On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 9:46 PM, Amir E. Aharoni
<amir.aharoni(a)mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
2011/6/17 John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com>om>:
An interesting question was posed on foundation-l
a few minutes ago. (see below)
On English Wikisource, I think there is an unwritten "guideline" that
the people who start a project do have a limited right to "OWN" that
project.
As it is an unwritten rule, I might just be dreaming this.
I would write it up something like:
Wikisource contributors dont enforce our own view of policy unless
someone else is undeniably breaking policy.
Wikisource contributors dont intentionally interfere with each others
projects unless requested, or unless a project is breaking widely held
communal expectations.
Do other Wikisourcerers dream the same dream?
I'm on this list, too :)
;-)
I think Wikisource needs its own discussion about this, precisely
because our project is so different in this regards.
I made a lot of edits in the English Wikisource,
mostly to Gesenius'
Hebrew Grammar and to some Britannica 1911 articles, but i actually
don't know much about its policies, written or unwritten.
It is a fact that i do feel that i "own" Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar in a
way, but i would gladly give this up to have more people join its
proofreading.
Wikisource work can be very lonely.
In Wikisource, unlike in Wikipedia, the text is not
supposed to be controversial, but there can be argument about
presentation, division into pages, headers, usage of links and
templates etc.
This is one of the reasons why we are so different to other projects.
Wikipedia *needs* a wide array of contributors to any given topic,
otherwise that is how most POV problems are eliminated.
The other reason is that any two sources may be for a completely
different audience.
A chapter of a childrens book should have different presentation to an
EB1911 page.
I invested literally months in creating the
infrastructure for this book, but i am nevertheless willing to see
someone come and change it into something better without asking me. In
other words, i wish more people would "interefere" in my work, even if
their vision of it is different from mine. I wouldn't consider this
interference, but help - as long as it's constructive, of course.
constructive participation in your project wouldnt be what I can interference.
interference is where you are unable to continue working on your
project because it has been undermined, or no longer achieves what you
intended for it to achieve.
for example, what would you do it I insisted that your text uses Comic
Sans font.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Sans
The "OWN" principle on Wikipedia is solely about what happens when you
do consider it interference.
On Wikipedia, the OWN principle says that main author must accept
undesirable edits by default, unless the new edits break policy.
On Wikisource, I think the main author *can* reject undesirable edits
by detail, unless the new edits are *required* by policy.
The main author will usually welcome any new edits, and may even
choose to leave the undesirable edits and talk to the newcomer, hoping
to understand the "undesirable" edits a bit better before rejecting
them.
--
John Vandenberg