Hallo zusammen,
anbei eine Übersetzung des Artikels von
http://www.nrg.co.il/online/10/ART1/469/513.html
Mein Dank gilt [[he:User:Drork]].
Viele Grüsse,
Manuel Schneider
[[Benutzer:80686]]
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The Yekim* will put things into order
An experiment in the German Wikipedia will test the patience of the bored
internet users: will they stop adding pictures of genitals to the entries
when the result is not immediately uploaded?
* Yeke (pl. Yekim) can mean either a German Jew, or occasionally a German
person in general, and is also slang for a well-organized diligent person
with no sense of humor.
By Dora Kishinevsky, AUG 25th 2006, NRG-Maariv
When Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, called upon students to avoid basing
their academic papers on the free encyclopedia, he was happily quoted by
Wikipedia's rivals. However, Wales did not question the credibility of
Wikipedia as a free encyclopedia, but rather referred to the questionable
method of using any kind of encyclopedia when writing academic papers. Wales
demonstrated the line of defense popular among Wikipedia's supporters: it is
the claim that even if the encyclopedia they care so much about is not
entirely credible, it is at least as credible as the traditional
encyclopedias.
The entry "Wikipedia: credibility" in the Hebrew version of the free
encyclopedia has a decent part about "essential problems in printed books
and Internet encyclopedias with established editorial board" and reminds
that "the world is far from being a case of black and white". It will take
some time until most of the population which was trained to distinguish
between authoritative information and any other non-trustable information,
adapts to this idea. Maybe some more researches such as the one published by
Nature.com, which compared Wikipedia to Britannica and found them to be
equally credible, will convince the wide public.
But even the most enthusiastic Wikipedians will admit that the free system
has its own unique problems. One of them is vandalism, those passers-by who
stop at Wikipedia in order to add lies, jokes, indecent pictures and other
kinds of graffiti. Such an entry is accepted in the Wikipedia's system
automatically like any other entry, and will be displayed to the future
visitors of Wikipedia.
At some stage, one of the veteran and sharp-sighted surfer will come across
this entry and restore it. It might take a few minutes in the case of
popular fire-catching entries, or up to months and even more in the case of
desolated entries.
Wild thorns
For the Wikipedians, vandalism raises no doubts about the idea of surfers'
collective responsibility; rather it is perceived as a marginal phenomenon
which should be handled technically. "Wikipedia aims at writing an
encyclopedia, not handling behavior problems of children with DSL", says to
NRG Mathias Schindler, member of the German extension of Wikimedia
Foundation, the operator of the Wikipedias.
Therefore, the experiment which the organization plans to implement in the
German version of Wikipedia, will try to diminish Wikipedia's appeal to
vandals, thus saving the efforts dedicated to fighting graffiti. During the
experiment new updates will not appear in the main page of the encyclopedic
entry for a while after uploading them. Updating the entry might require an
approval from a veteran Wikipedian.
Is Wikipedia giving up on the anti-authoritative approach? Schindler
believes that the users will not come to this conclusion, but acknowledge
the practical advantages of the change. "The longer you work in Wikipedia,
the more you value the pragmatic approach within the community", he says.
"The common assumption, which we have not yet proven, is that "stable
versions" will reduce people's eagerness to commit sporadic acts of
vandalism. We are here to find out whether this assumption is true."
Another advantage of the planned change - it will enable the release for
editing of major entries that were frozen and blocked due to their
inclination to catch fire. This kind of entry is, for example, "George W.
Bush" in the American Wikipedia. The policy change will open the entire
Wikipedia, including the main page, to updates from surfers, providing they
are willing to wait a while before the update is approved.
The experiment is in stages of development, which will probably take a few
months. If it is successful in the German version, the second in size after
the English-speaking version, it will be copied to Wikipedias all over the
world, including the Hebrew version.
--
Regards
Manuel Schneider
Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
Wikimedia CH - Association for the advancement of free knowledge
www.wikimedia.ch