This is my reply to Zoltan. Consider it public domain, if you want to re-use any of my explanations elsewhere.
Regards,
Erik
--- Weitergeleitete Nachricht / Forwarded Message --- Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 16:10:03 +0100 (MET) From: Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de To: "zoltan simon" zasimon@hotmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Proposed changes (Trojan War)
Hello Zoltan,
we are well aware of the criticisms that can be brought against an attempt such as ours. Quite a while ago some of us have written this page:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AOur_Replies_to_Our_Critics
Briefly, we try to avoid bias and sabotage by several means:
- The "Neutral point of view" policy. If someone adds new information to
an article, it should be attributed. Unattributed information that is considered controversial is either attributed or deleted.
- The "Recent changes" list. This page displays edits that have recently
been made to Wikipedia, and many contributors review it when they have time. It not only allows users to view the changes, it also makes it possible, by clicking on the "diff" link, to show the differences between a new page and its previous version. If someone edits a page and inserts four letter insults all over the place, we recognize this as vandalism and correct it. If a vandal persists, he is banned from the Wikipedia.
- The personal watch lists. Users who work on articles usually add these
articles to their individual watch lists. If they view this watch list, they see a list of all changes that have been recently made to these specific articles. So a user who has worked on an article that was vandalized or changed in a bad way and who hasn't noticed that on the Recent Changes page can still see it weeks later in his Watch List and fix anything that hasn't been fixed yet. This works rather well.
- The discussion pages. Each article has a "Talk" page attached to it,
which makes it possible for collaborators to work out conflicts, ask questions and agree on solutions.
There's more, and it all works amazingly well. Generally speaking, articles that are viewed a lot are edited a lot and are typically of higher quality, more balanced, less "crankish" etc. Articles on fringe or exotic subjects that few people care about can be of lower quality or less balanced. Some of us are thinking about implementing an additional certification scheme to detect high quality articles. Currently, some of our best articles are collected on a special page:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ABrilliant_prose
Sorry for being a bit verbose in this explanation, but the Wikipedia concept is so different from what people are used to that it takes a while to explain why it works ;-)
As for incorporating your material, feel free to send me anything you have, but note that I'm currently quite busy with various stuff (including some Wikipedia articles I'm working on, such as Library of Alexandria and Hypatia of Alexandria), so it may take some time for me to get to evaluating them, especially if they are long. I can read DOC files, but only in English and German.
But if the only reason you don't want to work on Wikipedia is that you're scared you might do something wrong, that's not a very good reason :-) We have a policy that's called "Be bold in updating pages". If people don't like what you do, they will tell you how it can be improved, or do it themselves. Our "Neutral point of view" policy makes it possible for many different views on a subject to coexist, if they are all attributed properly and without bias.
I have noticed myself that much of the research about the ancient world and the Middle Ages is flawed. What I'm missing the most is critical examination of sources -- if a text by a Catholic monk says that evil Jews massacred good Christians, many historians like to take it at face value, without any critical perception whatsoever. In Germany we have Karl-Heinz Deschner, who has done excellent work with his "Criminal History of Christianity", and in the 19th century, there were many critical historians, but nowadays more relativistic interpretations tend to prevail.
Few people have any realistic idea of the greatness of the ancient world in comparison to what followed it -- ancient Rome at its peak was on a technological level comparable in most ways to 19th century Europe. I'm very interested in developments surrounding the Antikythera device and other findings of technologically advanced ancient artififacts. The most emotionally impressive way to view the cultural difference is, in my opinion, to look at the development of art from Pompeii and the Fayum portraits to the primitive medieval paintings that lacked any sense of perspective or beauty and again to the art of the Renaissance, very similar to the ancient art.
We have a Hungarian Wikipedia, but it doesn't have any contributors (other foreign language Wikipedias are quite active: the German one has 7,000 articles, and the Esperanto Wikipedia has 4,000 -- the English Wikipedia has 90,000). Note that the English Wikipedia is not even 2 years old, and some of the non-English ones are much younger!
If you are interested in helping to build a Hungarian Wikipedia from the ground up, there's a mailing list here: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intlwiki-L where interested people from the international Wikipedias coordinate their development.
Please note that Wikipedia does not have a real power hierarchy, so I can't speak for the entire project. There are no special "editors", although we do have sysops who can delete pages and ban users, but they have to follow strict rules in doing so. For the most part, Wikipedia is a democratic project where everyone can participate.
Regards,
Erik
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