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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, \
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