[Wikipedia-l] Translating the Five pillars (Was: Important Issue to Hebrew Wikipedia and AdminAbuse)

2007/2/2, Berto 'd Sera <albertoserra(a)ukr.net>et>: Should all Wikipedias translate the pillars? Why? Would it necessarily work, if they did? Most of the projects probably have lots to learn from enwiki, since it is the oldest project and with all its flaws still somehow works despite its size. Most projects have at one stage or another imported policy pages and similar from enwiki, or from another wiki that took it from enwiki. Today however, whatever rules that should be imposed on all projects should come from the WMF, not English Wikipedia. The five pillars [1] is, to my knowledge, a compilation of basic policy created on English Wikipedia. There are other enwiki policy compilations as well, but it seems the pillars is the one most commonly referred to. I once a board member ,what policy a Wikipedia has to follow, and got the answer that probably these are only three: that the content should be free (GFDL), encyclopaedic and neutral. You can compare the pillars with for instance the foundation issues page at meta [2] which, interestingly, mentions the "wiki process" - a badly defined concept that may or may not be identical to the basic consensus based process of a wiki [3] and that is not mentioned in the Pillars. The project that I have been most active at has a compilation of "basic principles" [4] very similar to the pillars with one exception. This wiki never imported or reinvented "Ignore all rules", which is the fifth of the enwiki pillars. I don't think there is anything that tries to make them, or tells them they should, import that concept from English Wikipedia. I personally believe they might gain from doing so, but that is another issue - and a process of much larger scope, and much more painful, than simply translating a page. Personally I believe the concensus process a.k.a. wiki process is equally important as Ignore all rules, and deserves a central place in whatever policy compilation you have. Others might disagree, of course. /habj [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Foundation_issues [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Consensus [4] http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Grundprinciperna