coming from a background heavy with NGOs and non-profit organizations, and I think the Wikipedia Foundation has not to date fully realized its potential as one, at all levels, from funding to lobbying to outreach. It has potential, we must take it to the next step.

Engaging in strong leadership from the perspective of wikis and the wikiway of doing things, has a lot to offer to the bottom line (ie existing projects) and to the world at large:

1. Establish clear leadership - Makes the Wikipedia Foundation self-concious of it being the premier wiki organization. This provides clear leverage that then can be used to better outreach, development, and lobbying.
2. Develops beneficial relationships with institutional donors - Individual donations are always a small part of any NGO's funding. The emergence of the Wikipedia Foundation as a clear leader, will attract donors with commercial interests in popularizing wikis (ie JotSpot), or in information and knowledge dissemination, for whatever goals. Since Wikipedia's stated goal is fact based neutrality, once this leadership is clearly established, sfunding sources will emerge form accross the spectrum of politics, science, and business.
3. Develops a pervassive wiki environment - a lot of the resistance to wikis is based of not having real exposure to them in controlled environments. The popularization of wikis drives directly in to the wikipedia projects: as people become familiar with the tool, it is only logical they will move to the well established solution for specific
4. Generate a meta-community - one of the inherents problems of wikipedia is that while membership to the community is open, its goals and way of doing things immediately closes the door to a number of people: those with a lack of interest in encyclopedias for example. This could potentially cut WIkipedia off a pontential source of knowledge and creativity. By establishing leadership, Wikipedia could create an effective, more formal meta-community of general wiki advocates, that benefits its own projects while advancing the whole community.
5. Open is better - By leaving the sole province of its own projects, Wikipedia can harness untold power for mutual benefit. IBM embracing open-source is a great example of how this works, as is Red Hat's aggressive hiring of participants in open-source projects they like or need.

Of course, I say this with a caveat: if elected, these are things I will be actively seeking community input, and dare say, consensus. As I have said before, I am smart, but not smarter than millions enaging in good faith seeking the same goals. My platform is about engaging those forces. --Cerejota 21:34, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Board of Trustees election question

I'm kinda interested in one of your points, about policy changes by fiat; would you consider the Answer.com advertising deal to be such a policy change? For that matter, what do you think of advertising and Wikimedia Foundation-sponsored projects in general? --Rhwawn (talk to Rhwawn) 03:01, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Dear Rhwawn: The Answers.com deal could loosely be described as an example of where a change has been applied by "fiat", although it was not in itself a policy decision within the direct domain of Wikipedia; rather, it was a decision arrived at in a different strata of operation without a direct link to the project upon which it was based, which ultimately is a microcosm of the problem regarding community consultation. I think, in my own personal view, that the whole Answers.com decision was handled very poorly indeed by the Foundation, which lead to a great deal more paranoia and unrest amongst the "no advertising" advocates than was at all appropriate in reality, caused simply due to a lack of consultation and information about the proposed licensing deal, especially with relation to the "1-Click Answers" toolbar. It really was "a storm in a teacup" as what was actually agreed upon was comparatively mild, but because of the way the decision was arrived at, as a foregone conclusion rather than a proposal; that made users panic, as a lack of information added to immediate decision making by superiors tends to immediately equate to conspiracy theorism, which helps nobody (least of all the project leader). The only real issues surrounding the Answers.com deal were in truth things like GFDL compliance of Answers.com mirrors using Wikipedia content, and after Jimbo Wales pointed that out to Answers.com, the issue was fixed expeditiously - demonstrative of the fact that if the whole thing had been decided openly, there would have been no paranoia.

With regard to my standpoint on advertising and sponsorship, I am strongly opposed to Wikipedia, or any other Wikimedia project, carrying advertising of any description; for one, Internet advertisements are intrinsically odious, and secondarily, there are always fears relating to factual resources that advertisements are representative of corporate content insertion into the project, causing undue allegations of Wikipedia's editorial integrity being compromised for commercial reasons that would be best avoided. Sponsorship is, however, another matter, in that the Wikimedia Foundation has costs that are necessary in order to run the project, and ultimately finance will have to come from somewhere in bulk: it strikes me the most sensible manner of gathering such finance is through sponsorship links in industry, and thus it is a necessary activity for a charitable organisation such as Wikimedia to carry out. However, I believe any sponsorship in which the project's endorsement or image will be conferred to the sponsoring organisation (such as the Answers.com Wikipedia Edition) must be discussed thoroughly with project stakeholders, which was not accomplished in the Answers.com deal and I would seek to ensure in the future that this would be carried out.

I hope this answers your question adequately; should you have any further questions, please do drop me a line. Thank you very much, and best regards, --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 03:53, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] question answered

I answered your question on my questions page. --Improv 05:25, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reply on advertising

On my talk page I replied:

I think advertising might be the obvious choice, but it is a bad one.

1. Legal issues - A non-profit organization has many limits on use of advertising in its projects, and a media has certain responsibilities to its advertisers which include legal contracts that meet accepted standards, one of which is a certain content stability which is incompatible with the wikipedia model.
2. Wikipedia is volunteer driven - If you start charging for use (which is what advertising is), this will create heavy ethical problems. Essentially the Foundation will be driving slaves for profit. This could even have unforseen legal ramifications in itself, even if the GFDL is clear on commercial dsitribution. Furthermore, you don't bite the hand that feeds you.
3. NPOV Issues - the major, and most profitable, source of advertising income on the internet is contextual advertising. This potentially breaks the NPOV goal, by allowing businesses, political causes, and other organized efforts to buy advertising to skew the views of readers.
4. Community impact - The use of advertising assumes that users will mostly be passive consumers rather than active producers. This either destroys the entire rationale of active participation behind Wikipedia, or will create negaitive business consecuences as advertisers don't see ROI.

There are of course ways on which advertising can be brought in that mitigates these problems. We can get creative, for example passing some of the advertising revenue to registered editors, but this will really complicate the matters, and create its own set of problems. I think advertising is in general an easy, non-creative, unstrategic and unthoughtful solution.

The key to funding remains, in my opinion, in the institutional development of the Wikipedia Foundation as a non-profit, including the creation of an endowment and the development of relationships with institutional donors. The associated costs, both in monetary and social capital, to a non-profit solution are less than with advertising, and while the revenue potential could be less, I think ultimately the measured growth of the non-profit model supports the goals of the community much better than advertising.--Cerejota 22:03, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MyWikiBiz discussion

Please join the new discussion at: "Paid to edit" dialogue. Loved your comment about the magical teapot in Mercury orbit! -- MyWikiBiz 05:48, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wikEd

Hi, I have seen that you are using the Cacycle editor extension. This program is no longer actively maintained in favor of its much more powerful successor wikEd.

wikEd has all the functionality of the old editor plus: • syntax highlighting • nifty image buttons • more fixing buttons • paste formatted text from Word or web pages • convert the formatted text into wikicode • adjust the font size • and much, much more.

Switching to wikEd is easy, check the detailed installation description on its project homepage. Often it is as simple as changing every occurrence of editor.js into wikEd.js on your User:YourUsername/monobook.js page.

Cacycle 22:16, 8 November 2006 (UTC)