My 2 cents: Imho the pressure from English Wikipedia on other projects of the movement is very realistic in many kinds of matters, that I've experienced myself too. Other projects are not independent socially or culturally, the rules, practices, expectations and editorial behaviour is strongly related to that on enwp with all its positive *and* negative benefits. Often the negative benefits seem to outweigh the positive, unfortunately.
Aron
On Sun, 15 Mar 2020 at 11:17, Peter Southwood peter.southwood@telkomsa.net wrote:
It is grossly unrealistic to blame English Wikipedia and its editing community for what you appear to consider the shortcomings of other Wikipedias.
En: does not require or pressurise other projects to comply with its
editorial standards, which are those developed by en:WP, and for en:WP. Other projects are free to set and use their own standards for content, within the general WMF terms of use, and generally do. If they choose to emulate en:WP that is their prerogative. If you think that Cebuan Wikipedia does a better job of informing on the subject matter it covers than other projects, and would like to convince other projects that this is a realistic and rational opinion, and that they should follow that example, you are free to produce documentary evidence from experts that this is the case, and present it to the editing communities of those projects for consideration. If Commons are exceeding their remit by refusing to host material that is not used on en:WP, that is not the policy or the fault of the en:WP community who have no authority over Commons. As a general rule, when discussing a topic where there is scope for confusion, there is less likely for confusion to occur when you are sufficiently specific when referring to the ambiguous entities. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen Sent: 15 March 2020 08:37 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Brand Project: Who are we as a movement?
Hoi, By making the point that there is no Wikipedia AND that almost universally but particularly people who buy into English Wikipedia consider Wikipedia English Wikipedia, I expected that this is understood. I then address English Wikipedia specifically because it is its conventions that prevent the sum of all our knowledge to be shared.
Just to make that point specific, Cebuan Wikipedia does a better job informing on the total of the subject matters it covers, it is a project of a father who wants his children to have access to knowledge in their maternal language. From a Wiki point of view he deserves praise and gratitude in stead he gets scorn because it is against English Wikipedia conventions. Furthermore the approach of using data to bring knowledge in other languages is frustrated from within WMF. We could do a better job, a job that will work for any language but it is actively discouraged. The result is that we do NOT share in the sum of all knowledge, not even the knowledge that is available to us. In other words, English Wikipedia conventions prevent us from working towards our stated goal. Thanks, GerardM
On Sun, 15 Mar 2020 at 06:19, Peter Southwood < peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
Gerard, You start off by correctly specifying that Wikipedia is about 300 projects and make several good points about how people confuse Wikipedia with English Wikipedia, how this bias adversely affects various other projects, and then claim that "Wikipedia" is "universally understood to
be
highly toxic". Are you referring to all 300 odd projects, or are you
using
the generic term for the specific project in the way you previously objected to? Something else that is not obvious? Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2020 2:12 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Brand Project: Who are we as a movement?
Hoi, Essie, the work done by Snøhetta centres on the notion of Wikipedia as a unifying brand. The problem is that Wikipedia on its own is 300 projects and that for many, if not most people English Wikipedia *is *Wikipedia.
When we are all to be Wikipedia we will all suffer from the bias that English Wikipedia brings us. The problem with bias is that the negative effects are not felt, considered by those people who self identify with English Wikipedia.
- Research centres on English Wikipedia, when research is done for
projects
other than English Wikipedia, it is hard to get research published
- New functionality is almost always written for the English Wikipedia,
the
notion of the "other languages" is often not considered in the
architecture
- It is assumed that functionality works for projects other than
Wikipedia,
specific functionality is hardly ever developed
- In OTRS, the notions of notability are hard coded for English
notability.
Consequently many pictures have been removed that were explicitly
requested
for use with Wikidata
- there has been no marketing for other Wikimedia products - products.
Many
Wikisource books are available in final form. We do not serve a purpose because we do not seek an audience for them
- even though internationalisation and localisation for MediaWiki is
really
good, we do not consider how we can make use of data in other languages.
It is universally understood that Wikipedia is highly toxic and it may be that for external marketing Wikipedia makes sense. Internally I will welcome a unified message only once English Wikipedia accepts that its consensus is not considered as "Wikipedia" consensus.. Our aim is to
share
in the sum of all knowledge and it is not only in English and it is not what English Wikipedia deems notable. Thanks, GerardM