Summary: my arguments are -basic rules should be established *before* the project should start -and it means a enough number of people who are experienced at the aim of project and/or our policies and ideals, like NPOV, but with some modifications and adoptations, if necessary -it is strongly recommanded the newly created community has a good preperation, specially if they had a waiting time before their reqeust would be approved.
On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 13:34:05 -0800, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
If you mean by COPYING rules, just going to the english version and copying the rules of the english version, I will object that no project should exist which has no community able to make their own rules.
Exactly! It makes me wonder about those people who feel that they cannot function unless they have previously adopted a complete system of rules. Except for broad questions of fundamental principles communities must preceed rules.
Agreed. The question is what are those "fundamental principles". We see each Wikimedia project has different opinion except NPOV and GFDL. Some communities count only board and the Founder's former instructions, other include other community based idea like "Be bold". So for saving a mess on some projects - wolof wp and ja wiktionary are unfortunate cases among ours - and for helping newly being created projects, it would be helpful to show what are our fundamental principals.
It is more than those principals are written in letters. It is true here "letters kill you, but the spilit makes you alive". Avoiding wo wp case, the community could understand those principals and apply to their actual cases. In my opinion this assertion has two corollaries: 1) those principals could be modified applying the actual experiences on the community and 2) for this purpose, that is, its good understanding there should be people who know the aim and mechanism of the project to some extent.
So it seems to me a reasonable requirement that a new project should be began by a certain number of experienced people who have been already active on some project. In most cases 50 edits are enough show their behaviour and their and understanding to the policies in my opinion, and it is different from shutting out newbies: it takes two days to make 50 major edits, if they spent whole a weekend for activity on wiki. (well I however admit it might be a view of heavy wikiholics prausibly ...)
On the other hand, I agree with Ray on that most of rules would however be developed on the community through their activities, not preceeding its creation. But to manage difficult cases experience on other projects is helpful: the people who commit a project and/or the entire Wikimedia project, if possible, with sufficient understanding of policies and its mechanism. So here we expect experienced people at the beginning point of a certain project. Or
Perfectly predictable when the rules are nothing but words.
such a situation would come up again, I assume.
Translating/creating policies seems to be a much better test of actual interest in doing work. Once you do that, that shows a commitment to the project.
People need to do both. Mere translation is a mechanical act. There is a need to discuss how those policies guide our activity. Policies beyond fundamental principles can and should vary between projects
So the question is what are "fundamental principles". I think we must make it clear and provide a set of those principles in a form as neutral as possible (not depending on a certain project but also refertable to some concrete cases for further understanding). For example, NPOV guidelein in NPOV (not depending on a certain language project matters) ... as a startpont for each participants who want to create a new project.
Maybe that would have prevented the total shutdown that is taking place on the japanese wiktionary.
We can point out some factors of JA wikt shutdown, though I myself was not wholely clear the situation; I had been very inactive there during some months. And after I was back, I was surprised there were no changes or progress on policies' drafting before I had left it. There were almost no discussion on Beer Parlour (VP of wiktionary). It makes me convince strongly a new project need both people who concern policies and administrative issues (though it is not so fun than submission of new entires) and eager submitter of contents.