[Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

[Lars Aronsson]

Hi Larry,

> Not that I speak for Jimbo of course, but this might be misleading, Lars.
> [...] Again, this is misleading on a number of points.  First of
> [...] Again, Lars, you misleadingly imply something that makes
> [...] This is ridiculous, for reasons above stated.  I'm certain

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 at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxköping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/