On 10/26/06, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: Yes, documenting differences would be an excellent idea. I believe that informally, a lot of policies are derived from one project or the other. But that many also originate in a project because they give an answer to a need arising at one point in time. As to why I personally believe that unifying the policies is a very unpractical thing to do, just ask yourself and five other people from different cultures what length of time they'd put behind the phrase "It was a very long meeting". I've done it in a room with 15 people and we came up with so many different answers (a long meeting was from 20 minutes up to a 8 hours meeting) that I started grasping the differences that culture (in the case of Wikimedia, it would be national culture or project culture or whatever other thing that makes people and communities different). I believe that different people will give different answers to the same issues. People may learn from each other, or may not. And that is their choice. I don't believe that anyone should impose their solutions on others. Translation is not only a language issue, it is also an interpretation issue, so even in the unlikely case that all communities would agree on policies, their translation in different languages would probably already transform the policy just because it refers to different concepts in the first place, although they have the same name. (hey, we should probably try to start with "what is the role and definition of a sysop in your project". That one will probably show the range of different understandings) Delphine -- ~notafish NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.

Keep in mind that Erik had expressed such an idea on his Campaign Platform. On 10/27/06, magiske prosesser <magipro(a)organizer.net> wrote: