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List:       wikien-l
Subject:    Re: [WikiEN-l] 18 months
From:       Elisabeth Bauer <elian () djini ! de>
Date:       2006-04-27 3:20:25
Message-ID: 44503879.5050208 () djini ! de
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Stan Shebs schrieb:> Pete Bartlett wrote:> >>Why is de: better than en: is \
a great question. They appear to have>>covered classic encyclopedic topics \
much better than en: and>>their proportion of Exzellente Artikeler is \
double that of our FAs, despite >>standards. How to learn from de would be \
a great thing to discuss.> > In a word: "Ordnung".> > The full range of \
connotation is not easily translated into English,> but the disambig for \
de:'s [[Ordnung]] connects to lots of telling> things, such as en:'s \
[[social structure]] and the like. At the risk> of playing amateur \
sociologist and offending everybody, I'll opine> that while the German \
cultural liking for "Ordnung" sounds to USians> and Brits an awful lot like \
a compulsion to "follow orders", in> the WP context I think it translates \
to a greater sense of duty to> help achieve communal goals. As a german \
Wikipedian, I would dispute this. It is definitely notOrdnung and a sense \
of duty which makes the difference between Englishand German Wikipedia. And \
even if this claim comes up again and again,I'm not even sure that German \
Wikipedia is really better than EnglishWikipedia. They are different and \
have different strengthes. Now...let me collect some differences, I leave \
it to the reader to drawhis own conclusions. On 2nd April 2006 the \
category:Living people on en contained 81.930entries while the number of \
_all_ german articles tagged withPersonendaten (=almost all wikified \
biographies) was 86.830. I wassurprised. When I compare RfA on en and de, I \
count support votes on en:31, 53, 45, 48, 61, 81, 28, 76, 50on de:72 \
(loosing candidate), 6 (loosing candidate), 93, 143 (loosingcandidate!), \
92, 55It seems rather strange to me that the bigger community has \
lessparticipation on such an important topic as is "who should become \
admin".I didn't look at the criteria voters use on en, but they might be \
also abit different. On de candidates who really do a lot of useful \
cleanupwork are regularly turned down if they are not able to show that \
theyare also good authors. Other no-nos are bad behaviour, ignorance \
andespecially ignorance and wrong actions in image right questions. Social \
structure. The german wikipedia has a geographical advantage here because \
it covers a smaller area than the english. I may be a bitexceptional but my \
estimate is that I've met at least 150 wikipedians inperson. Those 150 \
wikipedians know others who know others... there is arather close network \
of personal relationships among german wikipedians(including of course the \
wikipedians from Austria and Switzerland). Thisbecomes especially important \
in case of conflicts: a good editor inwikistress, deleting his userpage and \
quitting? He'll be flooded withemails and maybe a calm discussion with one \
of his friends on the phonewill sort the problem out. Let's look at the \
structure of the IRC channels now. English wikipediahas the general channel \
#wikipedia with an extremely low signal to noise ratio, the a bit more \
quiet #wikipedia-en and - I may be mistaken onthe following: a closed admin \
channel, a bootcamp, mediation, probationand esperanza (whatever this is). \
German wikipedia has: the general channel #wikipedia-de for \
socializing,coordinating general work on the wiki, discussing events on wp, \
callingan admin for quick vandal bans etc. Rarely people who chat too much \
offtopic (=not wikipedia related) receive a friendly kick.Other channels: \
#hist.wikipedia where most historians hang out.#phil.wikipedia - meeting \
channel for the philosophers. #bio.wikipedia - home of the biologists. Some \
people frequent only the topic channelsand not the general one. The biology \
channel was the first topic channelset up and reflects the strength of the \
german wikipedia in biology. TheProjekt:Lebewesen (living beings) is the \
most active project on de andthey fill one whole column on featured \
articles alone (the historiansare catching up). General atmosphere. It's \
difficult to get hard data on this, but thething I hear most often is: \
atmosphere on the English Wikipedia is muchmore relaxed and people are \
friendlier and politer. There are even a fewusers who left the German \
Wikipedia with this reason and work only onen. So it might be true. This \
feeling is often connected to thebehaviour on AfD. Hurtful comments are \
frequent there, combined with amuch lower threshold for AfD: articles which \
are tagged as stub on enare usually proposed for deletion on de (and either \
expanded or deleted). One group of prominent editors sticks to the maxims \
on the page "Becruel" (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sei_grausam \
). This isnot meant literally, but in the sense of Larry Sanger:  To \
attract and retain the participation of experts, there would have  to be \
little patience for those who do not understand or agree with  Wikipedia's \
mission, or even for those pretentious mediocrities who  are not able to \
work with others constructively and recognize when  there are holes in \
their knowledge (collectively, probably the most  disruptive group of all). \
A less tolerant attitude toward disruption  would make the project more \
polite, welcoming, and indeed open to  the vast majority of intelligent, \
well-meaning people on the Internet.                                        \
--Larry Sanger Refering to this "meme" (it's not a guideline), users have - \
undisputedby the community - been blocked for "disturbing good authors \
fromwriting articles". Leads to blocking and banning customs. The \
germanwikipedia has no arbitration committee. A poll to establish one has \
notreached a necessary majority, the community divided about the \
question.Long term bans are decided by a community vote, short term bans \
arepronounced at the individual admin's own discretion. If another \
adminsthinks a ban too harsh, he may shorten or lift it. Wheel wars about \
suchissues are rare, though. Wikipedia namespace. This topic probably comes \
closest to Stan'sassumption of "Ordnung".  Personally, I love the Wikipedia \
namespace inthe English Wikipedia. There is so much to discover, so many \
obscure,interesting or funny pages. However, without counting, I have \
theimpression that en has many many more pages in this namespace than de. \
When I look inhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_style_guidelines \
I finda huge number of good advices, guides for almost everything (hey, \
even awhole page for how to set dashes). The number of german pages is \
muchlower. Pages in the Wikipedia namespace are routinely scrutinized \
ifthey are really necessary and often merged into existing ones \
ordeleted.http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Usability/Übersichtis \
a rather complete overview of all important documentation pages. Last point \
of this long mail: the impressive german projects like theprinted \
wikireaders, the DVD, the writing contest with big media echoetc. In my \
opinion, these are due to several factors:1) the independence of the german \
community from Jimbo and the WikimediaFoundation. The English Wikipedia is \
very much a monarchy, with peoplelooking to Jimbo for advice and guidance. \
The german wikipedia had andhas nobody with Jimbo's authority. People had \
to deal with the fact thatthere is no ultimate appeal. This has \
consequences for the socialstructure (which evolved to what I'd \
characterize as a meritocracy witha few prominent and influential editors) \
but also for the possibility torealize such projects. People had to act on \
their own, so they did it.2) Personal dedication and leadership of \
individual Wikipedians. Mostprojects were team work, but there was usually \
one person who investedmuch more work than the others. The driving force \
behind Wikipediaacademy in June is one editor, Frank. The driving force \
behind manysuccessful initiatives like the writing contest is Achim \
Raschka. Thedriving force behind the Wikipedia exhibition were Frank for \
theorganisation and me for the realization. The WikiReaders were producedby \
individuals. etc.3) For the DVD and WikiPress: the luck to find a good \
partner companywhich is crazy enough to take up the accompanying risks and \
whose bossesand employees "grok" the Wiki way. The first thing Vlado, one \
of theDirectmedians, did after the first CD was finally ready for \
productionwas to expand the article Reggae to double its size - at 3 \
o'clock atnight. Just to relax... So much for a comparison between English \
and German Wikipedia. I noticedthat I wrote much more about de, as I know \
the project much better.Maybe someone else could add more facts about en. \
I'm placing this textalso on \
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Elian/comparison - feel freeto edit and \
add comments there (and of course fix my bad english ;-). \
greetings,elian_______________________________________________WikiEN-l \
mailing listWikiEN-l@Wikipedia.orgTo unsubscribe from this mailing list, \
visit:http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


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