Hi,
As I said, we are not talking about a set of bureaucratic rules nor about a "constitution". I also agree that guidelines should be different for different set of projects, i.e. the Wikipedia guidelines won't be the same as the Wikinews guidelines. We also have several global rules that are already mandatory, most notably the GFDL rule, which is also the easiest to enforce.
I have an experience in writing in several Wikimedia projects in different languages. People often confuse the Wikimedia principles with the English Wikipedia principles (I saw this confusion here too), and due to a (strange) resentment towards the English Wikipedia, they reject any recommendation published on the Meta claiming it is just another idea of an American from the English Wikipedia.
We should stress that there are certain principles that must be shared by all Wikipedias (or by all Wikinews projects etc.), first beacuase these principles makes Wikipedia an open and reliable source, and second because we wish to encourage cross-contributions, i.e. that contributors will be able to easily write in several projects, and that articles could be easily translated and adopted in other projects.
Here are some allegedly global rules, which are unclear:
1. Original research - what exactly does it include? Can a certain Wikipedia redefine the notion of "state" and state: X is a state according to its own criteria?
2. NPOV - Can the Dutch Wikipedia (for example) decide it defines a state according to the EU recognition, and state X is a state only according to EU diplomatic recognition, or is it a violation of NPOV?
3. Polling - can a Wikipedian community vote about excluding a certain person from writing? Can it vote about whether to except a certain source? Can the Spanish Wikipedia decide a source from Japan will never be regarded reliable?
These are only a few questions that are not properly addressed, and the system doesn't work well anymore. This kind of problems rise more often as more people write in Wikipedia and as the communities grow, and we fail to supply answers and solutions.
Dror
On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 12:17 PM, Dror K dror1975@icqmail.com wrote:
[snip] 3. Polling - can a Wikipedian community vote about excluding a certain person from writing? Can it vote about whether to except a certain source? Can the Spanish Wikipedia decide a source from Japan will never be regarded reliable? [/snip]
Dror
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
The answer to your question is yes. They can and they do. The English Wikipedia commonly votes to ban individual users, typically disguised as "Discussing a community ban."
As far as sources go: each project is allowed to set the standard of inclusion. Some may choose to require more-high-profile sources, while others might accept a blog as a source.
This seems to me to be a solution in search of a problem.
-Chad
- Original research - what exactly does it include? Can a certain
Wikipedia redefine the notion of "state" and state: X is a state according to its own criteria?
Wikipedia is not there to make researches. So we don't redefine something. Your example seems more like a violation of NPOV. If the state of a state is disputed (for example Taiwan, or Cosovo), then it is disputed. It is recognized by some country and not recognized by other. That is it. We don't define a state as a state or not, we just describe things.
- NPOV - Can the Dutch Wikipedia (for example) decide it defines a
state according to the EU recognition, and state X is a state only according to EU diplomatic recognition, or is it a violation of NPOV?
It is a violation of NPOV. But this problem should be solved in the nl.wikipedia community.
- Polling - can a Wikipedian community vote about excluding a certain
person from writing? Can it vote about whether to except a certain source? Can the Spanish Wikipedia decide a source from Japan will never be regarded reliable?
Personally I share your opinion and am against such a poll. But I know that this happens in several communities, and I don't see the necessity to forbid them to do it, or to enforce other communities who refuse such a polling to do the same.
Ting
--- On Mon, 8/4/08, Dror K dror1975@icqmail.com wrote:
These are only a few questions that are not properly addressed, and the system doesn't work well anymore. This kind of problems rise more often as more people write in Wikipedia and as the communities grow, and we fail to supply answers and solutions.
I don't know that there are any straightforward answers, but there are solutions. However in this thread you have presented a solution without making very clear where there are questions not being addressed, which makes it hard to help direct to you existing solutions.
It is much easier to show the defects in your proposed solution. The underlying issue is that for anything to be accomplished on a wiki critical mass is required. Not only to build it general, but for any particular task or enforcement. Having the wikis work out the local guidelines on these issues themselves is necessary to build the critical mass to see the guidelines are followed in practice. I am very hopeful the process could be helped along with targeted workshops, but it still must be done by local editors. Until they grasp why NPOV or OR is dealt with in a certain way and more importantly what happens when they are neglected, they will not care about the issue no matter what the policy reads on the page.
It is local admins caring about the issue enough to require others to change there behavior through social pressure which is the only way to fix the issues. en.WP for all that the policies and guidelines say about references has 140,000 articles *tagged* as completely lacking sources. There has been no watershed event like the press received over BLP's to form a critical mass of people who really care about unreferenced articles. Someday if a hoax that has existed unchecked on Wikipedia for five years and is reported in the New York Times, that might create the critical mass. Or it might build in an internal fashion, it may be simply a matter of more urgent issues being solved first before. I am certain every wiki has policies that are not practiced as you would imagine when reading them, so even if we could give everyone a perfected top 5 policies; the problem would still exist. Besides likely being ineffective, handing such policies to admins to enforce would completely backfire (why would be another entire essay). We need to admins to be invested in the particulars of the issue itself. That comes from policy building on a local level. The overall guidelines of Wikipedias are embodied in being an encyclopedia of free knowledge that anyone can edit. If anyone can edit it, NPOV is the only practical method. If it is to be an encyclopedia, OR will be avoided. As along "free" is understood a free content, the solution there are limited as well. The sister projects overall guidelines are also embodied in their missions.
Birgitte SB
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org