[Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

[Larry Sanger]

On Thu, 3 Oct 2002, Lars Aronsson wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
> > Ah, and who do you think would appoint a "site owner" ???
> > Jimbo ?
>
> Yes, of course.  He owns the system, the name, and the machines.  He
> is very generous and liberal, but he is the owner.

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.

> > Some of us support it is also a dictionary... :-)
>
> If the trademark Wikipedia has some meaning (NPOV, etc.), perhaps
> defined by some charter, that meaning should be the same for all
> languages.  A year ago, Larry Sanger was very clear on the point that
> "Wikipedia is not a dictionary".  So if the French Wikipedia is
> becoming a dictionary, somebody is breaking this rule.  Either the
> French Wikipedia should straight up, or the rule should be revised.
> Since it is the trademark owner's (Jimmy's) interest to make sure the
> trademark keeps its meaning, he should appoint ambassadors who can
> help him maintain his policy in the various languages.

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.

> > >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?
> >
> > I rather support keeping poor contributions, they might grow better
> > in time.
>
> This has not been the conclusion of previous discussions on this list
> regarding the English Wikipedia.  People are now actively deleting
> "stub" articles.

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.

> > small number, the effect of somebody speaking loudly to challenge
> > these "ideals" gets a lot of power, far too much power on others.
> > I don't think a central power "asserting authority" will solve that
> > point : some contributors just don't want to hear anything about
> > what an english might have said on that subject
>
> This is why I think that an appointed ambassador or governor is
> needed, who knows the language and has the authority (from Jimmy) to
> tell people what the policy is, that they can join this list if they
> want to discuss the policy, and if they cannot accept this policy,
> then they must leave and start their own project.  If you eat in a
> restaurant or stay in a hotel, you must behave as the owner tells you.

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