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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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