I am divided about your email.
First, I think it should not be posted on Foundation-l. Foundation-l is the list of the Foundation, and should deal with Foundation topics. I believe the values (principles) related to Foundation have already been led.
1) in the mission statement :http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission 2) in the value statement: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Values
Either your email is about Wikipedia itself, and then, it should go to wikipedia-l
or, it is about all projects, in which case it should go to the meta list
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Second, I do agree with you clarity of "pillar" principles is necessary.
Imho, clarity of the pillars of Wikipedia is already achieved. Essentially, it is * Wikipedia is an encyclopedia * NPOV * openness * civility * sources necessary / no original work * free licence * ignore all rules (except for the pillar rules)
If some projects ignore these pillar rules, they should be better informed. That's only a *communication* issue
However, the pillar principles of other projects (eg, Wikinews, Wikibooks etc...) do not seem to be clearly agreed, and sometimes differ between linguistic versions. That's unfortunate, and I agree more discussion is necessary. I remember that's a point I pushed in the past as well (but I fear with not much impact :-))
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Third, I STRONGLY support the fact that all linguistic versions should be left free of deciding the path they use to reach the global goal, as long as they respect the pillar values. Polls (use or not) is not a pillar value; as such, each community should be free to decide to use it or not. At best, what we can help with is to favor sharing of experiences and of best practices.
Ant
Dror K wrote:
Hello, Currently we have very few global principles for the Wikimeian projects, namely the GFDL principle and maybe the NPOV principle. We have many recommendations listed on the Meta, which are not taken seriously in many projects. Wikimedia projects have grown tremendously, and in my opinion, it has become crucial that the list of principles governing all projects be a little more detailed. I suggest a few basic recommendations become obligatory. For example, [[meta:Polls are evil]] should become mandatory as a guideline to all projects. This article is very important as it put into practice the NPOV principle as well as the desicion-by-consensus and the differentiation between facts and views principles. I suppose there are other recommendation of this kind that should become mandatory guidelines. I am not suggesting a constitution or a full rule book. I do suggest to carefully single out several basic principles, since the projects' autonomy is a bit too wide, especially as we want to promote cross-contributions between projects. Dror
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