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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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