*Hello,*
*Please take a moment to read and review the updated SM calendar which has
a message which we plan to post today on behalf of Wikimedia Russia
regarding the Crimean crisis and Wikipedia editors. *
*Thanks! *
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Social_media/Calendar#March_25
*f/g:
The following post is from Wikimedia Russia.
Most people know what the Crimea crisis is and everybody has their own
opinion about who's right and who's wrong. Unfortunately, such situations
happen, but what should we, editors of Wikipedia (and especially Russian
Wikipedia), do?
It's important to state the following principles to understand this
question better:
1. Russian Wikipedia is Wikipedia in the Russian language, not Wikipedia of
the Russian Federation. We have active editors and sysops not only from
Russia, but also from Europe, Asia and America. Due to this fact we have
different opinions that help us produce neutral point of views.
2. Wikipedia isn't looking for absolute truth; it should represent "fairly,
proportionately, and, as far as possible, without bias, all of the
significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic."
That means that we are not stating, for example, that Crimean referendum
was legitimate or not, we provide different points of views: what Ukrainian
view is, what Russian view is, what other countries do and think, according
to reliable sources.
3. Wikipedia describes disputes but doesn't engage in them. We want to
state once more, that we are not looking for absolute truth and we won't
agree with personal attacks from one group of editors to another group of
editors: all of them have equal rights.
4. We don't encourage mass edits in such a hot topic without prior
discussion with other editors: that's why a lot of articles of this
category are protected from editing - propose your adjustments at the talk
page and discuss them with other editors, that's the most constructive and
effective way of editing.
5. We admit that such articles require additional attention and that's why
our community is discussing nominations for the new mediators of this
topic. Nevertheless, even now editors and sysops invest much time and
effort to keep Wikipedia neutral and true.
6. Wikipedia already had some similar situations. Our previous experiences
prove that "discuss, then edit" is the best practice. For example, the
similar disputes are connected with Nagorno-Karabakh, Kosovo, etc.
We kindly ask editors to stay calm, show respect to other editors and
discuss all edits based on reliable sources. Wikipedia has rules and
policies, we hope that our editors and readers are able to cope with this
accordingly.
--
Carlos Monterrey
Communications Associate
Wikimedia Foundation
+1.415.839.6885 ext 6881
www.wikimediafoundation.org
blog.wikimedia.org