First, I dispute the notion that the German Wikipedia is "better" than
the English one in terms of overall quality. Featured article count on
de: reflects, to a large degree, a much stronger drive on de: to that
particular process (which was on de: first - I copied it to en: from
there) from various pages. en: is also more inclusive, meaning many
more articles on obscure subjects which will never get featured. de:
tends towards agglomeration where en: maintains separate articles.
This all obviously affects the FA ratio in de's favor.
There's no doubt that de: has been very innovative when it comes to
quality drives and similar measures; however, en: has adopted most of
these and invented some new variants. There are some good ideas which
we should take from de: (and the other way around -- it was the
redesign of the en: Main Page that led many others to redesign theirs
in a similar fashion, including de:), but there are also ideas which I
definitely do not want to see copied because of some fallacious notion
of "de: is better than en:".
I want to comment on three specific points Elian made:
German wikipedia has: the general channel
#wikipedia-de for socializing,
coordinating general work on the wiki, discussing events on wp, calling
an admin for quick vandal bans etc. Rarely people who chat too much off
topic (=not wikipedia related) receive a friendly kick.
Other channels: #hist.wikipedia where most historians hang out.
#phil.wikipedia - meeting channel for the philosophers. #bio.wikipedia -
home of the biologists.
This is an excellent idea which should be copied in all languages. Right now.
One group of prominent editors sticks to the maxims on
the page "Be
cruel" (
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sei_grausam ).
Bad meme; die, die, die. If that gets copied to en:, I will do
whatever I can to get rid of it. It is the opposite of WikiLove and
promotes an atmosphere of suspicion -- whatever the page text says,
the title invites usage to justify any violation of policy. There's
a reason for all that wiki culture of "Assume good faith", "Don't bite
the newbies", etc. No reason to throw it out the window just yet.
We have "Be bold" as a way to add flexibility, and "Don't disrupt"
as
a general policy to deal with troublemakers. There's no need for "Be
cruel".
The german wikipedia has no arbitration committee. A
poll to establish
one has not reached a necessary majority, the community divided about the
question.
As a consequence, there is very little flexibility in dealing with
problem users, and when you have one, you often end up with an
indefinite block. My observation is that you have more sock puppetry
and more extreme aggression as a result. It's a simple fact that bad
users can and will evade blocks, so indefinite blocks against the
worst ones often accomplish very little indeed. And those who respect
blocks may be amenable to reason, so they should not be indef blocked
either.
The flexibility of admins you mention may have led de: to become the
leader in long term page protections, with some articles being
protected as stubs for almost a year. At least that was the situation
when I last ran a query on page protections:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Longest_page_protections%2C_September_2005
de: is, I think, a good example of the consequences some extreme
proposals in the "wheel warring" thread would have. Having an admin
class that becomes increasingly reluctant to question itself can be
just as problematic as one which is constantly flighting over what to
do.
I welcome this discussion. We need to understand better what
consequences certain decisions had in the histories of different
Wikipedias. Like Carl Sagan touted Venus and Mars as examples of
climate developments that could affect Earth, Wikipedias in other
languages have a lot to teach us.
Erik