On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 11:10 AM, Austin Hair <adhair(a)gmail.com> wrote: like the core social policies are often the ones that break down, i.e. if a group of admins decides to sieze control etc. So maybe we should stop arguing about *content* policies (which are obviously different from project to project, though not that different) and focus on a set of core social policies for the projects that can and should be the "norm" on anything the Foundation does. For instance: * civility * consensus * openness -- by default anyone is welcome to participate, unless/until they behave badly this is pretty basic stuff, but it seems that they are sometimes these qualities are in short supply. On a small wiki without of a lot of guidance, it may be that these community principles do not in fact develop "naturally", depending on the people involved. It would be interesting to hear more about case studies from smaller projects. phoebe

On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 10:24 AM, Mohamed Magdy <mohamed.m.k(a)gmail.com> wrote: A good idea for new Wikipedias, maybe. It's only going to be useful if it includes only the important fundamentals, and is not loaded up with all sorts of bureaucratic cruft. The given example, [[meta:Polls are evil]] seems to me to be a particularly poor choice because it's unnecessary and seeks to impose behavior guidelines on a community that might not need them. There's a difference between saying "This is a list of requirements that a WMF project must satisfy" and "Here are a list of principles that en.wikipedia has embraced and wants to push onto other projects". As for sister projects, I think it's a lousy idea. We can't have global policies that affect all projects, because the various projects are run so differently. A newly-created Wikibooks, for instance, would need a different "starter pack" of policies and templates then a new Wikiquote would. Even something such as NPOV, which seems to be such a hallowed standard on Wikipedia is treated surprisingly different on Wikiversity or Wikisource. Even Wikinews uses a different license that isn't completely GFDL-compatible, at least not bidirectionally. If I had to pick some guidelines which truely should be global to all projects and languages, it would be a very short list (and some of these are probably pushing it): 1) The project should allow some form of anonymous content contributions 2) The project should not prevent people from creating new accounts (except from known vandal IPs, of course) 3) The project must follow the privacy policy, and the checkuser policy (where applicable) 4) The project should use an acceptable free content license, must obey the requirements of that license as best as is technically possible, and must attempt to prevent the use of the project for copyright violations (whatever that means, in whatever jurisdiction it means it in) I can't really think of much more then this that is truely "global", and I'm certain even these are going to draw criticisms. My point here being that there aren't any real policies that can be made global, at least not when we consider the needs of all the sister projects. --Andrew Whitworth

On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 10:13 AM, Philippe Beaudette <philippebeaudette(a)gmail.com> wrote: Also probably very harmful. Policy is not something that people should have absent a need. Let policy grow organically based on the needs of the users. You don't need to start people off with complex policy when they don't need it. Polls are evil and other essays exist, and can be referenced. No one starts a Wikipedia in a vacuum, and lessons learned from one will flow to another. But we shouldn't expect all the lessons learned on enwiki to be useful to everyone else. Another way to think of this, Is there some problem that needs to be solved by this? Are smaller wikis currently being hurt by not having enough policy? Judson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion

Hoi, I am really interested to learn how you come to the conclusion that most projects are quite mature. If anything given the statistics that are available to us all I would come to exactly the other conclusion. - For most languages the localisation is still abysmal - Most projects have so little content, new content or changed content that they hardly make a dent in butter - More then half of our projects, probably two thirds are not involved in issues that have to do with the Wikimedia Foundation, without their presence we do not have a clue what we can do for these people these projects. When you talk about freedom, you have to appreciate that freedom exists in relation to others. When communities exist of single individuals or small groups that dominate by pressing their point of view. Several of these "freedoms" effectively prevent many other legitimate people joining these projects because they do not recognise themselves in what should be their project . While I agree with you that freedom is an important ingredient for the well being of projects and communities, many projects do not have the size and the basic set of values that you would recognise as essential for the success of those projects. Thanks, GerardM On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Renata St <renatawiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Renata St <renatawiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: The most important principle for any edition of Wikipedia is to build an encyclopedia. So, it's not freedom. The most important principle for any edition of Wikinews is to build a news agency (or whatever the name is). Again, the most important principle is not freedom. ... And there are some principles around building an encyclopedia, media storage, news agency etc. -- which are not, again, freedom. Again, we have our own principles which Florence quoted (in relation to Wikipedia): Wikipedia is an encyclopedia NPOV; openness; civility; sources necessary / no original work; free licence; ignore all rules (except for the pillar rules). Somewhat different principles are around some other Wikimedia projects. So, any project, while hosted at WMF servers, mustn't to deviate (significantly) from those principles. And there is no such freedom, like, for example, building a repository of hate speech or a repository of copyright infringements. There is no freedom to build a project driven by closed group of persons, too. Etc. etc.

On Sat, Aug 9, 2008 at 5:42 AM, Renata St <renatawiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: There is a set of relatively strict rules around building an encyclopedia, like: - Encyclopedia is ideologically a positivist project. There is no such thing like, for example, an encyclopedia based on post-modernist (whatever that means) principles. - A derivative of the scientific method, the encyclopedic method, has to be applied strictly. There is no space for, let's say, applying methods of some religion in building an encyclopedia. - Encyclopedia is not an original research and, ideally, every claim has to be sourced. - While opinions are welcome if they are based on sources, one encyclopedic article mustn't be biased. - And so on. The most of basic principles described at the Wikipedia in English describe such rules. The point here is that we don't need to be ideologically positivists, we don't need to apply scientific method in our personal lives, etc., but if we are building an encyclopedia, we have to apply those principles on building it. Otherwise, we wouldn't build an encyclopedia, but something else. While our social relations should be free, there are a lot of rules (and rules are not free) which lay behind building an encyclopedia. And it is not possible to build an encyclopedia without following those rules. So, yes, every project should have some level of freedom (mostly related to the social relations), but every project has to apply rules which are about building an encyclopedia (of course, if the project is a Wikipedia; if it is, let's say, a Wikinews, it has to apply rules related to building a news agency). While it is problematic to talk about "freedom" because interpretations of that word are not so consistent, it is dangerous to try to apply the most of semantic space of the word "freedom" to any kind of scientific (and thus, encyclopedic) work. Which means that we are far from from your construction "I think the only global principle that's true to all projects is FREEDOM.". You may define which freedoms all projects have, but strong positions like your is are far from reality, as well as they are dangerous.

Thank god someone was paying attention and noticed Wikinews wasn't GFDL. I was busy compiling a list of people to flame into smoking craters until you started shouting about this. Don't dictate to smaller projects, an 800lb gorilla throwing its weight around is just going to end up being attacked with biplanes fitted with machine guns. Now, where did I put those goggles I stole off Biggles? Brian McNeil -----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Whitworth Sent: 04 August 2008 17:24 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] It is high time we decided upon globalWikimedianprinciples On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 11:15 AM, Ting Chen <Wing.Philopp(a)gmx.de> wrote: thus be Openness is Again, and I really can't stress this enough: These "fundamental rules" are not global! en.wikinews DOES NOT USE THE GFDL. It uses CC-BY instead, which is still free but isn't the same thing. en.wikiversity, en.wikisource, and en.wikiquote have very different meanings for NPOV then en.wikiversity does. Do yourself a favor and check out WV's policy page on the matter: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/WV:NPOV --Andrew Whitworth _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 10:15 AM, Ting Chen <Wing.Philopp(a)gmx.de> wrote: Not all content is GFDL. Wikinews, for instance, cOmmons another example NPOV is not a global principle (doesn't apply to wikiquote or commons) Whatever "global" principles mustbe, they shouldn't be taken from Wikipedia, as each project has different issues and policies