The global mission, the image filter and the "German question"
Jan Eissfeldt is a German Wikimedian, holding down the position of administrator on the German Wikipedia and administrator and bureaucrat on the cross-community Outreach wiki. Here, he writes about the nature of the German Wikimedian community, and what lessons might be learned from its response to the recent proposals for an opt-in image filter.
The views expressed are those of the author only. Responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section. The Signpost welcomes proposals for op-eds. If you have one in mind, please leave a message at the opinion desk.
Something is different on Meta these days. Substantial parts of the German community, usually focused on itself and the three German language Wikimedia chapters, are going up the walls. Why is that?
Well, to keep an extremely long story very simple: they really hate the image filter and therefore the German projects are the only corner in the Wikimedia universe (it seems to me) heavily resisting this feature following the recent global referendum (see previous Signpost coverage).
According to stats.wikimedia.org, approximately 35% of the core community of the German Wikipedia (357 users) voted to totally reject the idea of the proposed image filter as they interpreted it in a local poll that publicly passed with 86% support. Traditionally, the community sorts out differences in binding crucial votes and nearly half of the core community took part in this one. Additionally, I attended their annual community conference this month and can tell you: many of those who did not participate in the poll aren't happy either. As a result, the Terms of use update is mainly under fire there right now for this reason.