Kurt Jansson wrote: I think this is an important question, and my best suggestion is to appoint one or two ambassadors for each language, who can act as site owners towards the other users and as translators/reporters to Bomis and developers. Therefore I welcome the newly set up embassies. Maintaining the neutral point of view and avoiding copyright violations should be the easiest part of the job. But how strict are the non-English Wikipedias on issues such as "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" (not a gazetteer, not a product catalog, not a consumer report, etc.)? Is it or will there be a problem to assert authority to weed out poor contributions in the small and slow-growing non-English Wikipedias? -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxköping, Sweden tel +46-70-7891609 http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/

I can try and help: what's the page? BTW, when is fr: switching to phase III? Is there anything I can do to help with that too? (I'm fluent in french but I've hardly used it on the net, so I'm missing great chunks of technical lingo. but I can pick up quickly)

Wikipedia habitus. I don't know if habitus is a common word in English, maybe "habit" would also fit in here? It wasn't meant seriously. Maybe I should have written "brainwashed" to make that clearer :-) maybe it I don't know, but I know that it's possible to use it in German with tongue-in-cheek. But I'll try to remember not to use it again in English. It's the same in the German Wp, and I think that's okay. others. Yes, that's the problem. The first month of a new Wikipedia are the most vulnerable, I guess. Kurt

On Thu, 3 Oct 2002, Lars Aronsson wrote: Not that I speak for Jimbo of course, but this might be misleading, Lars. Jimmy has *always* been responsive to community concerns--he doesn't just do things without consulting anybody. (Except, of course, *starting* the project of an open content encyclopedia--and I trust we can all be glad that he did that without consulting anybody.) What you're saying here (in several places in your post) makes it sound as if Jimmy holds all the cards, and he makes all the decisions, and if you don't like it, you're going to have to go to the trouble of starting a competing open content project. But this is just completely false. In one very attenuated sense, sure, he's *ultimately* responsible for the decisions about the projects, but that's *only* insofar as the projects happen to reside on his servers. As we all know (you were writing as if this weren't the case), the Wikipedia and Nupedia projects and their policies (or lack thereof!) now take almost all of their cues from rank and file participants. Again, this is misleading on a number of points. First of all, what Wikipedia stands for has **NOTHING** to do with the fact (if it is a fact--I honestly don't know) that "Wikipedia" is a commercial trademark. By suggesting that, Lars, you are suggesting that it is somehow quite important that Wikipedia policies, as promulgated so far, are bound up with "Wikipedia" being a trademark. But why think that? I'm sorry, but that just sounds silly. Second, my declaring "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" one year ago obviously is not what would make that (still) Wikipedia policy, if indeed it is (still) Wikipedia policy. Your implication, that policy declarations from Larry are policy by fiat, is precisely the sort of nasty misleading implication I felt throughout my tenure, and it's something I should have thought we had gotten over long ago. Third, you say that if someone on the French Wikipedia is breaking the "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" rule, they should be stopped or the rule changed; but this implies that *all* rules as formulated on the English Wikipedia are rules for all the rest. This isn't my understanding at all--at least, if nothing has changed since we last visited this issue, the non-English Wikipedias enjoy (and in my opinion *should* enjoy) an extreme amount of autonomy. Jimbo has declared that all wikipedias should share a few very basic policies in common. In fact, the only two that spring to mind immediately are the nonbias policy and the policy that we're working on an encyclopedia. The line between encyclopedia and dictionary is admittedly vague. I personally would insist that we risk producing something of poor quality and little use if we tolerate many stubs that are of dictionary definition length (not to say that we should just delete them outright--we *should* either expand or simply discourage them before they get written in the first place). This is my opinion, and I'll argue for it strenuously, but under no circumstances would I want to say that it should *necessarily* be the policy for the English Wikipedia, let alone all Wikipedias. *Whether* it is accepted as policy rests entirely with community consensus. Not fiat. Fourth, we have a long and respectable tradition of letting articles go to hell on Wikipedia, as far as policy is concerned, and when people want to clean them up so that they're in accordance with policy, that's grand. So it hardly follows from the fact that one or two people are writing a bunch of dictionary definitions on the French Wikipedia that the policy-- even the French policy, is there is one--on this point should be changed. Again, Lars, you misleadingly imply something that makes people look a lot worse than they really are. Please get it right. People are now actively deleting articles that are so completely useless that they don't deserve to be called "stub" articles. If I write an article called "Grant's Tomb" and the content is "The place where Grant is buried," there's nothing at all seriously or obviously wrong with removing that article, or its ilk. This is ridiculous, for reasons above stated. I'm certain that Jimbo would agree with that assessment, too. The authority for virtually all decisions comes from the community, Lars, and those of us in the community who like it that way would appreciate it if you would not imply otherwise. Larry

Hi Larry, I don't know why, but your words sound hard to me, and they sounded hard last year when you backed them up by being the official editor. I might have misunderstood all of this, and I could blame it all on the fact that English is not my native language, but the factual consequence is that I went away and started my own project because of this. I simply cannot see how much energy I would have had to spend trying to get to terms with you, energy that I now saved by staying out of your way. Still I have the deepest respect and gratitude for your starting Wikipedia, the first successful project to create a free encyclopedia. I am very careful to point this out in my paper that I'm presenting in Karlovy Vary next month, http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/elpub02/ http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/elpub02/abstracts/G_04.htm We agree completely that wiki is very useful. We disagree on the need for a license and strict policy. Wikipedia has GFDL and takes *pride* in being *only* an encyclopedia and *not* being a dictionary, a joke book and what not. Susning.nu has no license policy, and very few ask for it. And operating in the much smaller Swedish language environment (there is no about.com in Swedish, and no amazon.com or imdb.com full of book and film reviews), Susning.nu is *proud* to be *both* an encyclopedia, a dictionary, a hacker jargon dictionary, a consumer's guide to various products and services, a link guide, and pretty much anything that the users make it to be. There never was any discussion of what is suitable and what is not. The most recent addition is a number of terms from slang people use only when they are drunk, not very far from Jimmy's joke book. You recently expressed a view something along the lines that a real encyclopedia cannot be built entirely with amateurs, but also needs the input from serious scholars (sorry if I'm quouting this wrong). Your conclusion is that these people must be found and encouraged to join the Wikipedia project. I think that I agree with your assessment but my conclusion is different: Susning.nu continues to work with the people who wants to use it for fun, and might never become a fully functional encyclopedia. All these differences should be perfectly OK: Two different projects with different goals and methods. Still, the articles on Susning.nu are far better than those on the Swedish Wikipedia. This is a problem for the Swedish Wikipedia, and it illustrates a potential similar problem for any non-English Wikipedia: Should policy be relaxed (down to the Susning.nu level) in order to include more uses, and more users? Or should the policy be kept strict and centralized at the risk of excluding contents, uses, and users? Overly strict policy is what Nupedia suffered from. A relaxation of the policy for, say, the Bulgarian Wikipedia might mislead users to believe that the same is OK in the English or Russian Wikipedia. This could erode the value of the Wikipedia brand. If policy is relaxed for one language, the name Wikipedia might no longer be globally associated with quality and seriousity. I think this illustrates that policy issues can be as important as GFDL licensing to assure compatibility between projects. As far as I can see, Enciclopedia Libre is still fully compatible with Wikipedia, while Susning.nu probably is not. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxköping, Sweden tel +46-70-7891609 http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/

Lars Aronsson wrote: This all depends on what importance, rights and responsibilities you attach to the concept of ownership. There are intangible aspects of the project which are collectively owned. In the short run I don't see ownership as a problem, and I'm not in a hurry to see a debate on the fine points of trademark law. I'm willing to accept the presumption that Jimmy is acting in good faith, and that he will give up personal ownership if he is confident about where the project will head afterwards. There's no need to approach the subject with expectations of legal controversy. If the French Wikipedia feels that it is appropriate to include being a dictionary that's their business. I don't see the need for them to be bound by one of Larry's rules from a year ago when thay had no opportunity to participate in its development. Demanding that they "straighten up" would be unnecessarily dictatorial. Trademarks are irrelevant to this point. Appointing ambasadors to maintain policy would symbolize everything that most of us love to hate about the United States; it could inspire the Spanish "Eciclopedia Libre" to become multilingual. Frankly, (and speaking as an unrepentant leftist) from what I've seen of Jimmy's posts on this list, he has not exhibited symptoms of being such an autocrat. Eclecticology

Ray Saintonge wrote: I agree with this, to an extent. Wikipedia is not a dictionary is simply a statement rejecting as a priority some types of entries that are just simple explanations of word usage. This is a relatively minor point in the grand scheme of things, and one that is open to a consensus of the people actually working on the project. But "Wikipedia is not a joke book" is not the sort of policy that's open to consensus change. The judgment that we don't ban people for working towards NPOV (thus preserving some political slant that we prefer) is not the sort of policy that's open to consensus change. If I went on vacation for two weeks and came back to find that the developers, with full consensus on the part of contributors, had decided that Wikipedia would henceforth be pro-atheist, pro-libertarian, pro-reason, and pro-technology _as a matter of policy_, and started banning people for political disagreements, then I'd forcefully start taking away sysop privileges and unbanning people, consensus be damned. That's *even though* I am personally pro-atheist, pro-libertarian, pro-reason, and pro-technology. The reason is that openness and neutrality and that wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a joke book are all fundamental parameters for the project, in a way that decisions about the exact cutoff between an encyclopedia and a dictionary are not fundamental at all. The article that I would write, on another website, as a polemic, about, let's say, Ed Poor's religion, or Eclectiology's unrepentant leftism, would be critical and one-sided, let's suppose. And they might, on another website, criticise my atheism or libertarianism. But here on wikipedia, we leave all that at the door, and we appreciate that our differences do not stand in the way of writing an _encyclopedia_. --Jimbo

Ray Saintonge wrote: That's right. And the astonishing near-miracle to me, a veteran of too-many years on Usenet and mailing lists, is that even people of very different ideas can agree on an encyclopedic presentation. In the early days of wikipedia, I was skeptical. --Jimbo

Anthere wrote: I might be confused, but I thought wikipedia-l was a global Wikipedia list, not just a list for the English Wikipedia. I'm a member of wikipedia-l, intlwiki-l, wikitech-l and the German list. I don't speak French. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxköping, Sweden tel +46-70-7891609 http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/

--- Anthere <anthere5(a)yahoo.com> wrote: I completely agree. The mailing lists were simply added as we found a need for them. When we make www.wikipedia.org the main site for all of the projects, I think this would be a good time to reorganize the mailing lists. Stephen G. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More http://faith.yahoo.com

Lars Aronsson wrote: Amazing that this has appeared in the midst of a thread where we decide how to woo back la enciclopedia libre. They will never come back to such a situation. If they fear that Jimmy will betray the project, then you tell them to put the material on their own server. Well, that is just what they have done. We're trying to convince them that Jimmy will *not* betray the project; you're telling them to go to hell. And that is why EL has built its own hotel. If we want EL back, then we must build a hotel that they own just as much as any of the rest of us: a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organisation, The Wikipedia Foundation, which happens to use servers and Net access donated by Bomis, Inc. -- Toby

Anthere wrote: These connotations of "indoctrination" depend on the context. I would object if such a sentence were used in and article, but not on the mailing list where it is clearly informal and reflects a developed set of habits rather than something that has been imposed by higher powers. Ambasadors as site owners seems like a contradiction in terms. Talking about directors of a non-profit organization would make more sense. With a non-profit corporation, the corporation would become the owner rather than any individual. One criterion should be that no one country should have 50% or more of the directors. This may conflict with a frequent requirement that a majority of directors be from within the incorporating jurisdiction, but this varies considerably (at least across North America). If this becomes a problem a little jurisdiction shopping would be in order. The first set of directors might very well be arbitrary, but one of its duties would be to develop a set of rules acceptable by Wikipedians for the naming of future directors. I believe that in addition to directors, the group should also have a set of Trustees. They would not normally have corporate decision making powers, but would be in a position to step in to ensure survival of the project if the directors completely screw up. Their right to step in would need to be strictly defined. You're right! Defining neutrality will always be a problem. Don't think that the English Wikipedia is exempt just because it's bigger. People with prejudices never see them as prejudices. As for copyright, protecting the GFDL nature of Wikipedia copyrights is a far greater challenge than catching copyright violations by contributors. I would consider three of these four to be secondary issues where different languages could easily develop their own guidelines. Product catalog is a different matter because it relates to issues of advertising and consumerism Yes. Who makes the judgement that something is a "poor" contributions? Asserting authority would certainly be worse than anything we have now. The ones complaining so much about the poor articles should simply improve them themselves. If they feel that there are so many that they don't have enough time to improve them, that's their problem for being such perfectionists. Maybe they should just lighten up. Most political revolutions, coups-d'état, etc. are the work of dedicated minorities, without regard to where they come from on the political spectrum. Naturally, they want to diminish the influence of those with opposing points of view. The large majority of people is not confrontational, and they prefer the path of least resistance. The majority will concede issues where they disagree for the simple purpose of avoiding a fight. This can be a problem for a small group that has not enough strong-willed people with opposing views. I think each language group will need to deal with these problems separately, and, apart from the need to adhere to a very limited number of core principles, each may end up very different. Eclecticology

This is a great question! Kurt Jansson wrote: Let's say that we found out that sysops on the German wikipedia were banning people for minor disagreements. Let's say, for example, that a group of German libertarians (I use this example because my political sympathies lie in this direction) started banning Marxists and socialists. And they did so, not because of vandalism, but in an effort to maintain a pro-libertarian and pro-capitalist slant to various important articles. Then, I would remove their sysop privileges for abuse. (Only after considerable discussion, of course, and efforts to get them to straighten up.) But if that same group had legal, technical, and practical control over the server, I could do nothing. I think that's right. --Jimbo

Anybody interested in this subject should take a look at http://makeashorterlink.com/?F15463EF1 and the pages that are linked from there. It's a google translation, so I didn't understand everything, but maybe you can ;-) BTW, google can also translate English to Spanish, so if want to make a comment you can also include a bad translation. Kurt