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List:       wikipedia-l
Subject:    [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia + culture differences on different wikis
From:       Anthere <anthere9 () yahoo ! com>
Date:       2005-11-03 5:29:42
Message-ID: dkc786$ajr$1 () sea ! gmane ! org
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Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> 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,
> elia
> n

Nod,

A point I noted about differences is about the hierarchical structure. 
On some small starting projects, and in particular projects which are 
not wikipedia, once one or a couple of editors became sysops, they 
somehow "highjack" the power.

This may result in different situations

Two I have observed in the recent months were

* an administrator blocking pages on who he is himself in disagreement 
with another editor (in his preferred state naturally). And this in all 
good faith. When I asked him how on earth he could do that, his most 
innocent reply was "but... I am the admin, I need to protect the project 
against editors who have it wrong".
And.... well....

* on another project, only admins have the right to vote for admins, and 
if the rule needs to be changed, only admins votes are counted in the 
decision making.

I suppose this comes quite naturally from human nature. Making your way 
between monarchy, democracy... And this is more bound to happen on small 
projects started by editors who have never been in contact with the 
other projects (or very little). What many of us will consider common 
culture... is actually not common culture.
On en, Jimbo can decide who is an arbitrator or who has checkuser 
access... this would not work at all on the french wikipedia. Could it 
be due to the political systems of the countries where the editors 
mostly come from ?

Still, once the small project grows... there is always a moment when 
some glue people go wandering on other projects and bring other types of 
management. So, after a while, it seems to equalize quite well despite 
some differences.

One of the things I always find interesting to observe is "boldness". 
Generally, most english editors make changes without asking beforehand 
in the talk page, while french editors might be more hesitant. 
Generally, french admins happily (or not happily) revert other admins 
actions (such as blocking a person or protecting a page) while on the nl 
wikipedia, it seems that there is a rule to respect other admins acts 
much more (even if the decision is not supported). I was quite surprised 
to see japanese editors telling themselves the worst things... but in 
very kind and polite manners (while a french could just tell another 
person he is an ass).

Levels of bureaucracy are quite funny as well. The number of rules to 
define how the community should or should not work is differing widely.
Are they other wikis than enwiki with the 3R rule ? I would be curious 
to know...

For the understanding of license, I completely agree with Elian that 
this is largely varying.... this is also why I would support that we 
work on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_use_or_reuse_our_content 
(sorry, that is an ad...), or more generally on translation of some of 
our biggest policies.






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