That's the classic concern, of course, and the reason the rule is written the way it is. When we were just starting out, that was an appropriate concern, and is still an appropriate concern if a given language area is still starting out in virgin terrain.  

But I think the following is reality in most situations now.  "Various povs" already don't collaborate, because whoever was there first already dominates, and has already established what constitutes the neutral pov.  What the argument that James articulates assumes is that by not allowing the second wiki, people will have to collaborate.  The reality, instead, is that by not allowing the second wiki, the original owners of the first wiki get to keep their pov, and the people with a different pov are frozen out entirely. That's the reality. 

 (This, MF-W, is why I was discussing POV the other day. If there were a central mechanism to allow that second group to break in, we could do this. But there isn't, so we can't.)

Steven

Sent from Outlook


From: Langcom <langcom-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org> on behalf of James Heilman <jmh649@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2019 10:00 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee <langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki
 
My concern is having multiple wikis for nearly identical languages allows various povs not to have to collaborate and we are more likely to end up with difficulties like in Croatian.

On Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 07:56 Steven White <koala19890@hotmail.com> wrote:
My point is that these "politically-motivated claims" are already facts on the ground, whether you like it or not. 

Steven White

From: Langcom <langcom-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org> on behalf of MF-Warburg <mfwarburg@googlemail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2019, 8:43 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki



Am Mo., 28. Okt. 2019 um 16:08 Uhr schrieb Steven White <koala19890@hotmail.com>:
Well, as I have said many times, the current rule as written is problematic, and we have no business rejecting Montenegrin at this point. 

No, Langcom has "every business" to do so.
 
The policy, as written, says "The committee does not consider political differences, since the Wikimedia Foundation's goal is to give every single person free, unbiased access to the sum of all human knowledge, rather than information from the viewpoint of individual political communities." You have to read the whole sentence there, not just the first phrase.  By "not consider[ing]" political differences, the committee in fact perpetuates the fact that existing projects may already have "the viewpoint of individual political communities". In these cases, people in minority communities are tremendously disadvantaged in that they have to overcome (possibly) hostile political/cultural viewpoints—and may well not be able to do so. 

Your interpretation is exactly the opposite of what is written. The intention of the policy certainly was not to give every politically differing group their own wiki.

Thank you for your explanation in your other mail of why it is difficult to achieve a true NPOV. However, who has claimed that Langcom should NPOVs on any wiki?

One of the purposes of Langcom is to prevent the multiplication of wikis due to politically motivated claims that one language is actually two.


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