User talk:Ropers/IWNB notice
Hello.
There was a note at the Irish Wikipedian's notice board for a looong time, saying that I wanted to report on my activity in support of Dublin's candidacy for host city of the 2005 Wikimedia meetup. Apologies for the massive delay; the reason there was that I've twice experienced severe disappointments in connection with Wikipedia. The first disappointment coincided with the time that Frankfurt was selected among the 3 final candidates for host city. While I hypothetically could have spent more time working on Dublin's candidacy, I just could not get myself to do any more volunteer work for Wikipedia at that point. I subsequently mostly stayed away from editing and mostly confined myself to the Wikipedia mailing lists. This is where a second disappointment occurred. I have stayed away from Wikipedia pretty much ever since. But there still was that little tinge of bad conscience at the back of my mind, nagging me to get back to you anyway — after all, yers weren't involved in these sorry affairs. So this is the story then, from my perspective:
As you may know, my affinity towards Ireland has to do with having lived and worked in Dublin for some years, but I'm a self-admitted "fake Irishman" currently again resident in Germany. I got word of the meetup being planned pretty early, and I immediately felt that it would be fantastic to bring the convention to Dublin. So I proposed Dublin.
I didn't actually plan on "being in charge" of the Dublin candidacy (which I thought would not be very ideal as I'm not even local), but I felt the sooner Dublin gets its foot into the door the better and so I went ahead and proposed Baile Atha Cliath. I guess I kind of expected actual Dubliners to support the idea and take things from there. I announced things on the Irish Wikipedian's notice board.
For some reason though, it turned out that I got to be one of the more active people in terms of championing Dublin. The irony of me working for Dublin from Germany even after German cities got proposed did not escape me, but anyway, I wanted to go to Dublin and I wanted the meetup to take place there and my ambition to support Frankfurt was pretty much zero.
When the selection of candidate cities was about to get narrowed down, I felt, "Darn, I gotta do something here; there's little other activity". So I logged on to the Internet, grabbed that copy of the 01 phonebook I brought with me when I left Ireland and I started ringing various organizers, etc. on behalf of the Dublin candidature. I think someone suggested the Dublin Convention Bureau and that's how I got in touch with Jean Evans who went out of her way in researching, proposing and presenting venues, etc. for the meetup. I posted all the info/emails on the appropriate page.
By merit of that activity, the Dublin candidacy did indeed pass the next hurdle and was one of the three finalists. That's when I let things slip a bit, and I kind of still thought others would take things from there. However, seeing how I'd already done a couple of things at that point, some of yers might possibly have thought that I was kind of "in charge" of the Dublin candidature. So there probably was some time wasted at that point, and insofar as I could have been more active (or could have made it more clear that others maybe should pick up the baton), as far as my part in the missed opportunity at that point goes I would like to apologise. I'm sorry I wasn't of more help.
What was extremely sad, though, is that just when I realized that I maybe ought to get off my behind and pick up the reins (which some of you probably expected me to do), that's when the said first incident took place. I was hurt at that point and did pretty much nothing else -- while I did eventually receive an apology over the first incident, I never really got around to sorting it out in full, and I still saw an unexplained ambiguously threatening-sounding email much later, which may or may not have been directed towards me.
Probably the reasons for Frankfurt winning had nothing to do with all of this -- there does appear to be/have been more people working for Frankfurt. It's just that I would have felt much better if there hadn't been the aforedescribed suspected misunderstandings and the said aggravation. Sadly, just when I felt I could "return from the cold", explain the above and get back to proper editing, that's when the second incident happened.
Jean suggested that Dublin could again be proposed for the next Wikipedia meetup (assuming there is one). If so then she would be happy to be involved again. I'm posting the final emails we exchanged:
There you go. Do whatever you like. Go rooting for Dublin next time round. Or don't. I guess though I won't be involved -- and that's got nothing to do with you, the good craic Irish Wikipedians. I've got no issues with decent, fine, upstanding Wikipedians. What I despise is those who introduce systemic bias at the highest level and those who endorse such bias, in short: all those who skew the table and prevent participants from all having equal rights to speak, write and contribute at any level, in any medium, without fear, distress or discomfort .
"Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party — though they are quite numerous — is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for those who think different. The essence of political freedom depends not on the fanatics of 'justice', but rather on all the invigorating, beneficial, and detergent effects of dissenters. If 'freedom' becomes 'privilege', the workings of political freedom are broken." —Rosa Luxemburg
Ropers 19:58, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
PS: Please don't try to contact me via my Talk page -- it's unlikely I'll be reading it any time soon. If you wish to contact me, you can email me at ropers at ropersonline d0+ com.
There are some bits missing to this story that I (Kwekubo) would like to try and fill. I was quite taken too with the idea of Dublin acting as host city, but I didn't show anything more than a passive interest in actuality until Dublin was narrowed down to being one of the three finalist cities. I sent emails to all the major bodies that I could think of which could possibly be connected to the affair - the major universities, the county council, the RDS, the Irish Free Software Organisation, some Irish-language bodies - with about a week to go, but for some reason I only ever recieved a reply from the IFSO. I was online on #wikipedia whilst the decision of city was being made and tried to push Dublin's prospects, but it would seem that with such little real confirmed support compared to other groups such as Frankfurt it would have been hard to pick Dublin. I suppose the lesson learned for next time would be to act early if we want the bid to be taken seriously.
Finally, a word to Ropers - thanks for putting in the effort to propose Dublin in the first place. For the record, here's the Dublin bid's page on Meta. --Gabriel Beecham/Kwekubo 23:32, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
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