[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       wikipedia-l
Subject:    [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia + culture differences on different wikis
From:       Elisabeth Bauer <elian () djini ! de>
Date:       2005-11-02 16:39:04
Message-ID: 4368EBA8.7040806 () djini ! de
[Download RAW message or body]

Bjarte Sørensen wrote:

> On this note, I would also like to ask a broader question to the
> community: How different do you think are the cultures of the
> different languages' wikipedias? In particular I'm interested in
> inclusivist/deletionist matters, dispute resolution, administrator
> "powers" and I suppose general feeling of welcome. 

I observed that the debates in many wikis are quite similar. You'll find 
the repeating deletionist/inclusionist debate in en, de, fr... as well 
as you find - justified and unjustified - complaints about censorship 
and abuse of admin powers. The complaint from this spanish user was 
posted on de as well, someone gave a summary in german which made 
everyone instantly loose interest - just because all this sounded so 
familiar to the standard complaint of our trouble makers (all the key 
words included).

Dispute resolution is a tricky point because when a wiki is still small, 
there's usually no need for a dispute resolution process. This only 
becomes necessary when it reaches a certain level. Then people often 
look at other wikis - they may copy the concept of the english 
arbitration committee, or develop an anarchical community based dispute 
resolution process like the german wikipedia.

Same for the general feeling of welcome: In a small wiki, users are glad 
about almost any new contributor. In a big wiki like german wp, many 
users feel that we should be more selective about who is welcome or not 
(This is for example reflected in the description on the german main 
page. It still says "is an encyclopedia to which everyone can contribute 
with his knowledge" but it continues with "good authors are always 
welcome").

It would be interesting to know how many wikis share the custom of 
individually welcoming new users. I've seen it on almost any wiki I 
visited.

> And, not
> specifically with Spanish Wikipedia in mind, how well do we monitor
> aberrance from our common goal of wikilove and NPOV on the more
> "peripheral" wikipedias?

We don't monitor at all. The whole system is based on trust and a naive 
believe that the core values of wikimedia spread automagically to new 
wikis set up. ehm. The strange thing is, this mostly works quite well 
(as far as I can tell).
I found everyone I've talked to from other communities familiar with the 
concept of NPOV. There was always a notion to respect copyright and 
delete copyright violations etc.pp.

However, based on the many wrong answers I've seen even from experienced 
german wikipedians, I'm unsure about how many misinterpretations of GFDL 
and free licenses are floating around in the wiki world (Our request for 
permission email templates for example contained horrible nonsense about 
the requirements of the GFDL for more than a year...).

It would be an interesting project to go through all the wikis and check 
for such things but probably nobody has the time to do this - and the 
community seems to consider it more important to found new wikis and new 
projects than to care that all is working well in the existing ones.

greetings,
elian
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]